A solid month of almost daily “there is no problem but today we have big progress on it” is near, and a post on this record was planned to come in a few days time, but today my irony meter exploded, a lowly height has clearly been already reached. Greg Laden has covered it already, and his take is similar: Welcome to the "I'm starting to get cynical" edition. Yes, this is pretty much what I thought about the news today, too; how can you not get cynical.

Anybody with a little wit about them knew since the first few days that the Fukushima disaster is going to be at least another Chernobyl scale event no matter whether the cores completely melt or not, which is still a possibility by the way. The corporate media of course keep telling us that there is no big problem, nothing to see here.

So, we are well used to downplaying the problem, desperately putting a positive spin on the worsening disaster. This last week is maybe a little more funny than usual:

While we on Friday April 1^st still have them desperately looking for cracks that were not supposed to be there as no radioactive water had ever reached the ocean, on the weekend they are trying to seal the cracks because it is important that no more radioactive water reaches the ocean, and on Monday TEPCO releases over 11,500 tons of contaminated water about 100 times more radioactive than legal limits straight into the ocean.

But today’s headlines are pure irony nerve overloads! On Yahoo news for example we read:

“Japan stops leaks from nuclear plant: TOKYO (Reuters) – Engineers have stopped highly radioactive water leaking into the sea from a crippled Japanese nuclear power plant, the facility's operator said on Wednesday, a breakthrough in the battle to contain the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.

However, Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) still needs to pump contaminated water into the sea because of a lack of storage space at the facility.

… Workers are still struggling to restart cooling pumps -- which recycle the water -- in four reactors damaged by the earthquake and tsunami.

Until those are fixed, they must pump in water from outside to prevent overheating and meltdowns. In the process, that creates more contaminated water that has to be pumped out and stored somewhere else or released into the sea.”

Look,the crack is fixed.

All going through the pipes now. Yippee!

So the leak is fixed, that means the water cannot go into the sea, and so we have to just pump it into the sea, being happy it does not go through the cracks. Remember, this is all after two weeks of news about that no radioactive water will ever reach the ocean. But the headline is not something like “Apology, Thousands of Tons Radioactive Water is Dumped into Your Food Supply, We Promise Being Less Biased in Future.” No, the headline is, without no blushing or it being still April Fools Day: “Japan Stops Leaks From Nuclear Plant.”

Wow!

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OK, sarcasm is not for everyone, so let me add an explanation just in case some think I am so biased that I cannot even appreciate that fixing the leak is certainly a good thing: Yes, of course it is good. But why only put good news in the headline, why the positive spin while science sites and many blogs still claim media fear mongering? Four of the six blocks still have no power! For a whole week the headlines have been only about that power cables have been brought to all six reactors. Ask average Joe what he remembers: most think the power has been restored. It has not! The cables are not connected to the probably anyways broken pumps.

Now the news is that a minor leak is fixed while the reactor buildings are wide open, the reactors have cracks, radioactive crap is released straight into the ocean, ... . Most people by now only skim the headlines since they are already not interested anymore in the "little problems" in Fuku-what-was-that-again. In fact, the crisis is going on and worsening over a month now and it will go on for a loooong while. Who the hell can still claim that the media are blowing this out of proportion?