The Sound of Death

A few years ago, I watched a documentary on the Cherynobl disaster, and in it was film footage taken by helicopter of the ruined plant. As the camera passed over the top of the reactor, you could see its glowing core within. Somewhere off frame, there was the furious clicking of a Geiger counter, and the camera man, who at that time knew he had already received a lethal dose of radiation, narrated, “what you are hearing is the sound of death.” He died shortly after shooting that footage.

Unless you have been marooned on a distant planet, you have heard by now of the Japanese earthquake that ravaged the country last week, and that caused extraordinary tsunamis. Combined, the damage has already put this disaster on pace to exceed Hurricane Katrina as the most costly natural disaster in history.

By last Friday, however, early reports were surfacing that there were troubles with a few of Japan’s nuclear power plants that were in the quake zone. While some news agencies and even President Obama were bust denying that anything was wrong, something was, in fact, terribly wrong. As the weekend unfolded, and reactors experienced more and more problems, including fires, explosions, leasks and the ongoing threat of nuclear meltdown, the problem got to the point where it could not be denied any further, and now the world watches as Japan and her allies try to contain the problem as best they can. Last night, a new fire broke out at one station; today is a new day. Perhaps a new threat will emerge at any one of the compromised stations. We will have to wait and see.

In the meantime, there is already a significant health risk underway, and one that could translate into serious repercussions for portions of the health insurance industry. Aaron Datesman – a personal friend of mine – recently wrote this damning article on the serious problems he is seeing in how radiation risk in Japan is being reported. Now, Aaron is easily the smartest person I have ever met. He scored nearly perfect SATs. He turned down Harvard. He was, for a while, an honest-to-goodness rocket scientist. He currently works for the Department of Energy, and is deeply opposed to nuclear power. Like myself, he lived less than 100 miles from the Three Mile Island power plant back when it went sideways in 1979. Between that and growing up near Bethlehem Steel – which for most of the Cold War had multiple Soviet ICBMs targeted specifically at it – a childhood in the Lehigh Valley provided a strong education in the risks of radiation, and Aaron and I aren’t the only ones who left that area thinking that nuclear power is one of those genies better left in the bottle. Aaron’s politics are well to the left, but don’t let that turn you off. The man knows his science.