By Moisha Blechman
“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong,” according to Murphy’s Law. But that idea has not, even now, registered with the policymakers of most countries, including the U.S., who continue to promote nuclear energy. Only Germany, and a few smaller countries like Portugal, admit that all technology involves risk, and that the meltdown in Fukushima has shown nuclear risk to be unacceptable.
What would it take for policymakers to change their minds? Months after the initial tsunami and resulting events at Fukushima, it was confirmed that the core of Fukushima reactors 1,2, and 3 had melted down. On June 9, two British newspapers reported that the situation has gone beyond a core meltdown – there’s been a “melt-through” to the base of the pressure vessels and highly contaminated water is pooling in the outer containment vessels.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, Tepco, has given a report of the increased severity of the situation to the International Atomic Agency. The Yomiuri newspaper described the melt-through as being “far worse than a core meltdown” and the “worst possibility in a nuclear accident.”
The water pumped into the pressure vessels to cool the fuel rods became highly radioactive in the process. This water is leaking outside the buildings that house the reactors. Tepco is trying to prevent the water from flowing into the sea, but elevated levels of radiation are confirmed in the ocean near the plant. It is not known how Tepco will deal with the thousands of tons of water that have already been poured over burning fuel rods and have become highly radioactive.
Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have stated that the impact on the world’s oceans is 10 times worse than Chernobyl. Testing seaweed 40 miles away, GreenPeace found it to be 20 times above the legal permit for radioactive contamination. Seaweed is a staple in the Japanese diet. This will likely become worse as the radioactive water continues to drain into the ocean.
An area stretching 30 kilometers northwest from Fukushima became an evacuation zone, but there is significant contamination well beyond it. In fact, it is higher than in the evacuation zone of Chernobyl. Farmland there, and probably much further, will never be safe for food production again. Green tea, grown 150 miles away, is now banned for export.
Of course the contamination does not stop in Japan. Between wind and oceanic currents, Fukushima delivered a terrible and lasting blow to the planet as a whole. The radiation from Fukushima adds to that released by the accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. The burden increases with each nuclear plant failure. Before Fukushima, the plants upon which livestock in Norway graze were already contaminated to the point where the animals must go on a special cleansing diet for several weeks before slaughter. It is expected this will be necessary for 100 years.
In the face of this catastrophe, one would think that the United Nations would immediately set up an international and cooperative scientific investigation to coordinate data on radioactive contamination all over the world, especially since contamination from Fukushima is ongoing. Would not responsible governments inform the public? After all, they did pay for the plants, and they will suffer from them.
Instead, when the G-8 met in Deauville last month, France, the U.S., Russia, and the U.K. all committed to building new nuclear power plants. Even Japan’s Prime Minister Kan is quoted as saying that, while he plans to boost green energy, nuclear energy will remain one of the “pillars” of national energy policy. There was even a headline asking “What is wrong with Germany?” for refusing to further nuclear energy production.
In an op-ed in the New York Times on June 8 (“The Gas is Greener”), Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote that solar energy is fundamentally flawed and impractical because its infrastructure takes up too much real estate. However, he did not mention that much of the solar energy infrastructure is installed on existing buildings, homes, utility poles, etc., which is especially important in Third World conditions where there may be no grid at all. Incredibly, Bryce concluded by promoting natural gas and nuclear power as having “smaller footprints.” I was dumbfounded.
Any sensibly notion of an energy source’s “footprint” must account for any contamination it may produce. If Bryce is referring to real estate, then he must account for the contaminated acreage of Japan and Russia, unlikely to be farmed again. One must also consider the unknown consequences for the oceans of the world. And mining for natural gas in the best farmland of an agricultural state, New York, could effectively appropriate one third of its real estate!
Our leaders continue to say, “We will build and operate safe nuclear power plants – and we will do safe hydrofracturing.” In effect, they want us to believe in human infallibility, and never mind the historical record. As Murphy’s Law goes, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”
Moisha Blechman, a member of the New York City Group, chairs the Chapter Publications Committee as well as the Global Warming Coordinating Committee.