Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear power plants

  • Lies and Leaks: The Earthquake That Screamed “No Nukes!”

    The massive earthquake that shook Japan this week nearly killed millions in a nuclear apocalypse.
    It also produced one of the most terrifying sentences ever buried in a newspaper. As reported deep in the New York Times, the Tokyo Electric Company has admitted that “the force of the shaking caused by the earthquake had exceeded the design limits of the reactors, suggesting that the plant’s builders had underestimated the strength of possible earthquakes in the region.”
    There are 55 reactors in Japan. Virtually all of them are on or near major earthquake faults. Kashiwazaki alone hosts seven, four of which were forced into the dangerous SCRAM mode to narrowly avoid meltdowns. At least 50 separate serious problems have been so far identified, including fire and the spillage of barrels filled with radioactive wastes.
    There are four active reactors in California on or near major earthquake faults, as are the two at Indian Point north of New York City. On January 31, 1986, an earthquake struck the Perry reactor east of Cleveland, knocking out roads and bridges, as well as pipes within the plant, which (thankfully) was not operating at the time. The governor of Ohio, then Richard Celeste, sued to keep Perry shut, but lost in federal court.
    The fault that hit Perry is an off-shoot of the powerful New Madrid line that runs through the Mississippi River Valley, threatening numerous reactors. The Beyond Nuclear Project reports that in August, 2004, a quake hit the Dresden reactor in Illinois, resulting in a leak of radioactive tritium. Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, slated as the nation’s high-level radioactive waste dump, has a visible fault line running through it.
    More than 400 atomic reactors are on-line worldwide. How many are vulnerable to seismic shocks we can only shudder to guess. But one-eighth of them sit in one of the world’s richest, most technologically advanced, most densely populated industrial nations, which has now admitted its reactor designs cannot match the power an earthquake that has just happened.

    In whatever language it’s said, that translates into the unmistakable warning that the world’s atomic reactors constitute a multiple, ticking seismic time bomb. Talk of building more can only be classified as suicidal irresponsibility.
    Tokyo Electric’s behavior since the quake defines the industry’s credibility. For three consecutive days (with more undoubtedly to come) the utility has been forced to issue public apologies for erroneous statements about the severity of the damage done to the reactors, the size and lethality of radioactive spills into the air and water, the on-going danger to the public, and much more.
    Once again, the only thing reactor owners can be trusted to do is to lie.
    Prior to the March 28, 1979 disaster at Three Mile Island, the industry for years assured the public that the kind of accident that did happen was “impossible.”
    Then the utility repeatedly assured the public there had been no melt-down of fuel and no danger of further catastrophe. Nine years later a robotic camera showed that nearly all the fuel had melted, and that avoiding a full-blown catastrophe was little short of a miracle.
    The industry continues to say no one was killed at TMI. But it does not know how much radiation was released, where it went or who it might have harmed. Since 1979 its allies in the courts have denied 2400 central Pennsylvania families the right to test their belief that they and their loved ones have been killed and maimed en masse.
    Prior to its April 26, 1986, explosion, Soviet Life Magazine ran a major feature extolling the virtually “accident-proof design” of Chernobyl Unit Four.
    Then the former Soviet Union of Mikhail Gorbachev kept secret the gargantuan radiation releases that have killed thousands and yielded a horrific plague of cancers, leukemia, birth defects and more throughout the region, and among the more than 800,000 drafted “jumpers” who were forced to run through the plant to clean it up.
    Since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the industry has claimed its reactors can withstand the effects of a jet crash, and are immune to sabotage. The claims are as patently absurd as the lies about TMI and Chernobyl.

    So, too, the endless, dogged assurances from Japan that no earthquake could do to Kashiwazaki what has just happened.
    Yet today and into the future, expensive ads will flood the US and global airwaves, full of nonsense about the “need” for new nukes.

