Nuclear Hubris: Could Japan's Disaster Happen Here?
The “impossible” is underway in Japan. A 9.0 magnitude earthquake has badly shaken up several “indestructible” nuclear plants. Reactor No. 1 at the quake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is in partial meltdown, and reactor No. 3 may soon join it. In an act of naked desperation, plant officials are blindly pumping seawater into reactor No. 1 in an effort to cool its fuel rods.
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About the Author
Christian Parenti
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From Kyrgyzstan to Kenya, from Libya to Yemen, Syria and even Egypt, violence and upheaval can be traced back to the price of a loaf of bread.
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When extreme weather hits amid extreme poverty, escape becomes nearly impossible.
In all, four nuclear plants across northeast Japan are damaged, with a total of six reactors now having trouble cooling their radioactive uranium fuel rods. One major problem is that the quake destroyed all backup electrical power systems, so there is now very little juice to run equipment.
The worst off is the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, where the No. 1 reactor containment building exploded on Saturday when radioactive hydrogen gas was vented from the containment vessel inside it. Mixing with oxygen, the hydrogen ignited. More venting is due at reactor No. 3, thus a second such explosion is feared imminently (and may have occurred by the time you read this).
As day three of this disaster drew to a close, I reached former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Peter Bradford by phone at his home in Peru, Vermont. Now an adjunct professor at Vermont Law School, Bradford was a Carter-appointee to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and was on duty for the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979.
“It’s very hard to know what’s going on,” said Bradford with a grim calm. “During Three Mile Island very much of what we believed to be true on day three turned out to be untrue in subsequent days. Even now, we still don’t know how much radiation was actually released. It was less than was later released at Chernobyl, less than could have been released had the containment vessel failed. But how much was released? We don’t actually know.”
As for the multifaceted atomic crisis in Japan, it is very hard to say what is really going on. But this much is clear: if the containment vessel at the partially melted-down Fukushima reactor No. 1 holds, most of the radiation should be held within the site.
That is the Three Mile Island scenario, which the International Atomic Energy Agency rates as a four on its Nuclear and Radiological Events Scale. The crisis in Japan is, so far, a five. Chernobyl was a seven.
If the containment vessel breaks—or is already broken, cracked and leaking due to the earthquake—and if the meltdown keeps going, officials would have to switch from trying to cool the reactor to burying it with tons of sand and cement, essentially bombing it with dirt in numerous and very dangerous air sorties by cargo planes and helicopters.
That would be the Chernobyl scenario, and it would mean that massive amounts of radioactive iodine, cesium and other very poisonous stuff would escape into the atmosphere. This contamination would be deadly close to the site, but could reach the West Coast and even the East Coast of the United States—though in a very diffuse form.
The fallout from Chernobyl left swaths of Belarus and Ukraine red-hot no-go areas of contamination, inhabited by mutant wild boar and other strange fauna. The radiation from one or two Japanese Chernobyls could sicken many thousands of people—and many of them could die. The fallout’s diffusions across the Northern Hemisphere would strike later and quietly, as hard-to-track cancers seemingly unlinked to any one cause.
And what about our reactors? In the United States we have twenty-three reactors of the same General Electric design as Fukushima No. 1. We also have atomic plants built on fault lines. For example, the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant’s units 1 and 2 not far from Santa Barbara, and outside San Clemente there’s the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which has three reactors, two of which are still running. Environmentalists protested and bitterly opposed the opening of these plants along the California coast in a region of regular and often violent seismic activity. But as in Japan, their concerns were brushed aside with assurances that all contingencies had been taken into account.
The American fleet of 103 atomic reactors is old and rickety. But more dangerous than the old and brittle equipment, according to Bradford, may be overconfidence among regulators and managers. “The phrase ‘it can’t happen here’ is an invitation to disaster,” said Bradford. Mix technological arrogance with the profit motive, and you get slipshod management, corner-cutting and repeated lying.
As I’ve detailed in these pages in the past the American discourse around nuclear energy is somewhat schizophrenic. At one level, conservatives and some greens carry on a profoundly out-of-touch discussion about the merits of fourth-generation and miniature nuclear power plants. None of these schemes will be built due to their extremely prohibitive costs.
