Nuclear power back from the
grave By Victor Kotsev
A year after one of the worst industrial
disasters in history - the triple reactor meltdown
and spent fuel fires at the Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear power plant - we still don't have a very
clear idea about the full ecological, health and
economic consequences facing Japan and the world.
Yet, while staggering amounts of radiation
were released into the environment (the danger of
new discharges lurks: even the plant director
acknowledges that the reactors are "still rather
fragile"), the global nuclear industry seems
unfazed.
Its executives have good reasons
to be cheerful, despite the gloom that had started
to spread among them last year. The human lust for
power - in the forms of cheap energy and nuclear
weapons - is unquenchable, and seems stronger even
than the fear of death and collective destruction.
Meanwhile, alternative
sources of such power
beyond carbon fuels and nuclear energy, despite
decades of efforts, are still underdeveloped.
Citing data that 60 countries were looking
to jump on the nuclear bandwagon in 2011 and that
four Asian countries (Vietnam, Bangladesh, the
United Arab Emirates, and Turkey) are expected to
start building their first reactors this year, on
Thursday Japan Today ran the headline "Future of
nuclear power brighter than ever, despite
Fukushima." [1]
To be fair, modern
societies need energy, and some of the
alternatives to nuclear power are hardly better
for the environment or for our own health. The
dilemma policymakers are facing was aptly captured
in the title of a panel discussion that took place
at New York University last November: "Global
Warming or Nuclear Meltdown?"
In an essay
published by Foreign Policy, Robert Dujarric
argues that "we cannot expect renewables to
'solve' the energy question in the foreseeable
future. ... Thus, though they seldom mention it,
those who seek to abandon nuclear power are
arguing in favor of greater reliance on fossil
fuels." [2]
For many developing countries
that import fossil fuels, much like for Japan
until last year, nuclear power holds the promise
of energy independence and prosperity. Others
depend on their aging and unsafe reactors so much
that in practice it is proving impossible to shut
them down (such is the case, for example, of
Armenia, which is home to one of the world's most
dangerous nuclear power plants). [3]
On
the other hand, however, lurks the danger of
nuclear catastrophe. A report published by the
International Journal of Health Services, for
example, claims that about 14,000 deaths "in
excess of the expected" in the United States in
the first 14 weeks after the disaster at Fukushima
may be linked to the radioactive fallout from it.
[4] It was not possible to obtain similar
statistics about Japan or any other country in the
region, but given that the West Coast of the US,
which is closest to Japan, is over 5,000 miles
away, the conclusions should raise concerns.
According to the latest figures provided
by the Japanese government, the combined death
doll of the March 11, 2011 disaster is 15,853,
with 3,283 missing. Most of these people, however,
were killed by the magnitude 9 earthquake and the
subsequent tsunami that triggered off the
meltdown.
Both the government and the
plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company
(TEPCO), have often been accused of covering up
the magnitude of the disaster over the past year.
TEPCO announced in December that its workers had
managed to achieve "cold shutdown" status of the
inflicted reactors, meaning that the temperature
of the cores had dropped below 100 degrees
Centigrade. However, the cleanup of the site will
take decades - up to 40 years, according to the
current estimates. Tons of radioactive waste were
reportedly bulldozed there.
Meanwhile, the
danger of further contamination is not gone. "The
biggest problem for the immediate future is the
possibility of a severe aftershock earthquake,"
said Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry
senior executive, in a recent internet broadcast.
"Tokyo Electric has calculated that if a severe
earthquake hits, all of the jury-rigged piping
that is in place will fail again, and within 40
hours we will be back to a meltdown. Now that is
hardly stable." [5]
Even when a reactor
has been turned off, the spent fuel continues to
produce heat, and if the cooling system fails, a
fire can start. Such fires can be as dangerous as
nuclear meltdowns; this was demonstrated by the
fire at reactor number 4 at the Fukushima Daiichi
plant, which had been shut down prior to the
tsunami, but the spent fuel caught fire several
days into the crisis. Given that there were large
amounts of spent fuel at all the reactors at the
plant, we can expect Fukushima to remain a
significant danger for decades.
A cleanup
effort is underway in the towns and agricultural
lands nearby (and much of the beach near the plant
will be cemented over), but even the government
has acknowledged that some areas remain
permanently uninhabitable. [6] Meanwhile,
comprehensive data about the contamination of
either the atmosphere or the Pacific Ocean are not
available, but most estimates indicate that
Fukushima surpassed considerably a similar
disaster at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine in
1986.
