Sunday, March 20, 2011

Lessons from Fukushima: in search of the Natural Scientist

Charles Fredricks
20 March 2011

“I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.
Robert Oppenheimer, quoting the Baghavad Gita, on witnessing the first atomic bomb test, 1945

This, to borrow a phrase the President should appreciate, is a teachable moment. When we engage in disasters waiting to happen as business as usual, how can we be surprised at the results.

So how did we get here? Flush in the excitement of sudden victory over Japan in WWII, through the instantaneous incineration of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki along with most of their inhabitants, President Truman led the nation in thinking (I paraphrase) “we must make some good use of this awful thing.” In the same address acknowledging the first use of nuclear weapons, he outlined proposals for this new technology’s peaceful use for energy, praising to the sky those who’d made its implementation possible.

So with perhaps a bit of guilt in the shadow of our technological exuberance after WWII, soldiers were injected with plutonium as an experiment, and plants were built in this country and sold to friendly countries. Once the huge investment they entail was made, cleanup of waste along with admission of error was placed somewhere out of reach for future generations to deal with.

Interesting thing about, at least some, scientists. Because they invest themselves to the point of identification with a method of inquiry, rather than a dogma or a particular deity, and conceive no possibility of error in their approach, some go so far as to imbue themselves as being free from reproach. They are, after all, only human, proceeding on the best information scientifically available, so if mistakes are made, it is only a necessary part of the learning process in the indefatigable march of progress, nothing personal. No need to question whether a particular avenue should proceed to implementation; like explorers of old, there’s gold and glory in them thar hills. Perhaps mental gifts oriented toward exploration of the external world allows little interest in exploring their internal world, leaving them vulnerable to potential foibles. At any rate, rare is the scientist willing to admit to practices that endanger the public, when those practices are also responsible for their paycheck.

Well, the future has arrived, along with global warming. We are beginning to accept our planet is finite, and will not abide perpetual error. Many scientists are saying we have precious little time to get our !%@# together. Some of these push nuclear as a supposedly safe-r alternative to our addiction to carbon.

Some are lost in the dream of one day traveling to distant Earth-type planets, which on our present course, will happen some time long after our extinction— in other words, never. Better to discover a way of adapting ourselves to living on a very promising planet, one in trouble no doubt, but by far the best available— the one we happen to be on.

Other people seem to be adapting to this information by grabbing all they can for themselves, damn the cost to others or their future progeny. Their institutional bias formed by membership in the exclusive corporate club to which they belong, blinding them to the consequences of their actions. Not a good course for us to assume, collectively.

So, it’s our choice. We can be “the destroyer of worlds,” at least of this one— a real ego rush, though not a vey long ride— or we can accept humiliation, and adapt to what the planet is telling us. Not all things are possible, or rather, all things are possible only according to natural law. Respect for nature, or if you prefer for the possibility that that which we do not know exceeds that which we do, need not mean we cease to believe in gravity or evolution, but rather we accept a place in the cosmos more appropriate to our size, temper our advance, and our population. The implications of such a decision should be obvious.

Any form of energy that creates toxic waste capable of killing generations into the future one would think ought to be avoided. One radioactive by-product of fission with a relatively short life is Cesium137 with a half-life of thirty years, which means half of what has been emitted will have decayed by then, but the other half will be around (in declining amounts) for twenty times that long (six hundred years), in the air and water, messing up the food supply. Strontium90 with a similar half-life, concentrates in dairy products leading to early death from bone cancer. Contamination by a single microscopic grain of plutonium, minimum half-life of 24,000 years (that’s a half million years to complete decay to the point where it is no longer dangerous), is enough to give an individual cancer. The plants in Japan are spewing 200 different isotopes, one of which is Plutonium, due to the brilliant public relations driven decision to re-process spent weapons-grade uranium into reactor fuel, called MOX. Exactly how much do we want to be hated by our kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, their kids, etc.?