But in the meantime, there is an overlooked yet very real campaign by industry to relicense and extend by 50 percent the operation of our rickety old existing fleet of reactors. And get this—a quarter of our reactors are leaking or have leaked radioactive carcinogenic, tritium-polluted water. (See “Zombie Nuke Plants,” December 7, 2009.)
Vermont Yankee is one of the nukes up for relicensing, and it also has a tritium leak than no one can seem to find or stop. At first company officials from Entergy of Louisiana just lied about the problem, telling state regulators and lawmakers that the plant did not have the sort of underground pipes that could leak tritium into groundwater. But it does.
So far more than half of America’s commercial nuclear reactors have received new twenty-year operating licenses. In fact, the NRC has not rejected a single license renewal application. Many of these plants have also received “power-up rates” which allow them to run at up to 120 percent of their originally intended capacity. That means their systems are subjected to unprecedented amounts of heat, pressure, corrosion, stress and embrittling radiation.
The only thing that could make our nukes safer would be a campaign of constant, careful, rigorous (and expensive) inspection and maintenance. But the NRC does not require that. During his campaign, Obama called the NRC “a moribund agency…captive of the industry that it regulates.” Unfortunately, that has not changed much since Obama took office. And the private companies running the plants—armed with notions of infallibility and motivated by money—are doing all they can to squeeze yet more money from the aging nuke fleet.
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Comments
There is no reason to suffer the harms of nuclear energy. Cleaner, safer and infinitely renewable energy systems are ready and fully able to replace nuclear power. The cost of new nuclear power systems are also too high, with even solar power costing less. As additional safety measures are added to nuclear power, the technology prices itself out of consideration on economic terms. We have wind, solar, geothermal, hydro with existing dams and newer flowing water turbines, wave energy systems, biomass, hydrogen from water, all renewable and safe. Genetic damages are not reversible, and continue through future generations. Nuclear power is the most irresponsible form of electric generation ever invented and deserves to be abandoned for good. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-26/solar-may-be-cheaper-than-fossil-power-in-five-years-ge-says.html
When I read these comments, I see so many false and delusional statements. Nuclear power supporters offer empty rhetoric and outright lies to persuade people to put up with the horrible harms of nuclear power. Some of the anti-nuclear crowd, are exaggerating a bit. Meltdowns do not "spread like wildfire from one reactor to the next". But it is also true that grouping reactors together creates problems because radiation emissions from a damaged reactor can prevent access to the next one by workers. Loss of outside electricity is the actual event that makes meltdowns happen, and it does not matter whether that is preceded by tsunami, other flooding, earthquake, tornado, terrorist attack, or any other event that causes loss of power. Most reactors in the US have only 4 hours of battery backup to keep cooling systems running for the fuel rods. Overhead concretee holding pools can be broken or cracked by earthquake , letting water out, or making it impossible to keep enough water in. Even the newer designs which rely on gravity fed cooling still have a limited amount of water that still can be lost with earthquake damages.
The radiation releases do not stay on site; people all around the world suffer from the bad choices of others with nuclear power. The control systems are so complicated and extensive at reactors that the potential problems increase as the complexity increases. Chernobyl was blamed on operator error, Three Mile Island was blamed on something else, Fukushima was blamed on earthquake. Whatever, the blame is not the solution. The solution is to admit that nuclear power was a bad idea, that no matter how hard they try, and no matter how much is spent, disasters continue to occur.
Nuclear power is more expensive, without adding the liabilites, than most renewable and safe energy systems, this year, even solar power has hit a break even point in investment costs, but solar power can be owned by individuals, with free power after the finance period, and no chance of disaster at all. Wind power is cheaper than anything else over time, and already contributes large amounts of power. Hydro power has been used cheaply and reliably for many tears. Geothermal, wave energy, biomass, flowing water hydro, and other new systems, as well as hydrogen recovery from water, are coming to fruition. There is no reason to suffer from nuclear power.
