Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: earthquake

  • Nuclear Insanity

    This article was originally published by the Deccan Chronicle.


    Vandana ShivaFukushima has raised, once again, the perennial questions about human fallibility and human frailty, about human hubris and man’s arrogance in thinking he can control nature. The earthquakes, the tsunami, the meltdown at Japan’s nuclear power plant are nature’s reminders of her power.


    The scientific and industrial revolution was based on the idea that nature is dead, and the earth inert matter. The tragedy in Japan is a wakeup call from Mother Nature — an alarm to tell us she is alive and powerful, and that humans are powerless in her path. The ruined harbours, villages and towns, the ships, aeroplanes and cars tossed away by the angry waves as if they were tiny toys are reminders that should correct the assumption that man can dominate over nature — with technology, tools and industrial infrastructure.


    The Fukushima disaster invites us to revisit the human-nature relationship. It also raises questions about the so-called “nuclear renaissance” as an answer to the climate and energy crisis. President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Arjun Makhijani, speaking at Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, said that “nuclear renaissance” would need 300 reactors every week and two-three uranium enrichment plants every year. The spent fuel would contain 90,000 bombs of plutonium per year if separated. Water required would be 10-20 million litres per day.


    Following the Fukushima disaster, China, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines are reviewing their nuclear power programmes. As Alexander Glaser, assistant professor in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University, observes, “It will take time to grasp the full impact of the unimaginable human tragedy unfolding after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, but it is already clear that the proposition of a global nuclear renaissance ended on that day”.


    Across India, movements are growing against old and new nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants are proposed at Haripur (West Bengal), Mithi Virdi (Gujarat), Madban (Maharashtra), Pitti Sonapur (Orissa), Chutka (Madhya Pradesh) and Kavada (Andhra Pradesh).


    The 9,900 MW Jaitapur nuclear power plant, consisting of six nuclear reactors in Madban village, Ratnagiri district, Maharashtra, will be the world’s largest nuclear power plant if built. French state-owned nuclear engineering firm Areva and Indian state-owned operator Nuclear Power Corporation of India signed a $22-billion agreement in December 2010, to build six nuclear reactors in the presence of Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, and Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister.


    In the light of expected surge in orders following the France-India agreement, Areva started to hire 1,000 people a month.


    Jaitapur is a seismically sensitive area and is prone to earthquakes. Yet, there is no plan for the disposal of 300 tonnes of nuclear waste that the plant will generate each year. The plant will require about 968 hectares of fertile agricultural land spread over five villages that the government claims is “barren”.


    Jaitapur is one of many nuclear power plants proposed on a thin strip of fertile coast land of Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts — the estimated combined power generation will be 33,000 MW. This is the region that the Government of India wanted to be declared a world heritage site under the Man and Biosphere programme of Unesco. Villagers of the Konkan region have been protesting against the nuclear plant. They have formed Konkan Bachao Samiti and Janahit Seva Samiti and have refused to accept cheques for the forced land acquisition. Ten gram panchayats have resigned to protest the violation of the 73rd Amendment.


    Jaitapur has been put under prohibitory orders and more than five people cannot gather. On April 18, 2011, policemen fired at protesters who were demonstrating against the proposed Nuclear Power Park at Jaitapur. One died and eight others were seriously injured. The 2,800 MW nuclear plant planned at Fatehbad, Haryana, involves the acquisition of 1,503 acre of fertile farmland. Eighty villages are protesting; two farmers have died during protests.


    A nuclear power plant is planned in Chutkah, Madhya Pradesh, where 162 villages were earlier displaced by the Bargi dam. Forty-four villages are resisting the nuclear power plant. Dr Surender Gadakar, a physicist and anti-nuclear activist, describes nuclear power as a technology for boiling water that produces large quantities of poisons that need to be isolated from the environment for long durations of time. Plutonium, produced as nuclear waste, has a half life of 240,000 years, while the average life of nuclear reactors is 21 years. There is so far no proven safe system for nuclear waste disposal. Spent nuclear fuel has to be constantly cooled, and when cooling systems fail, we have a nuclear disaster. This is what happened at nuclear reactor 4 at Fukushima.


    The focus on fossil fuels, CO2 emissions and climate change suddenly allowed nuclear energy to be offered as “clean” and “safe”. But as a technology, nuclear power consumes more energy than it generates if the energy for cooling spent fuel for thousands of years is taken into account. In India, the costs of nuclear energy become even higher because nuclear power plants must grab land and displace people. The Narora nuclear plant in Uttar Pradesh, which is a mere 125 km from Delhi, displaced five villages. In 1993, there was a major fire and near meltdown in Narora.


    The highest cost of nuclear energy in India is the destruction of democracy and constitutional rights. Nuclear power must undermine democracy. We witnessed this during the process of signing the US-India Nuclear Agreement. We witnessed it in the “cash for votes” scandal during the no-confidence motion in Parliament. And we witness it wherever a new nuclear power plant is planned. Physicist Sowmya Dutta reminds us that the world has potential for 17 terra watt nuclear energy, 700 terra watt wind energy and 86,000 terra watt of solar energy. Alternatives to nuclear energy are thousand times more abundant and million times less risky. To push nuclear plants after Fukushima is pure insanity.

  • Japan’s Nuclear Catastrophe Leaves Little to be Celebrated on Children’s Day

    May 5 is Children’s Day, a Japanese national holiday that celebrates the happiness of childhood. This year, it will fall under a dark, radioactive shadow.


    Japanese children in the path of radioactive plumes from the crippled nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi power station are likely to suffer health problems that a recent government action will only exacerbate.