A few snapshots: An accident at the aging Indian Point plant near New York City, due for an earthquake, on the order of the one in Japan, would require the evacuation of twenty million people; an impossible task. The Diablo Canyon plant north of Los Angeles lies seventy miles from the San Andreas fault, three miles from the Hosgri fault, and just a half mile from the recently discovered Shoreline fault. This last is said by its discoverer, Thomas Brocher of the Menlo Park Earthquake Science Center, to be capable of a 7.5 quake, putting it at or exceeding the current design limit of the plant. To the south between Los Angeles and San Diego lies the San Onofre plant, designed for a quake not exceeding 7.0, where a similar situation exists. While these faults are not subduction faults like the one in Japan, it is questionable whether they would be able to survive both an earthquake equal or exceeding their design load, and the resulting tsunami.

Logic tells us that every one of our one hundred and four operating plants are a prime target for terrorists, especially considering there is no approved permanent waste facility. Spent fuel, radio-active waste several times more than what’s in the reactor itself, is stored onsite in a less contained situation than that in the reactor, making it more vulnerable to accidental or mechanical failure or attack. In Michigan this is about a hundred yards from the drinking water for forty million people, for the cities of Detroit, Toronto and Windsor. The fire in the spent fuel pool in reactor number Four at Fukushima is potentially more worrisome than the potential meltdown of reactors One, Two and Three.

As the three reactors burn in Japan, I reflect on my lack of surprise. A disaster of this magnitude is something many of us have expected for some time. My use of the word ‘disaster’ rather than ‘accident’ is deliberate. The NRC testified to a Congressional hearing as long ago as 1982 1 that such an “accident” had a probability of occurring, which they put at fifty-fifty in the next twenty years, a mark we passed ten years ago. Internal NRC documents dating from 1972 recommended all Mark I type plants be decommissioned. The recommendation went unadopted for fear it would spell a death knell to the industry. 

Proceeding in the face of such knowledge, the results can hardly be called an accident unless you can’t admit to having a gambling problem. The three reactors burning in Japan and the other three in potential trouble are of Mark I type design. Lest we infer that things are better in the US, twenty three of the one hundred and four nuclear plants operating in the United States are of similar age and design, built to less rigorous standards than those in Japan due to the strength and frequency of Japanese earthquakes.

While cheerleaders for nuclear insist it is the cheapest and cleanest, (even safest when compared against the safety record of coal), I believe they are behaving as ostrich futurists, rather than scientists, externalizing the extremely dangerous waste and other dangers. Fifty square miles near Kiev are now uninhabitable to humans. Now to that we can add a portion of Japan. If the Indian Point plant had a serious accident, we would likely lose New York City, financial capital of the United States and home to twenty million people. If the Diablo Canyon plant went, San Louis Obispo, Santa Barbara and possibly Los Angeles would be contaminated. If both Diablo Canyon and San Onofre were to to melt down, that would be San Diego, Los Angeles and points north. Say goodnight, Malibu and Hollywood.

Let's be clear, Wall Street won’t back nuclear power; the taxpayer is 100% on the hook as the insurer to cleanup and make whole any possible hiccups. I am not privy to the particular political negotiations that have resulted in the continued operation of plants long known to be hazardous, or in President Obama’s recent announcement of $8.3 billion in loan guarantees, with promises of more for two new plants,2 when none have been built in this country since the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979.

Expect the nuclear, defense industry and government to fight tooth and nail, to the last lobbyist's dollar to defend civilian nuclear power against science and common sense, because the civilian and military uses of nuclear are inextricably linked. When we strip away the civilian nuclear program, the military program would be conspicuously exposed, calling into question decades of foreign policy and imperial power based upon disproportionate force. Nevertheless, common sense dictates this is what we must do, to live in a safer, saner world.

Last time I checked my electricity bill was around a dollar a day. A single solar array of eighty by eighty miles in Arizona or New Mexico would supply all the energy needs of North America. Although the cost differential to renewables is not that great, double it, hell, triple it, and give me clean renewable energy and a world that’s not poised on the brink, just so I can make toast in the morning. This means, solar, wind, wave, tide, pumped storage, geothermal, and others I’ve left out.

Carbon in all its forms, and nuclear don’t make the list.

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1
http://crocodoc.com/yoz20b accessed 3:19pm PDT, 17 March 2011
2
http://www.aolnews.com/2010/02/16/obama-backs-nuclear-plants-with-billions-in-loans
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