Cal staff suddenly quiet after daily updates. It is disconcerting to say the least!
Readings to high? Pressure to stop informing? You have to take into account that the public is waiting for your updates to decide how to navigate their lives in the near future. Absence of data, or divergence from your established pattern of information will lead to assumptions. Please keep us informed.
Please try to keep anxiety
Please try to keep anxiety in check. The people providing this service have lives of their own and are under no obligation to continue providing the excellent work they are doing for the community's benefit.
Please be respectful of the fact that they are people too, and not to be so selfish that personal concerns are put before the wellbeing of others.
Thanks for all you and the team are doing
Just wanted to echo my thanks for your work. While it is not completely reassuring, it is good to have facts available.
We can certainly understand
We can certainly understand that you guys have been working hard to get us the results. I think the concern might come from the fact that you had been on the cusp of determining if the radiation levels were showing some kind of trend so you have us on the edge of our seats waiting to hear. Simulatneously in the news we hear there's flashes of blue light followed by radiation bursts coming from Reactor #2. So it's kind of disconcerting not to see any air levels in the last few days. But thanks so much for your hard work, much respect goes to you for your skill and dedication.
Thank You
Thanks for promptly replying, Mr. Miller. We appreciate your attempting to keep us reassured. And again, I know not everyone agrees with all your data or how you come about with your comparisons, but for the rest of us, speaking mostly for myself, we greatly appreciate what you guys are doing. As a mom of two wee ones, you guys are giving me the only piece of mind I can get out of this whole situation right now. If I lived closer to Berkeley, I would drive my happy butt down there with snacks and stuff for everyone. Since I am so far away, please accept my grateful appreciation. I would say give Dr. Chivers a hug for me too but that might just seem weird. ;o)
LOL, ..., I know that is not
LOL, ..., I know that is not a scientific term, but I could not resist.
Thank you for status update!
Thank you for the update, and thank you for the service you are performing. Your updates keep us informed and give us the information on which to make sound informed decisions in our lives. Whether that's leaving the bay area, staying, taking a vacation or avoiding certain foods, this is very very key information that is relied upon by many. Your team is very appreciated!
JMiller- THANK YOU! Also,
JMiller-
THANK YOU!
Also, may I ask, what (if any) measures are you taking at home? Iodine, avoid rainfall, etc?
More thanks, and an observation
JMiller et al, once again, my thanks. As someone else mentioned above, you good folks at the Berkeley Lab DO have us, quite literally, "at the edge of our seats". Please understand that this (frank) desperation for timely updates and the sort of VERY SPECIFIC information you have been providing so generously, is a function of two realities: [1] Our near-total CONFIDENCE AND TRUST in you -- not a terrible thing to claim, certainly; but also [2] Our near-total LACK OF CONFIDENCE AND TRUST in the people, agencies, organizations and governments who, if they were doing the job they are entrusted with, SHOULD be conveying this sort of data and explanations to us, in an EQUALLY timely fashion, with commensurate transparency, patience, grace, and generosity.
You guys are stuck with us, basically, because The Powers That Be at TEPCO, inside the government of Japan, the IAEA, the U.S. government and various affiliated agencies, not to mention the international press corps and media, have REPEATEDLY demonstrated, at best, a cavalier attitude toward this ongoing nuclear event and its potential effects / dangers... and, at worst, a thoroughly ignorant, devil-may-care, Apocalypse-courting disengagement that may very well contribute to WIDESPREAD HEALTH EFFECTS AND EVEN LOSS OF LIFE. I don't want to bring politics into this, but I'll just say this: If I were President, THIS would be the ONLY priority of my Administration, until I was SATISFIED that the danger had passed and that the public had been educated and reassured about this FACT. No such efforts are underway. As I've said before, it's as if The Powers That Be are whistling past their own graveyard.
Anyway. Point is: Your efforts are very much a double-edged sword. You have more than earned our respect, our gratitude and our thirst for your services... Far more so than anyone else I can cite in this crisis. You are, for all intents and purposes, our "life vest", and we are clinging to you with all the frenzied desperation of a drowning man. This is by no means fair to you and your colleagues: We are expecting you to be miracle workers, frankly; not only making it all understandable, but calming our fears and, eventually it is hoped, convincing us that the danger has finally passed. We expect too much of you, I know. Please continue to be patient with us and take us at our word when we say: We need you, right now, far more than you may realize. There is a vast, frightening ocean of silence, propaganda, platitudes, disinformation and bad information out there, and it is scaring the Hell out of us. You are a lighthouse in these dark and uncertain times. You are more precious than you can possibly realize.