    On April 19, the Japanese government sharply ramped up its radiation exposure limit to 2,000 millirem per year (20 mSv/y) for schools and playgrounds in Fukushima prefecture. Japanese children are now permitted to be exposed to an hourly dose rate 165 times above normal background radiation and 133 times more than levels the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allows for the American public. Japanese school children will be allowed to be exposed to same level recommended by the International Commission on Radiation Protection for nuclear workers. Unlike workers, however, children won’t have a choice as to whether they can be so exposed.


    This decision callously puts thousands of children in harm’s way.


    Experts consider children to be 10 to 20 times more vulnerable to contracting cancer from exposure to ionizing radiation than adults. This is because as they grow, their dividing cells are more easily damaged — allowing cancer cells to form. Routine fetal X-rays have ceased worldwide for this reason. Cancer remains a leading cause of death by disease for children in the United States.


    On April 12, the Japanese government announced that the nuclear crisis in Fukushima was as severe as the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Within weeks of the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, the four ruined reactors at the Dai-Ichi power station released enormous quantities of radiation into the atmosphere.


    According to the Daily Youmiri, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) announced that between 10 and 17 million curies (270,000- 360,000 TBq) of radioactive materials were released to the atmosphere before early April, a great deal more than previous official estimates.


    Even though atmospheric releases blew mostly out to sea and appear to have declined dramatically, NISA reports that Fukushima’s nuclear ruins are discharging about 4,200 curies of iodine-131 and cesium-137 per day into the air (154 TBq). This is nearly 320,000 times more than d radiation the now de-commissioned Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant released over a year. NISA’s estimate is likely to be the low end, given the numerous sources of unmeasured and unfiltered leaks into the environment amidst the four wrecked reactors. On April 27, Bloomberg News reported that radiation readings at the Dai-Ichi nuclear power station have risen to the highest levels since the earthquake.


    With a half-life of 8.5 days, iodine-131 is rapidly absorbed in dairy products and in the human thyroid, particularly those of children. Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years and gives off potentially dangerous external radiation. It concentrates in various foods and is absorbed throughout the human body. Unlike iodine-131, which decays to a level considered safe after about three months, cesium-137 can pose risks for several hundred years.


    Measurements taken at 1,600 nursery schools, kindergartens, and middle school playgrounds in early April indicate that children are regularly getting high radiation doses. Radiation levels one meter above the ground indicate that children at hundreds of schools received exposures 43- 200 times above background. And this is outside of the “exclusionary zone” around the Dai-Ichi reactors, where locals have been evacuated. Japan’s Ministry of Education and Science has limited outdoor activities at 13 schools in the cities of Fukushima, Date, and Koriyama Cities.


    Although the extent of long-term contamination is not yet fully known, disturbing evidence is emerging. Data collected 40 kilometers from the Fukushima’s nuclear accident  show cumulative levels as high as 9.5 rems (95 mSv) — nearly five times the international annual occupational dose. Soil beyond the 30-kilometer evacuation zone shows cesium-137 levels at 2,200 kBq per square meter — 67 percent greater than that requiring evacuation near Chernobyl.


    Three-fourths of the monitored schools in Fukushima had radioactivity levels so high that human entry shouldn’t be allowed, even though students began a new semester on April 5.

  • Radiation, Japan and the Marshall Islands

    This article was originally published by CounterPunch.


    When the dangerous dust and gases settle and we discover just how much radiation escaped the damaged Fukushima reactors and spent fuel rods, we may never know how many people are being exposed to radiation from the burning fuel rods and reactor cores, and how much exposure they will receive over time. Minute and above-background traces of Iodine-131 are already showing up in Tokyo’s water supply – 150 miles southwest of the leaking reactors – and in milk and spinach [with a dash of Cesium-137] from 75 miles away. The Japanese government has recently warned pregnant women and children to avoid drinking Tokyo tap water, and I-131 levels 1,200 times above background levels were recorded in seawater near the reactors.


    Aside from sharing the dubious distinction of both nations having been at the receiving end of America’s nuclear weapons, Japan and the Marshall Islands now share another dubious distinction. The unleashed isotopes of concern from the damaged Japanese reactors – Iodine-131, Cesium-137, Strontium-90 and Plutonium-239 – are well known to the Marshall Islanders living downwind of the testing sites at Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the central Pacific, following sixty-seven A- and H-bombs exploded between 1946-58. In fact, it is precisely these isotopes that continue to haunt the 80,000 Marshallese fifty-three years after the last thermonuclear test in the megaton range shook their pristine coral atolls and contaminated their fragile marine ecosystems.


    In fact, it was the irradiated downwind Marshallese on Rongelap and Utrik in 1954 caught in the Bravo fallout – and I-131 – that taught the world about the thyroid effect from the uptake of radioactive iodine.


    The U.S.’ largest [fusion] hydrogen bomb – Bravo – was 1,000 times the Hiroshima atomic [fission] bomb, and deposited a liberal sprinkling of these and a potent potpourri of 300 other radionuclides over a wide swath of the Central Pacific and the inhabited atolls in the Marshalls archipelago in March 1954 during “Operation Castle.”


    The Rongelap islanders 120 miles downwind from Bikini received 190 rems [1.9 Sv] of whole-body gamma dose before being evacuated. The Utrik people 320 miles downwind received 15 rems [150 mSv] before their evacuation. Many of the on-site nuclear workers at Fukushima have already exceeded the Utrik dose in multiples.


