Nuclear power was beginning to look like a panacea — a way to lessen our dependence on oil, make our energy supply more self-sufficient and significantly mitigate global warming, all at the same time. Now it looks more like a bargain with the devil.
So begins
Japan’s nuclear crisis might not be the last, Eugene Robinson's
Washington Post column this morning. Those reading it - and you all should - should remember that it was written BEFORE we realized how bad the situation is rapidly becoming - for example, that background radiation levels in Tokyo as now 23 times normal.
Still, much of what Robinson offers is remains pertinent. For example, after noting that this was Japan's largest earthquake, he poses the following, that
It is also true that the Fukushima reactors are of an older design, and that it is possible to engineer nuclear plants that would never suffer similar breakdowns.
But it is also true that there is no such thing as a fail-safe system. Stuff happens.
He then reminds us that for all our data and the analysis thereof, we are still dependent upon human beings to interpret it, and sometimes under great pressure. No matter how much we may have planned for a disaster, the human reactions can make it worse - think of Katrina as but one example.
But there is much more about which to worry.
Here let me note that some have questioned our reliance upon nuclear reactors since they began to spread after the original American reactor in Shippingport PA went live in 1957, 25 miles from Pittsburgh (although there was a joint use British reactor connected to the grid the previous year).
We needed electric power for our growing cities. Nuclear reactors needed lots of water, including extra water quickly in the event of a catastrophe. Thus our reactors were often located near rivers or on coasts, where in the case of a catastrophe water could be pumped in to quench a fire or cool an exposed core, as the Japanese are doing at Fukushima with sea water. This adds additional hazards, to which I will return.
Two lines from one paragraph jump out of Robinson's piece. First,
The problem with nuclear fission is that the stakes are unimaginably high.
That's how the paragraph begins. And it ends, a few sentences later, like this:
And where fission reactors are concerned, the worst-case scenario is so dreadful as to be unthinkable.
I read that and I thought back to something from the Bush 43 administration, something written about by Ron Suskind in his book The One Percent Doctrine, the title of which comes from this statement by VP Cheney: "If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response."
The Bush administration was criticized for that approach. Yet in our planning for nuclear accidents we have to think of things that are far less likely than a 1% occurrence, if for no other reason than the results can be so catastrophic. If we build the sea walls around the diesel generators to protect from a tsunami generated by an 8.2 magnitude quake, on the basis that we presume it to be a once in 500 years event, what happens when the tsunami that hits is from a quake with a magnitude 7-8 times as intense? Have we considered the consequences of the resulting failure? And do we really know what it a once in 500 years event? Can even historical records provide a sufficient pattern for making that estimation? After all, some faults were totally unknown until a quake hit - the 1994 "Northridge" earthquake, which while officially only a 6.7 had the effect of a much stronger quake, and which did over $20 billion in damage, occurred along what is now known as the Pico fault, which prior to that quake was unknown.
Robinson writes
It seems unlikely that the Fukushima crisis will turn into another Chernobyl, if only because there is a good chance that prevailing winds would blow any radioactive cloud out to sea.
But a good chance is insufficient. Further, we do not know the impact of a large cloud of radioactivity going out over the Pacific - surely as the radiation descended it would impact marine life - how badly? How could we track it? How much might it be carried by currents and spread widely? How massive would that cloud be? How radioactive?
Robinson offers some optimism in his piece. We have better designs now than Fukushima. We can learn lessons from Fukushima if we move ahead with further nuclear plants.
But even if he is correct, we still live with a legacy that could be frightening. I used to live in New York City. North of the city is the Indian Point Nuclear reactor. It sits along side of the Hudson River. What, if for any reason, an external water source - the Hudson - had to be pumped in after a failure of the cooling system? Under such circumstances, steam has to be vented from the containment dome to prevent an explosion. How radioactive might such a cloud be? Where would the prevailing winds take it? What if any risk is there to the waters of the Hudson? It is 24 miles north of the City, and provides almost 1/3 of the electric power used by New York City and Westchester County (I grew up in the latter). Were its power generation lost to an accident that would create a massive burden on the remaining electric grid. And were an evacuation necessary, if the prevailing winds were in the wrong direction, or if there were a risk of radiation being transported by the waters of the Hudson, how many millions would have to be relocated?
a bargain with the devil - we avoid the immediate damage to the environment by burning fossil fuels. But we still have not solved the problem of the radioactive byproducts of fissile energy generation - it is not just the spend fuel that is the problem, it is also the reactor vessel itself. Do we encase it in concrete on site? Is that sufficient? If we are going to take spent fuel and transport it, do we fully understand all the risks - natural and of human origin - to such transportation?
We need more energy already. We still have not learned how much conservation we should be doing. From a global security standpoint there is a strong argument to get off of oil and gas. From a climate perspective, any carbon based fuel is a problem. No matter what choice we make among the current large-scale sources of energy production, there are costs. Those of nuclear may not be as certain and ongoing as are those of carbon-based fuels, but when they occur, they can be far more immediately catastrophic. There have been nuclear accidents other than Chernobyl and Three Mile Island - many people do not know that in 1961 there was a fatal accident at one of the reactors at Idaho Falls, located in a desert area at 5,000 feet, the site of many experimental, one of a kind reactors where the US has tested various designs. There may have been similar failures in the old USSR.
Eugene Robinson is no fool. Yes, Fukushima may not yet be the worst case scenario. Perhaps the Japanese are responding as well as possible under the circumstances. We might well think we will learn from this lesson.
But then perhaps we should read his final paragraph -
And we will be fooling ourselves, because the one inescapable lesson of Fukushima is that improbable does not mean impossible. Unlikely failures can combine to bring any nuclear fission reactor to the brink of disaster. It can happen here.
We should have no doubt. We may not be able to avoid our current dependence upon reactors generating power by producing steam through nuclear fission. We may be stuck for now, but we should remember that nuclear power is a bargain with the devil.
It can happen here.