Ellen Beth at 03/14/2011 posted: "The power can go out anywhere and flooding can happen just about anywhere. For all the precautions, you just cannot predict where a safe place for a nuclear reactor is going to be. It's like saying the Titanic is unsinkable."
I quite agree with you, Ellen.
Some Russians even posted poems in LiveJournal about such
unsinkable nuclear Titanic. It is awfully funny! For example (http://desert-shield.livejournal.com/1400.html):
In mainland Japan,
You may got the exposure.
In coastal Fukushima,
The exposure gets You.
Mercer: Cooled with heavy water? Then why are they called light water reactors? These are General Electric Marl I boiling water reactors criticized by regulators since 1972 as being vulnerable to meltdowns due to tiny cost-cutting containments. All 23 in the U.S. should be shut down.
Here, an advanced tutorial in talking out both sides of one's arse, right-wing style. These are the same clowns who wopuld be wailing about the risk of ... severe sun-burn for workers!!! ... if there was massive investment in solar power outside the purview of the energy cartels:
lvSTATISM1 at 03/14/2011 @ 12:26pm: "Life is not risk free. but liberals and leftists in general are obsessed with viewing every degree of risk as catastrophic."
Pffffff. This from the same dittohead who hangs on every syllable for the grim & gruesome Cheneys when they drone on darkly about "1% doctrines" and dirty bombrs being enabled by the Sharia-law spouting Kenyan whom they imagine to be in the WH.
Why wait for an alQ dirty bomber when one's own nucleaur industry can do the irradiation for you?
"Nuclear energy is proven to be a safe, reliable, cost effective..."
Don't forget it's too cheap to meter and that the Titanic is unsinkable due to its techno-sophistication.
Nuclear power had a clear field ahead of it after WWII without challengers. It failed to capture the market becuase it presents intractable problems: to wit, cost over-runs, safety issues (see: today's news), and the conundrum of what do to with the waste. Across more than half a century, these problems have not been solved.
There is zero latitude for error with nukes. Excellent engineering and maintainence, however admirable in their own rights, are not good enough. There is no margin for error with nukes or it's dirty bomb time -- which is, I suspect, what so excites lvSTATISM1 about nukes, given his amply demonstrated hatred of humanity & civilian life.
ValleyPost.org
Japan Quake Puts Valley Nuke in Local Spotlight
by Eesha Williams
The massive earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 12 created a still-evolving disaster at several of Japan's nuclear power plants. Meanwhile, the Louisiana company that owns the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is trying to get permission from the government to run the 40 year old reactor until at least 2032. Vermont Yankee is three miles from Massachusetts and a stone's throw from New Hampshire.
On March 13, the New York Times quoted experts who said it was unlikely that the unfolding nuclear disaster in Japan will kill as many people as were killed by the 1986 meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union.
But the New York Times has a long record of getting the facts wrong about nuclear power. Some of these errors and omissions are documented in two books by this reporter: "Grassroots Journalism" and "Good News: Local Journalism That Made a Difference."
Karl Grossman is a journalism professor at the State University of New York. In a March 12, 2011 post on his blog www.karlgrossman.blogspot.com Grossman wrote:
"The radioactive releases in the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident affected the entire northern hemisphere, as a book published last year by the New York Academy of Sciences documents. And 'Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment,' authored by Dr. Alexey Yablokov, Dr. Vassily Nesterenko, and Dr. Alexey Nesterenko, finds that medical records between 1986, the year of the accident, and 2004 reflect 985,000 deaths as a result of the radioactivity released. Most of the deaths were in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, but others were spread through the many other countries the radiation from Chernobyl struck. Where the radioactivity spreads after a nuclear plant meltdown is largely a function of where winds take the radioactivity and of the rain that causes it to fall out."
In a March 13 interview, Grossman told the Valley Post that, if there is a major release of radiation in Japan, radiation could reach New England in "a few days," depending on wind speed and direction. "This would be affected by rain along the route. Also, mountains would cause fall-out, especially if it's raining in those mountains. Mountains would be a factor in blocking some of what would be in the wind."