    Also entrapped within the thermonuclear maelstrom from Bravo was the not-so-Lucky Dragon [Fukuryu Maru] Japanese fishing trawler with its crew of twenty-three fishing for tuna near Bikini [see The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon by Ralph Lapp]. As the heavily exposed fishermen’s health quickly deteriorated after Bravo, the radio operator Aikichi Kuboyama died of a liver illness six months after his exposure; his is now a household name in Japan and is associated with the “Bikini bomb.”


    Meanwhile, the Japanese fishing industry was rocked when Geiger counters registered “talking fish” [what the Japanese called the clicking sound of the contaminated fish being monitored] from the 800 pounds of tuna catch of the Lucky Dragon in Yaizu and in local fish markets. Much of the Japanese tuna at the time was caught by a fleet of 1,000 fishing boats operating in the fertile tuna waters near the U.S.’ Pacific Proving Ground in the Marshalls.


    In response to the plight and symbolism of the Lucky Dragon, Japanese women collected 34 million signatures on petitions advocating the immediate abolition of both atomic and hydrogen bombs in 1955. Pugwash, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning anti-nuclear organization was founded in 1955 by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in response to Bravo. The dangers of radioactive fallout from Bravo inspired Nevil Shute’s classic nuclear dystopia On the Beach, as well as Godzilla.


    To quell the diplomatic furor – whereby the Japanese representative to the U.N. accused the U.S. in March 1954 of “once again using nuclear weapons against the Japanese people” – the U.S. paid two million dollars to the fishing company which owned the Lucky Dragon; each of the 23 fishermen ended up with the princely sum of $5,000 in 1956 and the tuna company kept the rest.


    AEC chair Lewis Strauss (who originally proposed nuclear energy “too cheap to meter” in the post-War Atoms for Peace program) told President Eisenhower’s press secretary James Hagerty in April 1954 that the Lucky Dragon was not a fishing boat at all – it was a “Red spy outfit” snooping on the American nuclear tests.


    The legacy of latent radiogenic diseases from hydrogen bomb testing in the Marshall Islands provides some clues about what ill-health mysteries await the affected Japanese in the decades ahead. Also, the Marshall Islands provide insight about ecosystem contamination of these dangerous radioactive isotopes, and what this means for the affected Japanese.


    Profiles of the four isotopes


    o Iodine-131 [radioactive iodine] has a half life of eight days, and concentrates in the thyroid gland about 5,000 times more efficiently than other parts of the body. Traces of I-131 have been discovered in Tokyo drinking water and in seawater offshore from the reactors. It took nine years for the first thyroid tumor to appear among the exposed Marshallese and hypothyroidism and cancer continued to appear decades later.


    o Cesium-137 has a half life of thirty years and is a chemical analog of potassium; Cs-137 concentrates in muscle and other parts of the body. Rongelap Island has a new layer of topsoil containing potassium to help neutralize the Cs-137 left over from the H-bomb tests, but the Marshallese residents remain unconvinced and suspicious about the habitability of their long abandoned home atoll. Meanwhile, the U.S. is pressuring hard for their repatriation despite the fact that most islands at Rongelap will remain off limits for many decades with strict dietary restrictions of local foods.


    o Strontium-90 has a half life of twenty-eight years, is a chemical analog of calcium and is known as a “bone seeker.” Rongelap and the other downwind atolls have residual Sr-90 in their soils, groundwater and marine ecosystems.


    o Plutonium-239 has a half life of 24,000 years, is considered one of the most toxic substances on Earth, and if absorbed is a potent alpha emitter that can induce cancer. This isotope too is found in the soils and groundwater of the downwind atolls from the Bikini and Enewetak H-bomb tests.


    Lessons from the Marshall Islands


    * It took nine years after exposure to the 1954 Bravo fallout for the first thyroid tumor and hypothyroidism to occur in an exposed Utrik woman from the I-131. Several more tumors [and other radiogenic disorders] among the exposed people appeared the following year and every year thereafter. The latency period for thyroid abnormalities and other radiogenic disorders [see below] endures for several decades.


    * Because a child’s thyroid gland is much smaller than an adult’s thyroid, it receives a higher concentration of I-131 than an adult dose. Also, because a child’s thyroid gland is growing more quickly than an adult’s, it requires and absorbs more iodine [and I-131] than an adult thyroid gland. That is, the thyroid effect is age-related.


    * Radioactive Iodine-129 with a half-life of 15 million years and a well-documented capacity to bioaccumulate in the foodchain, will also remain as a persistent problem for the affected Japanese.


    * The Majuro-based Nuclear Claims Tribunal was established in 1988 to settle all past and future claims against the U.S. for health injury and property loss damages from the nuclear tests. As of 2006, the NCT had paid out $73 million [of the $91 million awarded] for 1,999 Marshallese claimants. There are thirty-six medical conditions that are presumed to be caused by the nuclear tests [http://www.nuclearclaimstribunal.com]. Eligibility for Marshallese citizens consists of having been in the Marshall Islands during the testing period [1946-58] and having at least one of the presumptive medical disorders.


    * The sociocultural and psychological effects [e.g., PTSD] of the Fukushima nuclear disaster will be long-lasting, given the uncertainty surrounding the contamination of their prefecture and beyond. Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton eloquently detailed this uncertain future and fears about “invisible contamination” concerning the Hiroshima and Nagasaki “hibakusha” [“A-bomb survivors”] in his award-winning 1968 magnum opus Death in Life.


