Evaluation of the validity of the information at this site should take into account these facts:
The groups is not hosted by MIT. The blog is not an MIT product. (See quote below)
The group has already engaged in activity that casts a great deal of doubt on their integrity.
http://geniusnow.com/2011/03/15/the-strange-case-of-josef-oehmen/They attempt damage control.
http://mitnse.com/2011/03/13/modified-version-of-original-post/The links provided by the group takes you not to MIT validated information, but to blogs created, hosted and operated by two Public Relations entities serving the for profit global nuclear energy industry. (See quote below)
There is a direct conflict of interest with significant potential to create bias present since the future careers of these students are directly threatened by the events at Fukushima.
This is the ABOUT statement from the blog directing readers to public relations outlets for the nuclear energy industry.
Our mission at the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering is to help develop the next generation of technical leaders of the global nuclear enterprise and to provide technical leadership in energy and non-energy applications of nuclear technology. We also have a responsibility to inform public debates on the wise uses of nuclear science and technology.
Purpose of this Blog
This is a blog written by the students of MIT’s Nuclear Science and Engineering department, with the support of our faculty. It is hosted outside of MIT’s domain name because of the established infrastructure at WordPress.com and due to the incredibly large traffic we were expecting and have seen so far. Please consult our official website
http://web.mit.edu/nse/ and see the link under Headlines if you are concerned about the credibility.
The purpose of this blog is not to provide up-to-date information about the ongoing situation at the nuclear facilities in Fukushima, Japan, nor is it to promote to a pro-nuclear political agenda. Rather, we are trying to provide non-sensationalized, factual data from engineers in a manner that the general public can understand. We are fighting to decipher conflicting news reports and manage the frustrating lack of clarity to provide this information. Also, please understand that we are full time students, busy writing theses, going to classes, and completing homework assignments, so these updates may be somewhat behind those of the media outlets.
For truly up-to-date information, we encourage you to view websites such as
http://ansnuclearcafe.org/ which has a compilation of news stories from the media outlets. The website at
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/ has fairly reliable information as well.
Former NRC Commissioner Bradford has characterized the efforts of the nuclear industry's PR campaign as being aimed at convincing the public of 6 "myths".
Since all are not only demonstrably untrue and lack any support at all in science, I call them deliberate lies.
1. nuclear power is cheap;
2. learning and new standardized designs solve all past problems;
3. the waste problem is a non-problem, especially if we’d follow the lead of many other nations and “recycle” our spent fuel;
4. climate change makes a renaissance inevitable; 5. there are no other large low-carbon “baseload” alternatives;
6. there’s no particular reason to worry that a rapidly expanding global industry will put nuclear power and weapons technologies in highly unstable nations, often nations with ties to terrorist organizations.