If radiation does reach the Valley, experts generally say people should stay indoors and possibly take potassium iodide pills. This can be confirmed by contacting your state's health department:
http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=eohhs2agencylanding&L=4&L0=Home&L1=Governmen...
http://healthvermont.gov
http://www.dhhs.nh.gov
On March 21 at 7 p.m., several nationally known experts will speak about nuclear power at the Centre Congregational Church at 193 Main Street in Brattleboro. The speakers will be Dr. Arjun Makhijani, founder and president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Maryland, and James Moore, director of the Clean Energy Program of Vermont Public Interest Research Group. Music will be provided by the Green River String Band.
The public is welcome. There is a suggested donation of five dollars.
A serious accident or act of sabotage at Vermont Yankee would kill thousands of people and leave hundreds of square miles of land uninhabitable.
The Vermont senate in February 2010 voted to close Vermont Yankee in March 2012. Unless Entergy is able to get the Vermont senate to reverse itself before March 2012 -- and unless Entergy is able to get a judge to overrule the senate -- the reactor will close by 2012.
Like all nuclear power plants, Vermont Yankee contributes to global warming. The cost of storing nuclear waste makes nuclear power more expensive than solar, wind or any other source of electricity.
Anti-nuclear march, Brattleboro, 2008. photo by Eesha Williams (click photo to enlarge)
In recent years, some public hearings in and around Brattleboro on the reactor's future have drawn as many as 500 people, the vast majority of whom were in favor of closing the plant.
Volunteers with the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG), the state's biggest environmental organization, spent last summer knocking on doors and speaking with people about why Vermont Yankee should be closed. "We've been finding tremendous support for closing Vermont Yankee," said VPIRG director Paul Burns. "Because of the way the prevailing winds blow, New Hampshire would probably be most affected by an accident. So we're getting support from people in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, too."
Burns predicted that Entergy would outspend the antinuclear groups "1,000 to one" on lobbying and advertising. "But our odds are better than theirs," he said. "If there's any state where the public will can prevail in a fight like this, it's Vermont."
Vermont Yankee opened in 1972 and was sold to Entergy by a group of New England utilities in 2002. The new owner promptly sought and eventually won regulators' approval to ramp up power production to 20 percent more than the plant had ever before produced.
There have been a string of accidents at Yankee, including a fire in 2005 and, in 2007, a spectacular cooling tower collapse, which sent debris and hundreds of thousands of gallons of water cascading several stories to the ground.
In January 2010, Entergy was found to be leaking nuclear waste into the Connecticut river, which farmers in western Massachusetts use to irrigate vegetables. The leak still has not been fixed.
To understand why so many people are volunteering so much time to try to close Vermont Yankee, one must look at the history of the nuclear power industry.
There are now 104 nuclear power reactors operating at 65 locations in the United States. The nuclear power industry was created by the federal government in the mid-1950s, according to "Nuclear Politics in America" by Colorado State University professor Robert Duffy. The technology required to use nuclear power to generate electricity was invented by the same government scientists who invented the first nuclear bombs, which were used with devastating effect in World War II.
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This photo shows protesters at the Entergy office in Brattleboro at 6 a.m. on March 5, 2007. photo by Eesha Williams
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In 1949, the Soviet Union became the first country besides the U.S. to detonate a nuclear bomb. Soon after that, Congressman Chet Holifield said, "We cannot be indifferent to the enormous psychological advantage that the Soviets would gain if they demonstrated to a tense and divided world the ability to put the atom to work in peacetime civilian pursuits. The United States will not take second place in the contest."
At the time, there were no American companies interested in building nuclear power plants. Power companies considered coal-fired plants to be a better investment. And experts were predicting minimal increases in demand for electricity in the U.S.
The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 effectively created the nuclear power industry. The government provided the industry with millions of dollars of free research, heavily subsidized fuel, discounted waste disposal, tax breaks and, perhaps most significant, taxpayer-subsidized insurance in case of an accident, since private companies were unwilling to provide coverage for radiation damage. The insurance was provided by the Price Anderson Act of 1957. Congress has renewed the Act approximately once every 10 years and it's still in effect.