    * Noted radiation experts John Gofman [co-discoverer of U-232 and U-233 and author of Radiation and Human Health], Karl Z. Morgan [a founder of health physics] and Edward Radford [Chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ BEIR III committee and advisor to the Nuclear Claims Tribunal] stated that there is no threshold dose for low level ionizing radiation:


        Any amount of ionizing radiation – which is cumulative – can pose a health threat for certain individuals, and especially those with compromised immune systems.

  • Nuclear Energy and Weapons: Uncontrollable in Time and Space

    This article was originally published on the Huffington Post.


    Alyn WareThe earthquake and tsunami in Japan devastated a whole region. Radioactive emissions from the damaged nuclear reactors are very serious, and have already contaminated food and water, prompting a ban on food exports from four prefectures and a government warning not to give Tokyo tap water to babies. The crisis could impact human health and the environment on an even wider scale — across Japan and around the globe.


    Whether or not the brave technicians in Fukushima are successful in containing the bulk of the radiation in the six reactors, the message is clear: natural disasters and accidents will happen. If it can go wrong sooner or later it will go wrong, and Murphy’s law and nuclear energy do not mix.


    In Japan, the fear of radiation spreading is connected to the memory of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki over 65 years ago. Over 100,000 people died from radiation exposure — nearly as many as from the blast. The genetic effects continue down through the generations.


    Japan’s nuclear crisis has brought back to public consciousness the basic truth that the effects of nuclear disasters — whether from nuclear energy or nuclear weapons — are uncontrollable in time and space.


    Current events at Fukushima remind us of the negligence of nuclear power companies in building nuclear power plants on earthquake fault lines or vulnerable coastlines. But they should also remind us of the even greater negligence of the nuclear weapon states in maintaining their arsenals of 20,000 nuclear weapons — most with yields over 100 times greater than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, and many on hair trigger alert, ready to launch within minutes. Any accidental, unauthorized, inadvertent or intentional use today (or tomorrow) would have a catastrophic, widespread, unprecedented and unimaginable impact on humanity and the environment.


    A recent statement released by international law experts from around the world, including former judges from the International Court of Justice, affirms that maintaining nuclear weapons and a readiness to use them is not only negligent, but given the dire consequences of any use, also against the law. The Vancouver Declaration on “Law’s Imperative for the Urgent Achievement of a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World,” notes that the use of nuclear weapons would be “contrary to the fundamental rules of international humanitarian law (laws governing use of force in wartime) forbidding the infliction of indiscriminate harm and unnecessary suffering.”


    In other words, during war one can attack military targets and personnel, but not civilians. One can inflict harm on military personnel, but not such harm that would last long after the conflict is over. In addition, it is illegal even in wartime to inflict long-term and severe damage on the environment. Nuclear weapons, with their uncontrollable blast, heat and radiation effects, could not be used without violating these laws. And if such an act is illegal, the threat to commit such an act is also illegal.


    Thus, in 1996 the International Court of Justice (a. k. a. the World Court) determined that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be generally illegal, and that there is an unconditional obligation to achieve the complete prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons through good-faith negotiations.


    Since then, failure of the nuclear weapon states to comply has had predictably disastrous results for global proliferation and nuclear danger, convincing India, Pakistan and North Korea that if they can’t cajole the nuclear weapon states to give up nuclear weapons, then they might as well join their nuclear club. Others are bound to follow suit.


    Until recently, states that wanted to hang onto their nuclear arsenals and their policies to use them argued that such policies were legal by misrepresenting a clause in the Court’s opinion. That clause stated that the ICJ could not reach a conclusion on the legality of threat or use in the extreme circumstance of self-defense when the very survival of a state is at stake. So by stating that they would only use nuclear weapons in “extreme circumstances,” the nuclear weapon states avoided applying the general ruling of illegality to their nuclear weapons policies.


    But they can no longer avoid this. In May 2010, the parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which includes the major nuclear weapon states, affirmed that any use of nuclear weapons would cause catastrophic humanitarian consequences, and that states must comply with international humanitarian law “at all times.” They also agreed that all states must make special efforts to build the framework for a nuclear weapons-free world, citing the United Nations Secretary-General’s proposal for negotiations on a global nuclear abolition treaty.


    Now governments have to choose: hang onto their nuclear arsenals, or uphold the rule of law to which they have agreed. They can’t do both. We all know which will make us safer. Nuclear possession is a recipe for proliferation and corrosive to international humanitarian law, which, as the Vancouver Declaration says, “is essential to limiting the effects of armed conflicts, large and small, around the world.”


    The nuclear crisis in Japan has debunked the claims of authorities that their nuclear power stations, built with inferior containment on fault-lines, are safe and fully under control. Before something goes horribly wrong on the weapons front, we must also debunk the claims of the nuclear weapon states that nuclear weapons are safe as long as they are in the ‘right hands.’


    States including the US take the position that we should just trust them to take small steps towards nuclear disarmament sometime in an indefinite future. That’s like trusting the nuclear power industry to police itself and voluntarily phase itself out in deference to public safety. It simply won’t happen without a global prohibition enforced by the rest of the world, like the one outlined in the draft treaty circulated by the UN Secretary-General.


    In 1996, the President of the International Court of Justice called nuclear weapons an “absolute evil.” We have already applied international humanitarian law to other inhumane and indiscriminate (read “evil”) weapons such as landmines and cluster munitions in order to achieve global treaties for banning them. Now it’s time for absolute prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons.

  • From Hiroshima to Fukushima

    This article was originally published by The New York Times.


    Jonathan SchellThe horrible and heartbreaking events in Japan present a strange concatenation of disasters.