    There is only one thing we know for certain about this advertising: it is a lie.
    Atomic reactors contribute to global warming rather than abating it. In construction, in the mining, milling and enriching of the fuel, in on-going “normal” releases of heat and radioactivity, in dismantling and decommissioning, in managing radioactive wastes, in future terror attacks, in proliferation of nuke weapons, and much much more, atomic energy is an unmitigated eco-disaster.
    To this list we must now add additional tangible evidence that reactors allegedly built to withstand “worst case” earthquakes in fact cannot. And when they go down, the investment is lost, and power shortages arise (as is now happening in Japan) that are filled by the burning of fossil fuels.
    It costs up to ten times as much to produce energy from a nuke as to save it with efficiency. Advances in wind, solar and other green “Solartopian” technologies mean atomic energy simply cannot compete without massive subsidies, loan guarantees and government insurance to protect it from catastrophes to come.
    This latest “impossible” earthquake has not merely shattered the alleged safeguards of Japan’s reactor fleet. It has blown apart—yet again—any possible argument for building more reactors anywhere on this beleaguered Earth.

     

    Harvey Wasserman helped co-ordinate media for the Clamshell Alliance, 1976-8. He was arrested at Diablo Canyon in 1984 and at Seabrook in 1989. He is author of “Solartopia: Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030.”

  • An Orwellian View of Nuclear Energy: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Nuclear Energy is Green

    In George Orwell’s classic novel, 1984, the government uses the slogans war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. Now, Nicholas Kristof (New York Times, April 9, 2005) would have us believe that nuclear energy is green.

    Kristof’s argument that “nukes are green” is out of touch with reality. Kristof would have us believe that the truly green energy sources – solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal – are no match compared to the benefits of nuclear power. He argues that nuclear power produces no greenhouse gases. Presumably, in Kristof’s logic, the gigantic steam towers, reactor buildings and nuclear fuel spring from the earth as naturally as the sun shines and the wind blows.

    Kristof offers an extremely narrow examination of the issue. He fails to consider that the construction of a nuclear plant, as well as fueling, decommissioning and storage of spent fuel, relies heavily upon fossil fuels, which generate vast quantities of greenhouse gases. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Energy Information Administration says the global strategy to mitigate carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions, besides conservation programs, should include retiring coal-fired plants in favor of natural gas and renewables and not to construct new nuclear plants.

    Kristof also fails to accurately analyze the economics of the nuclear industry. Monstrous government subsidies have kept the industry afloat. Without massive subsidization, the nuclear industry’s insurance liabilities would have driven the industry into the ground years ago. The IAEA Energy Information Administration reports that “new nuclear power plants presently cost more to build than do fossil fuel plants. This includes fossil fuel plants such as those fired by natural gas, a fuel that carries lower environmental costs…”

    Combined costs of new nuclear plants with the unknown yet enormous costs to store the more than 45,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste produced to date, promises to handicap future generations with a gargantuan debt. If nuclear energy is accepted as green and reactors multiply across the world, future generations can expect not only an economic nightmare, but also the potential for accidents such as Chernobyl, calamitous terrorist attacks and an environment strewn with radioactivity.

    Kristof is dead wrong in suggesting that burdening future generations with nuclear wastes buried underground is more reasonable than burdening them with a warmer world in which Manhattan is submerged under 20 feet of water. Endorsing nuclear energy as green and calling for an expanded national presence for nuclear energy will not solve the global warming crisis, it will only exacerbate it. Accepting nuclear energy as green will increase the number of targets terrorists might strike; increase the amount of viciously radioactive waste in need of heavily protected long-term storage; and increase the amount of ozone depleting gases emitted into the atmosphere.

    Replacing fossil fuels with truly renewable energy sources could be accomplished with government subsidization for a fraction of what the US is currently spending to subsidize the nuclear power industry and to secure our access to Middle East oil through military intervention and foreign aid.

    Unless war is peace and freedom is slavery, then nuclear energy is not green. Policy makers must realize they need not choose between two poisons: burdening future generations with nuclear wastes buried underground or burdening the future with a warmer world submerged under water. Kristof glosses over the true viability of clean, renewable energy sources. With sufficient funding, research, and legislative support, future generations won’t have to face the bleak Orwellian future that Kristof implies is inevitable.

    Luke Brothers is the Communications and Outreach Associate at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).