The importance to the industry of this taxpayer-subsidized insurance is illustrated by a 1982 study done for Congress by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The study estimated that a serious accident at the Indian Point nuclear power plant near New York City would kill 50,000 people, result in 100,000 "radiation injuries" and cause $300 billion in property damage.
Following the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, about 144,000 people who lived near the plant evacuated the area for several days. The number of people who died prematurely because of the Three Mile Island accident is disputed by experts. Estimates range from zero to thousands. Settlements paid by the reactor's owner to people who lived near the reactor required those who got the money to remain silent about the accident.
In 1987, James Asselstine, then a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission appointed by President Ronald Reagan, told the New York Times that there was a 45 percent chance of a meltdown at a nuclear reactor somewhere in the United States by 2007.
A threat by the U.S. government to get into the business of electricity generation prompted private corporations to build nuclear power plants. In 1957 Lewis Strauss, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, said, "It is the Commission's policy to give the industry the opportunity to undertake the construction of power reactors. However, if industry does not, within a reasonable period of time, undertake to build the type of reactors which are considered promising, the Commission will take steps to build the reactors at its own initiative."
The federal government had spent $1.2 billion developing nuclear reactor technology by 1962, more than double the amount the industry spent. In the mid-1960s, less than 1 percent of the electricity used in the U.S. came from nuclear power. In 2000, nuclear power reached its peak, providing 20 percent of U.S. electricity. As of 2005, that had declined to 19 percent.
In the mid-1980s, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (successor to the Atomic Energy Commission), whose members were appointed by President Reagan, changed its rules to allow new nuclear power plants to open even when state and local officials said there would be no way for people near the plants to evacuate in case of an emergency. Governor Mario Cuomo of New York called the change "absurd."
Earlier, President Jimmy Carter's Department of Energy had agreed in 1977 to eventually take all the industry's "high-level" nuclear waste. It wasn't until 1987 that Congress had decided where the federal government would dump the nuclear waste that Carter had offered to take: Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain still has not opened. The state of Nevada is doing its utmost to make sure it never does. The U.S. Department of Energy estimated in 2001 that the total cost of the dump would be about $58 billion. The waste is still being stored around the nation near the reactors where it was created—for example, in Rowe, Mass.
In 1995, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report that said nuclear waste kept at Yucca Mountain could still be deadly in 1 million years. During that time, the waste will need to be watched 24 hours a day by heavily armed guards.
Spending one dollar on energy-efficiency programs like Efficiency Vermont saves approximately three times as much energy as spending one dollar on nuclear power generates, according to a study by Amory Lovins published in 2005 by the journal Nuclear Engineering International. The dollar spent on energy efficiency also creates more jobs than the dollar spent on nuclear power, according to David Goldstein of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
In other words, the study suggests, if New Englanders were to take the money we now give to Entergy for electricity from Vermont Yankee and spend it on programs like Efficiency Vermont, Vermont Yankee could be closed, our electricity bills would go down and there would be a net increase in jobs. Most of the electricity Vermont Yankee generates is used outside Vermont.
Wind power and energy-efficiency programs are at least twice as cost effective as nuclear power at reducing the pollution that causes global warming, according to the Lovins study. Fossil fuel is used in constructing and dismantling nuclear power plants; mining, processing and transporting nuclear fuel; and transporting, guarding and storing nuclear waste. The massive steel and concrete casks that hold Vermont Yankee's waste will need to be replaced approximately once every 100 years for the next 1 million years. The old radioactive casks will then need to be disposed of.
Between 1974 and 2005, the U.S. government spent on research and development (in 2005 dollars) $48 billion for nuclear power; $20 billion for fossil fuels; $12 billion for solar, wind and other sources of renewable energy; and $12 billion on energy efficiency, according to "Government Energy Technology R&D Budgets," a report by the International Energy Agency.
But the government's energy investment strategy has arguably not reflected the will of the American people, hundreds of thousands of whom have taken to the streets to express their aversion to nuclear power over the years.