For example, a study published in
the Journal of Environmental Science and
Technology shows that Fukushima polluted the ocean
with a lot more radioactive chemicals than did
Chernobyl. The peak releases occurred about a
month after the accident, and at one point, on
April 6, 2011, the levels of radioactive cesium
near the plant were almost 50 million times higher
than the normal background levels. [7]
At
present, all but two of Japan's 54 nuclear
reactors are offline, and the others are expected
to shut down within a few weeks. Given Japan's
dependence on nuclear energy (about 30% of the
country's electricity came from the nuclear power
plants prior to the disaster), many experts expect
at least some of the reactors to be restarted
soon, after safety tests and improvements.
However, public opinion in the country has
turned against nuclear power, and Prime Minister
Yoshihiko Noda, who tried to advocate the above
path, is facing considerable resistance; in fact,
he has also called for a gradual phasing out of
nuclear power over several decades.
In a
move fraught with symbolism, even the man who
years ago convinced the former US president Ronald
Reagan to allow Japan to process spent nuclear
fuel into plutonium, feeding speculations that he
was seeking a nuclear weapons capability, former
Japanese prime minister Yasuhiro Nakasone,
recanted after the disaster. "I want to make Japan
into a solar power nation by skillfully using
solar energy," he told a solar energy conference,
quoted by the newspaper Asahi Weekly.
"That statement by the 93-year-old who had
long pushed nuclear energy as a national policy
was an expression of a drastic change in energy
policy even before any such move was even being
considered by the opposition Liberal Democratic
Party that he once led," the article concludes.
[8]
However, Japan and several other
developed countries that are moving away from
nuclear power - most notably Germany - seem rather
isolated in this endeavor. As mentioned above,
most often the primary reason for this is the lack
of good sustainable alternatives for the peaceful
generation of electricity; however, in some cases
the motivation is darker.
Consider for a
moment the advice that a Chinese scholar, in his
own account speaking to the Israeli daily
Ha'aretz, gave to the Iranian ambassador in
Beijing:
"I suggested taking Japan's
route. Japan is a nuclear power. It has nuclear
reactors and immense amounts of stockpiled
plutonium and enriched uranium, but it has decided
not to build nuclear weapons. Of course, it has
the option to do so. If Japan wants to, it can
build nuclear weapons within a very short time."
[9]
Estimates vary, but according to the
Asahi Weekly article cited above, Japan has
stockpiles of plutonium sufficient to build 1,250
nuclear bombs. Indeed, Japan's fuel recycling
program, while never quite successful in recycling
the fuel for energy purposes, has been the object
of envy of several Asian countries for its
potential military applications.
In an
insightful analysis in Foreign Policy magazine,
Henry Sokolski argues that the aftermath of the
nuclear disaster in Japan is also a moment of
opportunity for initiatives against nuclear
proliferation:
The weapons potential of this
plutonium is an unspoken driver behind South
Korea's interest in getting into plutonium
recycling, too. Seoul has long sought to keep up
with every aspect of Japanese technology,
including the most questionable and dangerous
nuclear- and missile-related activities. If
Tokyo were to terminate its fast-breeder and
commercial plutonium reprocessing efforts, it
would go a long way toward depriving Seoul of
its argument. [10]
We can assume that
Iran is following the developments closely, as is
North Korea along with a number of other countries
in the region. Sokolski's punchline, however,
comes toward the end of the article, with the
information that the Barack Obama administration
itself is lobbying against legislation designed to
impose better controls on exports of nuclear
technology:
Despite all the high-minded rhetoric
about the importance of nonproliferation, it
appears the White House attaches higher priority
to nuclear sales in developing countries. Just
last week, word leaked out that the
administration is renewing talks to conclude a
nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia
- even though Riyadh's royals recently declared
that Saudi Arabia was committed to acquiring
nuclear weapons if Iran did.
[11]
Given that a nuclear arms race
seems to have already started in the Middle East
(and other parts of Asia), one has to wonder
whether the US is entirely serious in its
anti-proliferation efforts on the continent.
One of the broader lessons is, perhaps,
that until disaster is brought intimately close to
us - people in general - we seem unable to learn
from it. It is true that the reactors where
serious incidents have occurred have all been old
and flawed; new designs are supposedly much safer
and produce much less waste (even so, the thought
of Bill Gates manufacturing "smaller, cheaper and
safer" nuclear reactors might be a bit shocking).
However, in the long term, our reliance on
a technology that is so harmful to us and to the
environment will invariably carry risks that are
too high to justify. This is, of course, assuming
responsible use, which is hardly a very safe
assumption.
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