Orwell's turning so fast in his grave...

...he should be connected to the electric grid!

At a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) subcommittee meeting on May 26, 2011 about the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, ACRS Member Dana A. Powers bragged about how little radioactivity had escaped during the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe.

Powers said: "But, the whole thing is quite remarkable, I mean, that you have damage to three units, maybe a couple of spent fuel pools, we've got a megacurie or so of cesium outside the plant...I mean, that just shows you how much defense-in-depth you have, even when things get very, very heavily compromised here. I mean, there is a tremendous -- had you asked me a priori, before the event, you had this sort of event occur, what kind of source term would you expect, I would have written out a much more severe set of numbers for you." 

See page 130 of the transcript.

In a sense he's right -- perhaps 99% of the radioactivity hasn't disgorged into the environment -- yet. But that 1% packs quite a punch -- a million curies of radioactive cesium represents a catastrophic release. And we aren't out of the woods yet on the other 99%, especially since a lot of it is contained in the countless tens of thousands of tons of radioactively contaminated cooling water, which Tokyo Electric Power Company ran out of room to store many weeks ago. Of course, they continually "feed and bleed" the melted down Units 1, 2, and 3 each day, generating even more radioactively contaminated water with nowhere to go. Unknown amounts have already been released into the ocean, either accidentally through leaks, or else on purpose to make room in storage areas for even more highly contaminated water. 

An NRC media release from 1998, announcing his re-appointment to the ACRS at the time, gives this biography on Dr. Powers: "...born in Ironton, Missouri, received his B.S. degree in Chemistry and his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, and Economics from the California Institute of Technology. He began his career in 1974 at Sandia National Laboratory, where he currently serves as a senior scientist at the Nuclear Technology Center. Dr. Powers is responsible for the development of safety research programs for Department of Energy nuclear facilities. He has served on the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Facility Safety for DOE and for DOE's Chemical Reactions Tank Advisory Panel."