    First, the planet unleashed one of its primordial shocks, an earthquake, of a magnitude greater than any previously recorded in Japan. The earthquake, in turn, created the colossal tsunami, which, when it struck the country’s northeastern shores, pulverized everything in its path, forming a filthy wave made of mud, cars, buildings, houses, airplanes and other debris.


    In part because the earthquake had just lowered the level of the land by two feet, the wave rolled as far as six miles inland, killing thousands of people. In a stupefying demonstration of its power, as The New York Times has reported, the earthquake moved parts of Japan 13 feet eastward, slightly shifted the earth’s axis and actually shortened each day that passes on earth, if only infinitesimally (by 1.8 milliseconds).


    But this was not all. Another shock soon followed. Succumbing to the one-two punch of the earthquake and the tsunami, eleven of Japan’s 54 nuclear power reactors were shut down. At this writing, three of them have lost coolant to their cores and have experienced partial meltdowns. The same three have also suffered large explosions.


    The spent fuel in a fourth caught fire. Now a second filthy wave is beginning to roll — this one composed of radioactive elements in the atmosphere. They include unknown amounts of cesium-137 and iodine-131, which can only have originated in the melting cores or in nearby spent fuel rod pools. Both are dangerous to human health.


    The Japanese government has evacuated some 200,000 people in the vicinity of the plants and issued potassium iodide pills, which prevent the uptake of radioactive iodine. The U.S. aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan had to change course when it sailed into a radioactive cloud.


    The second shock was, of course, different from the first in at least one fundamental respect. The first was dealt by Mother Nature, who has thus reminded us of her sovereign power to nourish or punish our delicate planet, its axis now tipping ever so slightly in a new direction. No finger of blame can be pointed at any perpetrator.


    The second shock, on the other hand, is the product of humankind, and involves human responsibility. Until the human species stepped in, there was no appreciable release of atomic energy from nuclear fission or fusion on earth. It took human hands to introduce it into the midst of terrestrial affairs.


    That happened 66 years ago, also in Japan, when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the time, President Harry Truman used language that is worth pondering today.


    “It is an atomic bomb,” he said. “It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.”


    Japan’s prime minister, Naoto Kan, referred to the atomic bombings by implication when he stated that the current crisis was the worst for Japan “since the Second World War.”


    For some years afterward, atomic energy was understood mainly to be an inconceivably malign force — as the potential source of a sort of man-made equivalent of earthquakes, and worse.


    In the 1950s, however, when nuclear power plants were first built, an attempt began to find a bright side to the atom. (In 1956 Walt Disney even made a cartoon called “Our Friend the Atom.”)


    A key turning point was President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace proposal in 1953, which required nuclear-armed nations to sell nuclear power technology to other nations in exchange for following certain nonproliferation rules. This bargain is now enshrined in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which promotes nuclear power even as it discourages nuclear weapons.


    As Ira Chernus has chronicled in his book “Atoms for Peace,” the proposal paradoxically grew out of Eisenhower’s distaste for arms control. He had launched a nuclear buildup that would increase the U.S. arsenal from 1,436 warheads at the beginning of his two terms to 20,464 by the end. His strategic nuclear policy was one of “massive retaliation,” which relied more heavily on nuclear threats than Truman’s policy had. Arms control would have obstructed these policies.


    Yet Eisenhower needed some proposal to temper his growing reputation as a reckless nuclear hawk. Atoms for Peace met this need. The solution to nuclear danger, he said, was “to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers” and put it “into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace” — chiefly, those who would use it to build nuclear power plants.


    Of course, the weapon never was taken out of the hands of soldiers, but the basic power of the universe was indeed handed over to nuclear power engineers — including Japanese engineers.


    The long, checkered career of nuclear power began. The promise at first seemed great, but the problems cropped up immediately. The distinction between Disney’s smiling, friendly atom and the frowning, hostile one kept breaking down.


    In the first place, the technology of nuclear power proved to be an open spigot for the spread of technology that also served the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In the second place, the requirement of burying nuclear waste for the tens of thousands of years it takes for its radioactive materials to decline to levels deemed safe mocked the meager ingenuity and constancy of a species whose entire recorded history amounts only to some 6,000 years.


    Finally, the technology of nuclear power itself kept breaking down and bringing or threatening disaster, as is now occurring in Japan.


    The chain of events at the reactors now running out of control provides a case history of the underlying mismatch between human nature and the force we imagine we can control.


    Nuclear power is a complex, high technology. But the things that endemically malfunction are of a humble kind. The art of nuclear power is to boil water with the incredible heat generated by a nuclear chain reaction. But such temperatures necessitate continuous cooling. Cooling requires pumps. Pumps require conventional power. These are the things that habitually go wrong — and have gone wrong in Japan. A backup generator shuts down. A battery runs out. The pump grinds to a halt.


    You might suppose that it is easy to pump water into a big container, and that is usually true, but the best-laid plans go awry from time to time. Sometimes the problem is a tsunami, and sometimes it is an operator asleep at the switch.


    These predictable and unpredictable failings affect every stage of the operation. For instance, in Japan, the nuclear power industry has a record of garden-variety cover-ups, ducking safety regulations, hiding safety violations and other problems. But which large bureaucratic organization does not?


    And if these happen in Japan, as orderly and efficient a country as exists on earth, in which country will they not? When the bureaucracy is the parking violations bureau or the sanitation department, ordinary mistakes lead to ordinary mishaps. But when the basic power of the universe is involved, they court catastrophe.