On May 2, 1977, police arrested 1,414 protesters at the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. In June 1978, some 12,000 people attended a protest at Seabrook. In August 1978, almost 500 people were arrested for protesting at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California. In May 1979, in Washington, D.C., about 70,000 people, including the governor of California, attended a march and rally against nuclear power. On June 2, 1979, about 500 people were arrested for protesting construction of the Black Fox nuclear power plant in Oklahoma. The next day, 15,000 people attended a rally at the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island; about 600 were arrested. On June 30, 1979, about 38,000 people attended a protest rally at Diablo Canyon. On Aug. 23, 1979, in New York City, about 200,000 people attended a rally against nuclear power. On Sept. 23, 1979, about 167 protesters were arrested at Vermont Yankee. On June 22, 1980, about 15,000 people attended a protest near the San Onofre nuclear power plant in California.
No new nuclear power plants have been ordered in the U.S. since 1978.
Protests preceded the shutdown of the Shoreham, Yankee Atomic, Millstone I, Rancho Seco, Maine Yankee and at least a dozen other nuclear power plants. An article in the June 2007 issue of the Journal of American History did not hesitate to give protesters credit for the decline of the nuclear power industry: "The protesters lost their battle [when Diablo Canyon opened in 1984], but in a sense they won the larger war, for nuclear plant construction ended across the country in 1986."
Bob Mulholland ran a successful campaign to close the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant near Sacramento, Calif. Rancho Seco was closed in 1989 because the people of Sacramento voted to close it.
Mulholland, who now works for the California Democratic Party, told the Valley Post that the nuclear industry dramatically outspent the antinuclear groups in advertising before the referendum vote.
"David can beat Goliath," he said. "We had a New England Town Meeting-style community debate and people saw that the industry was lying. Closing Rancho Seco was the best thing our community ever did."
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This is an updated version of an earlier Valley Post article about Vermont Yankee. At the end of that article is a list of sources for the facts in this article. It is at: ValleyPost.org
A far more reaching problem than a nuclear meltdown is developing in Japan. In order to rebuild its infrastructure Japan will not start selling off its U.S. Treasury bonds (at a discount). With Pimco now out of the Treasury Bond business and China not really interested in buying more, that leaves only Bernake and his magic tricks at the FED to buy U.S. debt. Bernake will print some phony money, buy the debt, Obama will say everything is all right with the world, and then a hyperinflation tsunami will come and the average American won't be able to pay for a can of pork and beans. This bond meltdown will effect everyone. The tragedy in Japan isn't just highlighting a world energy infrastructure that is defective as much as the financial infrastructure.
Mutant wild boar as a result of Chernobyl? I hadn't heard that so I went to Google. All I found were stories of there being no scientific evidence to support such fantasy-like rumor mills. In fact, wildlife has made a resounding come-back in the area. That's not saying there's no risk in nuclear energy, just pointing out that the author on this piece has engaged in fear-mongering and therefore loses some credibility in their argument. There's an agenda here and it's not to educate but to scare people to their opinion.
Nice to see some rational input from some new liberals here.
Thank you for providing some good input-
even Shadowknows understands the benefits of nuclear energy
What they won't do ever again is build the units that close together. When one has a meltdown, it will spread to the neighboring reactor and so on down the line.
In 1990 Hans Beta published an essay on the OpEd page of the NYT. This was in response to the Chernobel meltdown. He claimed that the reactor there was faulty and that the American reactors were not only more secure but that a Chernobel could not happen here. I was dismayed to read this from an intellect of his stature. A year or so later he corrected his claim and left me believing that only a fool could believe that anything man builds is fool proof. I continue to believe this.
It is disappointing to see valid concerns about a potentially lax regulatory environment mixed with a piece of fear mongering that would seem at home in a Fox "news" piece. The situation in Japan should rationally increase our confidence in the safety of even antiquated nuclear plants--after a massive earthquake and a tsunami, events of such a magnitude that they will not occur in the US, that reactor design is functioning as one would hope for in the situation. Also, the release of Tritium, while indicative of aging components and inadequate maintenance, has not posed a threat to human health. We need to challenge the relicensing of aging plants, but to do so with rhetoric and arguments that hinge on emotional reaction is unnecessary--doing so weakens an argument that can be made on far stronger ground.
