FUKUSHIMA --A GLOBAL DISASTER --MAKES FEAR OF NUCLEAR JUSTIFIED

FUKUSHIMA--A GLOBAL DISASTER--MAKES FEAR OF NUCLEAR JUSTIFIED

Recently I have seen an upsurge of an attitude about nuclear ionizing radiation which I might call “the “don't worry it’s harmless” school of thought. Such ideas, to my chagrin, are often expressed by my family dentist and the local orthopedic surgeon.  I excuse their opinions, knowing they are colored by the fact that they prefer to have their patients think that their use of X rays (and a good part of how they make their comfortable incomes) incurs no danger to their patients.  Their statements are in general valid...though more powerful ionizing radiation used in other protocols of medicine (i.e. MRIs) have been thoroughly criticized. But the media and practitioners of public opinion-control who have deep-rooted stakes in the viability and continued profitability of nuclear power are those with whom I have a real problem. Recently, some have argued, like my dentist, that radiation exposure should not be so frightening. For one example of such opinion pieces which look at radiation exposure through rose-colored glasses...(and may help get stories and books published by trade organizations) you may read:“Fear vs. Radiation: The Mismatch” by David Ropeik, NYT Opinion.

The blossoming of pieces such as those by Mr. Ropeik, who claims to be a risk analyst, is perhaps the natural outgrowth of the disaster that nuclear power has proved itself to be in the last two years as we all gaze on the slowly deteriorating conditions at Fukushima crippled since 11 March 2011. The Level 7 nuclear “event” (7 is the highest) in Japan is the second nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in little more than a quarter century. It is Fukushima which makes liars our of the nuclear advocates who attempt to paint nuclear as American as apple pie and as safe! After Chernobyl, and now Fukushima, world opinion now seriously questions the safety of this “most dangerous way to boil water” and to look more critically at all those sooth sayers in the nuclear industry who had profits rather than safety on their minds.  Particularly devastating for the “its safe” crowd has been the disaster at Fukushima, occurring in a nation which prides itself on meticulousness, care and caution. If the methodical Japanese can't keep a lid on nuclear, how can we expect the Russians, Americans, or even French to do it any better. But the fear is not simply the result of the number of radiation deaths (a number difficult to pin down since effects take a long time to show up), which are admittedly...so far...few. The real fear is and should be of the long term contamination of wide swaths of countryside, the possibility of widely dispersed diluted amounts of biologically active nuclides being concentrated by the marine food chain, the direct contamination of water, soils, and food, the displacement of entire communities, the loss of agricultural areas to long term (virtually permanent)nuclear contamination, and finally not to mention the monstrous and debilitating costs. Risk analyst such as Mr. Ropeik make that analyis.  What we do know is that Fukushima will eventually take four decades to clean up and cost unknown billions.  After Chernobyl and now Fukushima the wisdom of this form of electrical generation is now more likely to be questioned. More and more thoughtful and knowledgeable leaders now consider nuclear to be too dangerous, unpredictable, and ultimately ruinously expensive.  Now Germany (!), the financial and industrial powerhouse of Europe has decided to bring and end to its reliance on nuclear. Events such as this must make the powerful nuclear industry and their investors and political supporters shake in their boots and direct them to mount their campaigns of disinformation...an attempted “clean up” of their own.

So let's take a bit of review regarding the history of the earlier disaster at Chernobyl, since the Fukusihma event is difficult to evaluate since its story is still unfolding and the unpalatable and frightening facts are still “leaking out” from TEPCO like the highly contaminated water carrying dangerous Cesium 137 which is slowly leaking into the formerly pristine Pacific Ocean.

On April 26, 1986 the Chernobyl Plant at Pripyat in east Central Europe, in what is now the Ukraine,was the site of a massive nuclear accident which caused an explosion and fire that released a huge cloud of radioactive dust which dispersed and settled over a vast area of the Ukraine. Global winds carried nuclear dust west which settled over all of Europe, except for Spain and Portugal. (Even today some parts of northern Scotland still have readily detectable levels of radioactivity in their soils and in the foods produced on them. In Germany hunters can not eat the boars they kill in the forests because the meat of these beasts is too radioactive.)

The world first became aware of the Chernobyl accident two days after the explosion when workers in a Swedish nuclear power plant in Forsmark,(nearly 700 miles away from Chernobyl) were found to have radioactive dust on their clothes. Swedish nuclear regulatory investigators attempting to find the "leak" at Forsmark were finally led to conclude the nuclear materials were coming from a far off site--in the Ukraine.

In attempting to control the disaster at Chernobyl many workers heroically exposed themselves to fatal doses of radioactivity.  In the end it took the efforts of some half a million workers and cost 18 billion Russian rubles (today $600 million dollars) to temporarily staunch the leak of radioactivity and stabilize the shattered Chernobyl plant.  To accomplish this the plant was covered over with tons of concrete and then an outer concrete shield was built over the entire plant.  But over the years, the outer shield has decayed and cracked and is now subject to collapse---and a possible repeat of the leaks and spread of nuclear contamination.  As a consequence, the Ukraine is presently building on the site an even more massive (20,000 ton) arched concrete “sarcophagus” which is being built on rails next to the plant and will  when completed (at a cost of some 1.5 billion Euros) be slid over the existing plant on rails to cover and protect the plant for some future date, when the process will no doubt have to be repeated to prevent further harmful leakage.

As a result of the 1986 accident a vast area of the highly productive agricultural lands of the Ukraine were so badly contaminated by radioactive dust that they had to be permanently evacuated and their farms, homes and businesses abandoned for (20,000 years) virtually forever.  Russian and Ukraine officials cleared an area within a radius of about 19 miles from the plant as too contaminated with radioactive materials for human life. This zone covering nearly 1,100 square miles is known as the “zone of alienation" and is nearly the size of the US State of Rhode Island. After more than a quarter century it remains uninhabited. The untended farms, fields and meadows have have reverted to forests where wildlife such as wolves and moose now wander. Officials estimate that the land will not be safe for human habitation for 20,000 years!

Can we all afford to put at risk of permanent contamination an area the size of the State of Rhode Island around each of our many nuclear plants? Would the aftermath of a massive nuclear accident result in multiple zones “of alienation” for twenty millennia?  Imagine the effects on our metropolitan areas (some of which like New York are virtually ringed with old nuclear plants similar to those at Fukushima). As humans we are supposed to be able to learn from our mistakes.  Chernobyl was enough to have most of us realize nuclear power was a big mistake. One mistake was enough for some of us. But now after Fukushima, if we do not change our ways and turn to better, less expensive, systems less prone to accidents which become global disasters----in a word safer ways to generate electricity--such as solar panels, wind, renewables, geothermal, tidal, etcetera, etcetera, after this second global disaster Fukushima, if we do nothing we are just plain dumb!

Get the picture?

rjk