International Law

Olympic principle

By Karl-Friedrich Lenz

The operators at the site fighting are not specialized in the job they have right now.

Obviously, not one of them has ever experienced a disaster of these proportions. And they were hired and trained to run the plant under normal conditions.

In contrast, there are people who do this kind of job for a living. All firefighters, especially those with knowledge and experience with radiation. Soldiers in specialized radiation units. Veterans of the Chernobyl liquidation (at least 500.000 of them).

But they are not on site, since they didn’t happen to work at TEPCO when disaster struck.

The response to this should be handled like the Olympic Games. Every nation should identify their champions in dealing with a runaway nuclear reactor (of course well in advance). And when disaster strikes, every nation should send the people on top of the list, the very best specialists, in a matter of hours. Of course also with the best assets in remote-controlled robots, heavy protection gear and measuring equipment. And an open communication line to the top of their Government to request anything more down the list in a matter of minutes.

The Olympic Games show that it is quite possible to identify the best specialists at whacking little balls or other similarly important activities. The same should be possible to do easily when it actually matters.

Instead we have amateurs running the show who don’t have boots, don’t have equipment to measure the radiation on site, don’t even have food and a place to sleep and are overworked because there are much too few of them.

Full post as published by Lenz Blog on March 31, 2011 (boomark / email).