Shut the Nukes NOW!
It seems we’ve escaped complete catastrophe at the six failed reactors in Japan damaged in the earthquake and tsunami—for the moment, But it was (and may still be) pretty dicey.
Two of the reactors had to be cooled with seawater, in a last-ditch effort to prevent catastrophic meltdown. Those reactors probably can’t be used to generate electricity ever again. And the chance that the other four will return to service is probably pretty low, considering the extensive damage, high levels of radiation, etc., not to mention the risk of further damage in future quakes.
Thank goodness this happened in Japan, the country with probably the best earthquake-related building codes in the world (imagine what would have happened if a nuke had been sitting on earthquake fault during last year’s quake in Haiti—shudder!)
But here’s my question: WHY in the name of creation are we still hopelessly, haplessly, playing with nuclear fire? Did we learn nothing from the Chernobyl disaster? Or the barely-contained accidents at Three Mile Island, Browns Ferry (Alabama), Enrco Fermi (Michigan) and other near-calamities at nuke plants not only in the US but around the world? The nuclear industry’s safety record is horrible, and as Chernobyl proved, we don’t always get lucky with containing the damage—and when we don’t, large areas are rendered uninhabitable for decades.
Back in 1979-80, I had a monthly column about the dangers of nuclear power. I devoted two of my columns to the possibility of accidents resulting from earthquakes, and that information was taken form commonly available sources (even in the pre-Google era). More than 30 years later, we appear to have learned nothing. And earthquakes are only one of a dozen or more very compelling reasons NOT to use nuclear power. Some of the others include terrorist threat, waste disposal issues that need to be addressed for a longer timespan than human history, the problem (with US nukes of sharply limited liability in the event of an accident), diversion for bomb-making…and perhaps most shocking, the lifecycle analysis that shows that by the time you count the energy and fossil footprint of mining, milling, processing, transporting, running the reactors, reprocessing, waste storage and transportation, etc., you don’t actually create very much energy. One study I saw even claimed it was a negative number! (And another study showed that renewable energy is two to seven times as effective in reducing greenhouse gases.) For this very dubious benefit, we’re putting our own and every future generation at enormous risk???
Here’s my call to action:
- IMMEDIATE world-wide shutdown of any nuclear power plant within 100 miles of an active earthquake fault and entombment in the most solid possible barrier
- Phased shutdown of remaining N-plants over perhaps six months
- A world-wide Marshall Plan-style initiative toward the high-gain, relatively renewable low-cost energy solutions of the sort promoted by Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute in their “Winning the Oil End Game”: a plan to rapidly exit from fossil fuels without needing nuclear.
@Smarten_Up: Paul, you are absolutely right, and there’s even more to the terrible tradeoffs of nuclear power–on economic and other fronts. Just as an example, here’s a comment I made earlier today on TriplePundit:
One of the many problems with nuclear is that it turns out not to be so carbon-neutral after all when you look at the entire fuel cycle. Uranium has to be mined, milled, processed, made into fuel rods, transported to its destination, cooled, reclaimed, stored while continuing to be called, reprocessed, transported, etc. (notice that I don’t say “disposed of,” because there is actually no safe disposal method, which is another of the plethora of problems).
–>All of these things require a huge amount of energy, typically from carbon-emitting, greenhouse-gas-creating sources. One study I saw when I was writing my book on nuclear power (my first book,many years ago) said that counting the entire cycle, nuclear power is a net *consumer* of energy. OUCH! In other words, all this enormous risk for little or no actual benefit.
Let’s talk a little Maine economics here people, since anything to do with safety seems to be so low on some folks’ radar…
This article states ( https://new.bangordailynews.com/2011/03/16/politics/lepage-administration-still-eyeing-nuclear-despite-japan-crisis/ ):
“…ratepayers pick up the estimated $6 million to $8 million annual tab to store and monitor the radioactive fuel…” from the Wiscasset (Maine Yankee plant, decomissioned 1996). Since 1996, that is an average of $7 million x 15 years = $105 million. And it produced NO electricity for us in those 15 years, just cost us money.
Well, since there is no other option for storing this poison, and it needs to be kept secure for the next 25,000 years… let’s do the arithmetic…that is $175,000,000,000, not counting for inflation. $175 Billion just in storage costs.
That is just one plant, that produced electricity from 1972 to 1996, not a very long 24 years…
How many of those plants are there? 104 working ones in the US, a good percentage of which are near earthquake zones, BTW.
I would rather see all of a large wind turbine farm blow over in a monster storm. Imagine: some twisted steel to haul out, several dozen trees knocked over, some soil erosion to repair—-versus-—thousands of cancer deaths, for decades and decades, hundreds of square miles as no-go zones, food supplies contaminated, etc. for a nuke plant.
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I have always said, since the days of the Three Mile Island debacle, if the true costs of nuclear energy electricity production were factored in to what a utility charged for that electricity, it would not be “too cheap to meter,” but too expensive to even produce.
Factor in the true costs of the insurance policies a utility company SHOULD be required to carry to recompense victims after a major accident, and not policies artificially capped by federal legislation–you would not split one atom…
Factor in the true costs of just the security services at a storage site for the waste products of nuclear electricity production, for thousands of years…
Factor in the design, land, building, and maintenance of such a storage facility–none yet exists–and the true costs would bankrupt several nations…every nuclear plant in this country is storing its wastes onsite, lacking anyplace to send it. Imagine storing your own garbage output in the kitchen for the next number of years…
If it takes a recession/depression to stop the building of these poison plants, then hurray!
That is capitalism at work, and not corporate socialism.
True costs, true costs.
Do the research:
https://www.culturechange.org/n_power.htm
https://www.nirs.org/
https://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/2009-10_NuclearNonsense
https://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20040523x2.html
Since we’ve got alternatives that work well, it just doesn’t make sense to take the risks that come with nuclear power. And it’s hard to believe people could think it’s safe to build nuclear plants anywhere near fault lines.
There are enough disasters that happen that we can’t control (earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes). We don’t need to add disasters we’ve created.
I totally agree with you. The trade-off and so-called “benefit” in this case is decidedly NOT worth the risk.