  • Time to Shut Down the Nation’s Nuclear Plants

    In the aftermath of the horrific September 11 attack on the World Trade Center there has been considerable discussion in the US media about the threat of a future chemical or biological attack. Meanwhile, the much greater threat posed by a successful terrorist attack on a US nuclear reactor has passed almost without notice. Currently there are about 110 operational nuclear reactors in the United States. And virtually every one of these electrical generating facilities is vulnerable to terrorism. Indeed, from the standpoint of the terrorist it would be hard to imagine a more ideal target than a nuclear reactor. These plants are uniquely vulnerable by virtue of their design. A successful assault on even one nuclear reactor could produce a catastrophe that would make the recent tragedy in New York seem puny by comparison.

    Such terrorism would be much easier to mount than the attack on the World Trade Center. No need to hijack a commercial jet liner. A small plane would suffice, and could be legally rented at any of a hundred airports in the US. The plane could be flown to a remote air strip located, say, on a rented farm, there loaded with explosives or even gasoline, before being pointed in kamikaze fashion at a nuclear plant.

    Such an attack, planned by someone with the necessary expertise, and staged by a handful of determined men, would be extremely difficult to stop. Current operational safeguards at US nuclear plants are designed to protect against truck bombs. But apparently no thought has been given to the sort of aerial assault that toppled the World Trade Center.

    The objective of such terrorism would be to disable the nuclear plant’s safety (cooling) systems, triggering a worst-case scenario: a nuclear melt-down.

    A partial melt-down of uranium fuel did occur at Three Mile Island in 1979, and, again, at Chernobyl in 1986. However, serious as these accidents were, especially Chernobyl, the long-term consequences of a full-scale melt-down would be immeasurably worse, worse even than the detonation of a nuclear weapon. Why? Because the core of a nuclear reactor contains many times as much uranium fuel as the largest nuclear bomb. Hence the potential for the release of far more radiation.

    Try and imagine, if you can, the hellish scenario that would result from such an attack. A full scale melt-down is a runaway nuclear reaction in the core of a nuclear reactor. It leads to a “China Syndrome,” where the “hot” uranium fuel literally melts its way through the floor of the reactor’s containment vessel, then sinks into the earth until it reaches ground water; whereupon a gigantic plume of intensely radioactive material rises like death into the air and begins to spread with the winds over a vast area.

    Let us assume such an attack near a large US city — a fair assumption given that many nuclear plants are located near metropolitan areas. With the prevailing winds, a melt-down at a plant in Pennsylvania, say, or in Virginia, would contaminate a large portion of the eastern seaboard with lethal radiation, killing untold numbers of people, and necessitating the evacuation of tens of millions of others. Large areas would be rendered uninhabitable for centuries. Entire cities, including New York and even the nation’s capital, might have to be permanently vacated. The human cost in lives, not to mention the vast disruptions to American society, would be on a scale that is impossible to comprehend.

    Yet the danger is all too real. Although the inherent vulnerability of nuclear reactors to terrorism has been understood for many years, the threat has not been taken seriously — until now — for reasons of hubris and greed.

    From the day of their election President Bush and Vice President Cheney have touted a new generation of “clean” and “safe” nuclear power reactors that, we are told, will solve the nation’s latest energy crisis. The two most powerful men in the land have, in short, been doing everything in their power to magnify the problem, and have played straight into the hands of Osama bin Ladin.

    No doubt, Bush and Cheney’s support for nuclear has been driven by politics. They have sought to reward those in industry who supported their candidacy. Make no mistake, the only reason nuclear power has survived is because of federal subsidies. Corporate welfare has been its life-blood. In a truly free marketplace nuclear energy would long ago have gone the way of the dinosaurs.

    In the wake of the disaster in New York the nation must finally come to terms with the true risks of nuclear energy. We must face the reality that there is no way to adequately safeguard these plants. When terrorists are willing to die they are very difficult to stop. The only solution is prevention: phase out nuclear power as soon as possible in an orderly transition to wind and solar energy; which are immune to terrorism, in addition to being cost-effective and environmentally friendly.

    *Mark Gaffney is the author of a pioneering study of the Israeli nuclear weapons program. Mark is currently preparing a briefing paper “Will the Next Mid-East War Go Nuclear?” for the Washington-based Middle East Policy Council. He can be reached at: PO Box 100 Chiloquin, OR 97624 541-783-2309