Be well -- try to get some rest, if possible, and we'll be here when you have something new to announce / explain.
Rick Cromack.
Allen, Texas
www.facebook.com/lonestarplano
Ditto the above
Thank you for the efforts and those of your team. You are playing a crucial role in this historic chapter for many of us.
Rick, thank you for your
Rick, thank you for your confidence. This post is so eloquent, I will most likely quote you as we move on with our efforts. Stay calm, we are keeping watch on as many things as we can at the moment and we will inform as results come in.
Regards from a fellow, former "bubblehead"
Dr. Chivers -- you're very kind. I took a quick peek at your CV through the Departmental Web Site and was pleasantly surprised to discover you are a former "nuc"! I was finishing up several years as a Sonar Tech (SS) around the time you were at Orlando at Nuclear Power School -- I was right up the coast, at Kings Bay, attached to SUBRON 20.
I've mentioned before here that I know "just enough" about nuclear engineering to be "dangerous" -- I attribute that to the Submarine Warfare Qualification process, and, naturally, my experiences during several boomer patrols and a handful of fast-boat TAD deployments. I've had custody of rad badges before; this is one of many reasons this ongoing event has me so very deeply spooked.
Every single nuc I ever knew had a few reliable characteristics: They were intelligent, enthusiastic about their craft and education, responsible, forthright, and utterly "no-b.s.". I feel even more reassured now that I know that the information coming from your Lab has passed through the hands of a nuc; and, for anyone else reading this, allow me to put your mind at ease: There will be NO QUESTION of obfuscation, avoidable delay, nontransparency, propagandist or "calming" tactics, or lack of courage HERE. When you're sitting in a tin (no, not really) can a couple hundred feet long, more often than not within a few yards of nuclear weaponry, completely on your own and with your life in the hands of only a few score young men (back then, anyway) you're swapping air and everything else with, THERE IS NO ROOM FOR NONSENSE, NO TIME FOR GAMES. Add to that the unique challenges of depth, pressure, total isolation, time, and a functioning nuclear reactor -- not to mention, the very real possibility of running into something at speed, HARD -- and the professional atmosphere, the eyes-wide-open attitude, the let's-get-it-done-whatever-it-takes diligence, is simply unmatched. I have spent the last eighteen years trying to find anything like it in civilian life. To date, I have not.
We are "in good hands", folks. I don't know beans about anyone else at the Berkeley Lab -- but with a nuc bubblehead in there, we ARE going to get correct data, in a timely fashion, and unvarnished -- I can GUARANTEE you that. I will sleep a little better tonight, for certain.
Rick Cromack.
Allen, Texas
www.facebook.com/lonestarplano
OK, now I really have to get
OK, now I really have to get to work to keep up with that post.
One small correction, I only
One small correction, I only trained and was staff (2 yrs) on a submarine prototype (S5G Idaho Falls) and was detailed to CGN-41 USS Arkansas (2 yrs). So, I would not call myself a bubblehead. Hopefully, that does not crush your opinion of me.
Close enough for government work
It qualifies. I won't be calling you a "nub" anytime soon, worry not.
When all this is over we really need to swap some sea stories. (Remember the difference between a sea story and a fairy tale? A fairy tale begins, "Once upon a time..." and a sea story starts off: "This is no-sh!t."
I'll let you get back to scrounging batteries for the sound-powered telephone now, or searching for the key of the kelson.
Rick Cromack.
Allen, Texas
www.facebook.com/lonestarplano
LOL...
LOL, no pressure, Doc. Didn't mean to put you on the spot, there, shipmate.
When this is all over and life begins to return to something like normal, I really need to get out there to California and buy you a beer, partner. Heck, I'll buy the whole Lab a beer, or a wine cooler, or a mojito, or whatever it is that you Californians drink these days. (For me, it's Shiner Bock, or Starbucks coffee, and very little else.)
Rick Cromack.
Allen, Texas
www.facebook.com/lonestarplano
It's true
I couldn't have said it better myself. I agree with everything Rick said.
Wow
Well put.