I remember well the impact of the Chernobyl disaster, having left Poland the week before. I was in close phone contact with Polish friends as radioactivity spread to their region. People were told to stay indoors, wash their hair. Out of that disaster, activists were born: I encountered them later when I studied the environmental movement in eastern Europe. Now Japan is facing its own nuclear energy crisis. And today, engineer and economist Lloyd J. Dumas, the author of 2010's The Technology Trap: Where Human Error and Malevolence Meet Dangerous Technologies, argues that nuclear technology cannot be made safe. - Janine R. Wedel
In the aftermath of the horrendous disaster in Japan, serious damage to a number of nuclear reactors in that country has once again called into question the wisdom of relying on nuclear power for an important part of our electricity supply. Are we overreacting?
No. Nuclear power is an inherently dangerous technology. Nuclear plants are designed with multiple levels of protection against disaster. But power reactors live in a delicate balance between using the heat from nuclear reactions to turn water into steam that drives electricity generators, and keeping the core of the reactor cool enough to avoid potentially catastrophic melting of the fuel rods. It is precisely this delicate balance that has been disrupted at the Japanese reactors.
First the ground shaking of this unexpectedly powerful earthquake did some as yet unspecified damage to the nuclear plants, which are designed to withstand lesser quakes. Then the tsunamis that rolled in from the sea added to the damage. The result was a loss of both off-site and on-site power, crippling the plants ability to operate critical reactor cooling systems -- one of the most serious situations that a nuclear power plant can encounter. With coolant levels dropping in the reactor core, fuel rods were exposed and rapidly began to overheat, turning steam into hydrogen that has already exploded at several reactors. Worse yet, the buildup of heat is melting the fuel rods, driving the reactors farther out of control. As a last ditch emergency measure, the plants operators have flooded the cores of the troubled reactors with seawater, which will temporarily keep them cool enough to forestall disaster, at the cost of corroding and ruining the reactors.
But natural disaster is far from the only source of danger. Nuclear plants are also appealing targets for terrorists. From 1976-2000, there were more than 1800 nuclear safeguards incidents, including 740 "bomb-related incidents", at American nuclear plants according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. We have been told that the only airliner hijacked on 9/11 that did not reach its intended target was likely headed for the White House or the Capitol. But after it was taken over and before the passengers and crew fought with the hijackers, the plane was headed in the direction of and only about 15 minutes flying time from the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. If that world-famous plant was the intended target, had the hijackers succeeded, we could easily have had an American Chernobyl on our hands.
Something as mundane, ubiquitous, and unavoidable as human error is also a potential source of nuclear disaster. A combination of design error and failure to follow guidelines for safe operation of the reactor at Chernobyl played a key role in triggering that catastrophic accident in 1986. Nuclear plant operators in the U.S. have reportedly been found asleep on the job or impaired by alcohol or drugs, apparently as a reaction to what is most of the time an extremely boring job. There is even some early indication that human error may have played a role in the still unfolding events in Japan. Apparently, no one had ensured that there was an adequate supply of diesel fuel for the generators that serve as a critical backup for powering emergency core cooling systems.
Finally, there is the problem of how to ensure the safe storage of nuclear waste. It was blithely assumed in the early days of nuclear power that before enough dangerously radioactive waste had accumulated to be a serious problem, we would develop new technologies to safely treat or at least store the waste. More than half a century has gone by since then, and the truth is we have made some progress, but we still don't have that problem anywhere near solved. Yet we continue to generate more and more of this long-lived waste, even as we contemplate expanding nuclear industry once again.
If we had no alternative ways to power our society and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, nuclear energy would still be a very risky path to follow. But there are a wide variety of practical alternatives available, from serious attention to improving energy efficiency (while maintaining our standard of living) to a whole host of ecologically benign renewable energy sources. Decades ago, the Sandia National Laboratory estimated damages into the hundreds of billions of dollars could be caused by a major accident at key nuclear plants in the U.S. It is hard to imagine even a catastrophic accident at a field of wind power generators that could do more than millions of dollars of damage. More important, the threat to human life and the environment posed by nuclear power is also much, much greater.