    The problem is not that another backup generator is needed, or that the safety rules aren’t tight enough, or that the pit for the nuclear waste is in the wrong geological location, or that controls on proliferation are lax.


    It is that a stumbling, imperfect, probably imperfectable creature like ourselves is unfit to wield the stellar fire released by the split or fused atom.


    When nature strikes, why should humankind compound the trouble? The earth is provided with enough primordial forces of destruction without our help in introducing more. We should leave those to Mother Nature.


    Some have suggested that in light of the new developments we should abandon nuclear power. I have a different proposal, perhaps more in keeping with the peculiar nature of the peril. Let us pause and study the matter. For how long?


    Plutonium, a component of nuclear waste, has a half-life of 24,000 years, meaning that half of it is transformed into other elements through radioactive decay. This suggests a time-scale. We will not be precipitous if we study the matter for only half of that half-life, 12,000 years.


    In the interval, we can make a search for safe new energy sources, among other useful endeavors. Then perhaps we’ll be wise enough to make good use of the split atom.

  • How Japan Learned About Nuclear Safety

    This article was originally published on the History News Network.


    Lawrence WittnerAlthough people can be educated in a variety of ways, experience is a particularly effective teacher.  Consider the Japanese, who today are certainly learning how dangerous nuclear power can be.


    Of course, the Japanese people also have had a disastrous experience with nuclear weapons—not only in 1945, when the U.S. government destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs, but in 1954, when a U.S. government H-bomb test showered a Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon, with deadly radioactive fallout, and a vast nuclear disarmament movement began.


    The Lucky Dragon incident occurred in the context of the first U.S. H-bomb test, conducted by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in March 1954.  The AEC had staked out a danger zone of some 50,000 square miles (an area roughly the size of New England) around Bikini atoll, the test site in the Marshall Islands, which the United States governed as a UN “trust territory.”  But the blast proved more than twice as powerful as expected, and sent vast quantities of radioactive debris aloft into the atmosphere.  When large doses of this nuclear fallout descended on four inhabited islands in the Marshall chain (all outside the official danger zone), the U.S. government evacuated U.S. weather station personnel and, days later, hundreds of Marshall Islanders.  The islanders quickly developed low blood counts, skin lesions, hemorrhages under the skin, and loss of hair.  Eventually, many came down with radiation-linked illnesses, including thyroid cancer and leukemia.


    Meanwhile, about 85 miles from the test site—and also outside the danger zone—radioactive ash from the H-bomb test fell on a small Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon.  Two weeks later, when the vessel had reached its home port of Yaizu, the crew members had become seriously ill, with skin irritations, burns, nausea, loss of hair, and other radiation-linked afflictions.  In short order, the Japanese government hospitalized the stricken fishermen and destroyed their radioactive cargo.  Although most of the fishermen survived, the Lucky Dragon’s radio operator, Aikichi Kuboyama, died during hospital treatment.


    As the news of the Lucky Dragon incident spread throughout Japan, a panic gripped the nation, as well as a fierce determination to end the victimization of people, in Japan and the world, through nuclear weapons.  Nuclear fallout—or, as the Japanese referred to it, “the ashes of death”—became a household term.  A poll found that only two percent of the population approved of nuclear testing unconditionally.  In May 1954, a group of middle class housewives in the Suginami ward in Tokyo began a petition campaign to ban H-bombs.  Carried in their shopping baskets, this “Suginami Appeal” grew into a nationwide movement and, by 1955, had attracted the signatures of 32 million people—about a third of the Japanese population.  Japan’s nuclear disarmament campaign blossomed into the largest, most powerful social movement in that nation’s history.  Polls showed overwhelming popular support for it.


    Naturally, this upsurge of “ban the bomb” sentiment shocked U.S. government officials, who—with their nuclear weapons program at stake—engaged in a systematic policy of denial.  The chair of the AEC, Lewis Strauss, publicly declared that the Marshall Islanders were “well and happy.”  The Japanese fishermen, he conceded, had experienced a few minor problems; but, in any case, he stated falsely, they “must have been well within the danger area.”  Privately, he was more caustic.  The Lucky Dragon, he told the White House press secretary, was really a “Red spy outfit,” a component of a “Russian espionage system.”  At the request of Strauss, the CIA investigated this possibility and categorically denied it.  Nonetheless, Strauss continued to maintain that the irradiation of the Lucky Dragon “was no accident,” for the captain of the vessel must have been “in the employ of the Russians.”  He also told authors to ignore the contention of the “propagandists” that a crew member of the vessel had died of radiation exposure.


    Other American officials, too, saw no justification for the Japanese response to the Lucky Dragon incident.  From Japan, the U.S. ambassador lamented that nation’s “uncontrolled masochism.”  He reported that Japan, “aided by [an] unscrupulous press, seemed to revel in [its] fancied martyrdom.”  According to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, President Dwight Eisenhower found this message “of great interest and value from [the] standpoint of policy formulation.”  Like Strauss, Eisenhower insisted in his memoirs that the fishermen were within the danger zone.  Commenting on the effects of the Lucky Dragon incident, the acting secretary of state added his own warnings about public attitudes in Japan.  “The Japanese are pathologically sensitive about nuclear weapons,” he told Eisenhower.  “They feel they are the chosen victims.”


    In reality, most Japanese had learned from the tragic events of 1954 that, when it came to nuclear arms, everyone was a potential victim.  Or, to put it another way, there are no safe nuclear weapons.  But many Japanese continued to cling to a belief in safe nuclear energy—at least until this month, when their crippled nuclear reactors began spewing out radioactivity and heading toward a meltdown.