Life is not risk free. but liberals and leftists in general are obsessed with viewing every degree of risk as catastrophic.
Nuclear energy is proven to be a safe, reliable, cost effective, and a good alternative to oil, gas, and coal.
These incidents though few and far between always lead to the Media and the left to go into "the sky is falling" hysteria.
A few factual problems with this piece. There is no such thing as radioactive hydrogen gas. Nuclear reactors of this old type are routinely cooled with heavy water, which is made with deuterium, a stable isotope of hydrogen.
The only way we can meet the requirements for a decent living standard for our global human population is by increased use of nuclear power as we use up all our chemical sources of power. Thus the only issues of relevance on this topic are those of maintenance, regulation, over-sight and due diligence which cannot be meet by private industry. This is one industry that needs to be nationalized but it does need to grow. We need many, many new nuclear plants as we go forward. And there have been more people killed over the decades in the timber,coal and oil industries than have been killed by radiation leaks including Chernobyl. Do not be scared by the anti-nuke nuts.
I don't know who the 'right winger' is that you are talking about. Without painting anyone else with a political brush, I agree that (in addition to building modern replacement plants) a great deal of monitoring and inspecting must be done for these older plants.
In further emphatic agreement, my statements about how very ancient our plant designs are underscores your assertion that better monitoring and inspection is needed.
pyeatte at 03/13/2011 @ 11:00pm
Once again, like Pavlovian organisms reacting to a stimulus, rightwingers are exhibiting their usual reading comprehension problems coupled with dishonest avoidance of central issues. Parenti's article is clearly far more concerned with maintenance, regulation, over-sight and due diligence in the industry than design issues.
Here it is again, from the end of the article and composed in plain English (a foriegn language to rightwingers who speak fluid ideological caricature & head-spinning double-talk): "The only thing that could make our nukes safer would be a campaign of constant, careful, rigorous (and expensive) inspection and maintenance. But the NRC does not require that. During his campaign, Obama called the NRC "a moribund agency...captive of the industry that it regulates." Unfortunately, that has not changed much since Obama took office..."
First, the article starts off with a heavily skewed straw man argument:
" The “impossible” is underway in Japan. A 9.0 magnitude earthquake has badly shaken up several "indestructible" nuclear plants. "
Please tell me WHO ever said these plants were "indestructible" and that this was "impossible"? I've heard no such claims.
Second, these plant designs are from the 1960s. Since that time there are modern plant designs (especially coming out of Germany in the past decade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor ). These fourth generation designs involve encapsulating the fissionable material in ceramic and graphite composite spheres. (NOT the ceramics you make plant pots out of, but rather technically advanced impact hardened ceramics)
The spheres are created in such a way as to keep the fissionable payloads separated at an appropriate distance as to prevent a meltdown even if multiple spheres somehow shatter.
1) No more critical mass issues because the fuel is spaced by its own container.
2) No gravity issues, because it eliminates rod suspension altogether.
3) No need for cooling systems at all (see below).
Plants in Germany have run "dry" (without coolant) for months on end in experimental "disaster preparedness" runs. Core temps climb slowly and then after a few days, the core temperatures level out at very safe levels.
The U.S., like Japan, is cursed with being an early adopter with a bunch of 1960s designs. That was the infancy of nuclear power generating plants. Never buy a car during its first year of introduction. Those plant designs are several generations old now.
I do not buy the above comment posted by pyeatte. The point here is that anything can happen. So we might not get tsunami's in the midwest or there may be some places less likely to experience an earthquake, but we get tornados in most of those places. I live in Illinois where we get both. The power can go out anywhere and flooding can happen just about anywhere. For all the precautions, you just cannot predict where a safe place for a nuclear reactor is going to be. It's like saying the Titanic is unsinkable.
The main problem here is not the reactor design. After the reactor properly shut down due to the earthquake, the tsunami caused flooding in the power backup and ruined the diesel generators preventing powering the cooling pumps. This was a problem of placing the nuclear power plant too close to the sea. We have to make sure any new plants in this country are not on active geological fault lines and are not near the sea.