Natural disasters, such as the gigantic earthquake off the coast of Japan, remind us of the fragility of even our most impressive technologies and the utter interconnectedness of our modern societies. We cannot prevent these disasters any more than we can eliminate the potential for human malevolence that leads some people to terrorism or overcome the ubiquity of human error. But we can choose to depend on technologies that do not expose us to the level of risk posed by nuclear power. That is certainly within our reach.
..do the math.....
....one needs, perhaps, to devise a ''humanity-value scale,'' to justify the Nuke-Spooks.....
Maybe they can figure it out using advanced calculus...or some other function......but I doubt it......
sure, life is risky....
..but until you establish the value of one, human life, or indeed great swaths of earthborn creation for the rest of time......
don't waste your breath......
with creeped out, absurd arguments about the untarnished record of nuclear fission processes, ie., bombs, weaponry, power-plants, and so on..........
those arguments are toxic in themselves.... and like the meteorologic, blanket-layering of atomic radiation itself, can be extremely subtle and deadly......
nest'ce-pas?
If we had been working on solar and wind power and put the same money behind it since the 60's we might have clean energy now that didn't imperil the planet. Just common sense.
''to err is human''...
.....W. Shakespeare
You are quite right, ''human oversight'' is extremely critical when handling radioactive isotopes.
...this would apply to the architects of these potential, slow-motion, nuclear-bombs.....
..they now theorize that the dozen or so emergency generators in Fukushima did not initially fail from the violence/impact of the tidal-wave/tsunami.....
..They either depleted their diesel-fuel, or according to inspectors, were junk-engines presenting the ludicrous, cosmetic appearance of a safeguard/system......
.......of course, the tidal wave may have ultimately rendered them out of commission..
.....these flawed generators were unscrupulously [or murderously?] installed with the goal of trimming construction costs, some believe.....
......this is the status quo, possibly.....
They are the glaring, weak-link in the system of safeguards within these G.E.-design, power-plants.
peace always.....
b.....
Another horror to consider: what happens to the waste in this situation?
Author terms it "long-lived". Isn't that a term you use for war veterans ands long running entertainment. You don't apply it to poisons that sit around for tens to hundreds of thousands of years.
www.offthegridmpls.blogspot.com
Nobody has a clue.
Capturing their regulators and funding reelection campaigns is screaming for investigations.
I have frinds who work at Nuclear Power Plants here in the United States. When I speak to them about the events in Japan, I am reassured that they are just as dedicated to safety as the Japanese. We have to remember their friends and family are members of the public. They work every day to ensure everyone is safe.
But the industrial accidents are themselves only a tiny fraction of the overall death toll from fossil fuels. Thousands of people annually die in fires caused by these fuels. Tens of thousands die in accidents involving vehicles powered by fossil fuels.
All told, millions and millions of people have died as a direct or indirect result of reliance on fossil fuels over the past century and a half. The nuclear age has now been not quite half that long, but even counting Chernobyl and factoring in the worst possible effects of what is happening in Japan, nuclear-related fatalities do not even come close to those from fossil fuels. Not even in the same ball park.
It's natural to fear radioactivity, but I have to wonder how much this natural caution has been amplified to panic proportions by way of the vastly funded propaganda apparatus of the fossil fuel industries.
Somehow I think this stuff is different; the wind goes where it blows; probably a hell of a lot quicker than you can put this stuff back where it came from. I heard Anderson Cooper and some nulear smart guy talking about how the Japanese were lieing about past & present safety conditions at all of those plants. Before the quake, some Japanese officials were fired and resigned for fibbing about safety conditions at Fukishima.
To add to all of this, the 50 workers are too sick to continue and will suspend operations until its safer. I think the risks far outway the benefits. God bless them, but I don't think they can stop this. I mean no disrespect but;I think the discussion is way pass cheap or better energy sources.