Interview with Akira Tokuhiro, Nuclear Engineer: Fukushima and the Mass Media

[bananas]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vivian-norris-de-montaigu/interview-with-akira-toku_b_863297.html

Interview with Akira Tokuhiro, Nuclear Engineer: Fukushima and the Mass Media
Posted: 05/17/11 05:28 PM ET

<snip>

I want to bring up a sensitive point to many who are (may be) identified below.

There is a difference amongst the following: nuclear physicist, nuclear engineer, nuclear reactor operator, nuclear non-proliferation specialist.

During the current crisis, all these 'experts' have been in the media.

The ranking of 'experts' who REALLY know how the reactor accident took place is as follows.

1) Nuclear reactor operator (he/she is really the forensic surgeon, the auto mechanic who can build and drive the car)
2) Nuclear engineer (he/she is the forensic and internal/external medicine practitioner; the automobile design and analysis engineer)

As for the other two, they only understand the principles. It is as if they know the principles of driving a car but have never driven the car nor designed a car nor repaired a car.

<snip>

[caraher]

1. Sure

But expertise is relative; a nuclear physicist is well ahead of, say, Bill Nye (engineer) in understanding what happened (and Nye was on CNN as an "expert" the night of the first explosion).

The other factor is how close to reliable information one is. Outside of TEPCO I'm not sure reactor operators and engineers could say much about what REALLY happened since what TEPCO tells the world is hard to take at face value.

As a physicist, I know there's a lot I don't know about reactors, but I also generally have a good idea where the line between what I know and what I don't lies. And let's not forget that unraveling what happens is as much about asking the right questions of the right people as expertise. For instance, Richard Feynman was a theoretical physicist and not a rocket scientist or engineer, and one could have made the same kind of claim about his likelihood of "REALLY" knowing how the Challenger disaster took place compared to engineers who built the solid rocket boosters. But it fell to him to really put the story together, by going straight to the source - people who actually assembled the rockets, engineers - and evading the managers. (Read about it in http://www.amazon.com/What-Care-Other-People-Think/dp/0393320928/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1306018602&sr=8-2">"What Do You Care What Other People Think?" as well as his http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/challenger-appendix.html">appendix to the report of the Rogers Commission)

[jimlup]

2. +1

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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