    Plenty of people in other countries, including the United States, remain in denial about the safety of nuclear weapons and nuclear power.  What kind of experience will it take to convince them to rid the world of these monstrous things?  More to the point, is it really necessary to wait for that experience to occur?

  • Nuclear Reactor Catastrophe in Japan

    2011_03_16_weeramantry.pdf

  • The Japanese Disaster – Nuclear Tragedy – Lessons for India

    2011_03_16_ramdas_india.pdf

  • A Final Wakeup Call?

    David KriegerOur hearts go out to the people of Japan who are suffering the devastating effects of one of the most powerful earthquakes in the past one hundred years, followed by a devastating tsunami.  Thousands are dead, injured and missing, and hundreds of thousands have been left homeless, many with limited food and water. 


    The greatest danger to the people of Japan, however, may lie ahead in the unfolding disaster of the damaged nuclear power plants at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station located 130 miles north of Tokyo.  Already, substantial radiation has been released from the fires, explosions and partial meltdowns of the radioactive fuel rods in these plants, brought about by loss of coolant in the reactor cores and the spent fuel pools.  The containment shells surrounding several of the reactors have been breached, allowing for the release of radiation into the environment.


    High radiation levels at the plants have resulted in reducing the work force trying to contain the radiation releases to skeleton crews, volunteers who are putting their own lives in jeopardy for the common good.  Keijiro Matsushima, an 82-year-old survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, commented, “It’s like the third atomic bomb attack on Japan.  But this time, we made it ourselves.”


    The amount of radioactive material in the crippled reactors at Fukushima Daiichi dwarfs the amount in the Chernobyl plant, which 25 years ago had the worst nuclear power plant accident in history.  Residents have been told to evacuate from a 12-mile radius of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants, and told to stay indoors in a further 7-mile radius.  The United States has warned its citizens in Japan to stay beyond a 50-mile radius of the damaged power plants.  Many countries are helping their citizens to leave Japan altogether. 


    The major lessons to be drawn from the tragedy in Japan are: first, nature’s power is far beyond our ability to control; second, the nuclear industry, in Japan and elsewhere, has arrogantly pushed ahead with their dangerous technology, wrongly assuring the public there is no reason for concern; third, the reassurances of self-interested nuclear “experts” are not to be trusted; and fourth, the nuclear power plant failures in Japan are a final wake-up call to replace nuclear power with safe, sustainable and renewable forms of energy.


    There are 440 commercial nuclear reactors in the world.  Of these, the US has 104, nearly twice as many as Japan’s 55 nuclear power reactors.  Of the US reactors, 23 are of the same or similar design as those that are failing in Japan.  President Obama’s 2012 budget calls for $36 billion in loan guarantees to subsidize new nuclear power plants. 


    California, known for its propensity for earthquakes, has two nuclear power plants: one at Avila Beach, north of Santa Barbara; and one at San Onofre, between Los Angeles and San Diego.  Both plants are located near major fault lines.  The Diablo Canyon power plant at Avila Beach is situated near the San Andreas and Hosgri fault lines.  The San Onofre plant is located less than a mile from the Cristianitos fault line.  Diablo Canyon is designed to withstand a 7.5 magnitude earthquake and San Onofre to withstand a 7.0 magnitude earthquake.  Japan’s 9.0 magnitude earthquake has demonstrated, however, that the force of earthquakes can dramatically exceed expectations.


    Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors 1 and 2 made the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s list of top ten nuclear power sites with the highest risk of suffering core damage from an earthquake.  Living in Santa Barbara, downwind from those reactors, we should be worried.  The millions of people who live and work in New York City, within the evacuation range of the Indian Point 3 nuclear power plant, should also be worried because that plant is listed as number one on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s highest risk sites.


    We know that we humans cannot control earthquakes.  Nor can we control tsunamis or other natural disasters.  What we can control are our decisions about the use of technology.  We can say “No” to technologies that are catastrophically dangerous.  From my perspective, this would include any technologies that require an unattainable level of human perfection to prevent massive annihilation.  As we have seen in Japan, natural disasters and nuclear power plants are a potentially deadly mix.  The dangers grow even deadlier when human error is added to the equation. 


    In addition to their potential for catastrophic accidents, nuclear power plants are subject to deliberate attacks by terrorists or during warfare.  After more than half a century, there also remains no long-term solution for the storage of highly radioactive nuclear wastes, which will threaten future generations for many times longer than human civilization has existed.  Of critical concern as well, nuclear power plants use and create the fissile materials that can be used to make nuclear weapons.


    Mother Nature has given us a deadly warning that it is past time to end our reliance on nuclear power and invest instead in solar power, the only safe nuclear reactor that exists – 93 million miles from Earth.  The question is: Will the disaster in Japan open our eyes to the need for change, or will we be content to continue to tempt fate and simply hope that we do not become the next place on the planet where nuclear power fails catastrophically?

  • Japanese Earthquake Triggers Faults at Nuclear Power Plant

    Report by Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) (Original document is at www.nirs.org/international/asia/reportonearthquakedamage71907.pdf)

    In the early hours following the July 16 earthquake in Japan’s Niigata Prefecture, when Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) was reporting only a transformer fire and spill of 1.5 liters of radioactive water, NIRS criticized TEPCO for being slow to report information and told the Associated Press that we were waiting “for the other shoe to drop.”

    That sound you hear is the rumble of an entire shoe factory tumbling to the ground.

