Sometimes it's not such a bad idea to have a hand hovering over the panic button.
In Hong Kong, we often panic about small things and maybe, as the good people who run the Daya Bay nuclear plant assure us, the tiny radiation leak last month was really not worth worrying about and we should not overreact.
Yet, something is uncomfortably familiar about the company's response to reports of the leak. First they belatedly admitted that the report of the leak, coming from a US-based source, was indeed correct. They then stressed that this was nothing more than a 'minor operating incident' and that the Chinese state nuclear regulator had been notified.
However, it is unclear whether such notification was also furnished to the Hong Kong authorities at the same time. Hong Kong, after Shenzhen, is the most heavily populated centre close to the plant but there is studious ambiguity in statements from the Hong Kong government as to when it received notification.
Also notified was a body called the Daya Bay Nuclear Safety Consultative Committee, apparently an independent monitoring committee. The website of the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Operations and Management Company refers to this committee but does not disclose its membership. CLP Power, the Hong Kong company which owns 25 per cent of the plant, is equally silent on this matter.
Surely there is nothing to be embarrassed about here? Or is there? And how reassuring is it to learn that China's notoriously secretive National Nuclear Safety Administration was notified about the leak and also remained silent?
There is no independent evidence to suggest that the problem was anything other than the minor incident that the company claims it to be. But why not make it public? This raises the question of whether a similar response of silence would apply to a more serious incident.