    It is now clear that the damage to the world’s largest nuclear power facility was far greater than initially reported and that radiation releases were also far greater than reported. Indeed, it appears that radiation releases are continuing today (July 19, 2007). According to a report from Bloomberg News (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aCWh.1vTk3_Y&refer=home), 402 million Becquerels of radioactivity already have been released, although this government-supplied figure likely understates the reality, as radiation apparently continues to be released into the environment.

    According to the Associated Press (www.pr-inside.com/a-look-at-problems-found-at-r174712.htm) on July 17, damage to the reactors was extensive. The AP found the following problems listed at that time:

    A list of malfunctions at the seven-reactor Kashiwazaki-Kariya nuclear power plant in northwestern Japan following a powerful earthquake this week:

    • Fire at an electrical transformer facility.
    • 1,200 liters of water containing radioactive material leaked into sea.
    • About 100 barrels of radioactive waste knocked over in storage facility.
    • Duct knocked out of place in major vent; possible leak of radioactive cobalt-60 and chromium-51 from five of the plant’s reactors.
    • Water leak inside buildings housing all seven reactors.
    • Malfunctioning of water intake screening pump at two reactors.
    • Blowout panel knocked down at turbine buildings at two reactors.
    • Oil leak from low-activation transformer waste oil pipes at two reactors.
    • Loss in water-tight seal at reactor core cooling system.
    • Water leaks from diesel generator facility, burst extinguisher pipe, burst condenser valve and filtration tank.
    • Broken connections and broken bolt at electric transformer.
    • Loss of power at control center for liquid waste disposal facility.
    • Oil leaks from damaged transformer and magnetic transformer facility.
    • Oil leak at reactor water supply pump facility.
    • Disrupted electrical connection at magnetic transformer facility.
    • Cracks in embankment of water intake facility.
    • Air and oil leaks at switching stations.
    • Land under parts of plant turned to mud in quake-caused process known as liquefaction.

    However, as of July 19, we now know that some 400, not 100, barrels of radioactive waste were knocked over, and about 40 lost their lids. At least some of the waste was liquid, and leaked into the building, according to Citizens Nuclear Information Center (CNIC) in Japan (for more information on nuclear power in Japan, visit their website at http://cnic.jp/english/). It is not known whether radiation from these spills has leaked outside the building.

    The 1200 liters (about 317 gallons) of radioactive water spilled into the Sea of Japan apparently came from the irradiated fuel pool at Unit 6 at the site. This is one of the two newer units: it is a 1315 MW General Electric/Toshiba Boiling Water Reactor that came online in November 1996.

    According to Japanese officials, the newest reactor at the site, a 1315 MW GE/Hitachi Boiling Water Reactor that came online in July 1997, has been venting radioactive steam into the air since the earthquake began, and continues to do so today (July 19). We have been unable to determine radiation levels of these releases.

    The earthquake exceeded the design basis for the reactors, and the facility does not meet new Japanese earthquake standards put in place in September 2006. Moreover, the fault that caused the quake is apparently directly underneath the facility site, and was not discovered prior to construction. It is not yet known whether this fault is capable of an even larger earthquake than the 6.8 measured on July 16.

    In a July 17 statement, CNIC said, “In just two years three earthquakes (off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture on 16 August 2005, off the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture on 25 March 2007, and now this one) have exceeded the “extreme design earthquake” assumed at the time the plants were built. In September 2006, for the first time in 28 years, the Nuclear Safety Commission revised Japan’s earthquake guidelines. Japan’s nuclear power companies are now carrying out earthquake safety checks on the basis of the new guidelines. By rights, all nuclear power plants should be shut down until these checks have been completed.”

    All of the reactors at Kashiwasaki Kariwa currently are shutdown and likely will be so for a long time to come as additional damage comes to light and its ability to withstand future earthquakes comes further into question. Initial projections are that the reactors will be closed for at least a year, and it is highly possible they will never reopen. Already, the earthquake has caused TEPCO to lose $4.3 Billion of its market value, according to Bloomberg. A lengthy shutdown of the world’s largest nuclear facility will undoubtedly cause far greater cost to the utility.

    Ironically, TEPCO’s website touts its nuclear program, and states as its number one priority in restoring public confidence in that program, “Promoting disclosure of information and ensuring transparency of nuclear operations.” Clearly, TEPCO’s commitment to transparency is no more than a slogan and it is unlikely public confidence will ever be regained.

    For the United States, the lesson is unmistakable: the earthquake reminds us of the fragility and danger of nuclear power and its ability to withstand the acts of Mother Nature. Nuclear reactors and earthquake faults simply don’t mix. An immediate need is to permanently end any further discussion of installation of dry cask radioactive waste storage units at the Diablo Canyon site on California’s earthquake-prone Pacific coast.

    NIRS will attempt to update this report as events warrant.

    The Kashiwasaki Kariwa facility consists of seven Boiling Water Reactors. Three are of Toshiba design and are 1067 MW each. Unit 1 came online in September 1985, Unit 2 in September 1990 and Unit 3 in August 1993. Two are Hitachi reactors of 1067 MW each: Unit 4 came online in August 1994 and Unit 5 in April 1990. Unit 6, a GE/Toshiba BWR of 1315 MW, came online in November 1996 and Unit 7, a 1315 MW GE/Hitachi BWR came online in July 1997. Taken together, until July 16, 2007, these represented the world’s largest nuclear power facility.

     

    Michael Mariotte, July 19, 2007 Nuclear Information and Resource Service 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 340 Takoma Park, MD 20912 301-270-6477 nirsnet@nirs.org, www.nirs.org