As heroic workers
and soldiers strive to save stricken Japan from a new
horror--radioactive fallout--some truths known for 40 years bear
repeating.
An earthquake-and-tsunami zone crowded with 127 million people is an unwise place for 54 reactors. The 1960s design of five Fukushima-I reactors has the smallest safety margin and probably can't contain 90% of meltdowns. The U.S. has 6 identical and 17 very similar plants.
Every currently
operating light-water reactor, if deprived of power and cooling
water,
can melt down. Fukushima
had
eight-hour battery reserves, but fuel has melted in three
reactors.
Most U.S. reactors get
in
trouble after four hours. Some have had shorter blackouts. Much
longer
ones could happen.
Overheated fuel risks hydrogen or steam explosions that damage
equipment and contaminate the whole site--so clustering many
reactors
together (to save money) can make failure at one reactor cascade
to
the rest.
Nuclear power is
uniquely unforgiving: as Swedish Nobel physicist Hannes Alfve'n
said,
"No acts of God can be
permitted." Fallible people have created its half-century
history
of a few calamities, a steady stream of
worrying
incidents,
and
many
near-misses.
America has been
lucky so
far.
Had Three Mile
Island's containment dome not been built double-strength because
it
was under an airport landing
path, it may not have withstood the 1979 accident's hydrogen
explosion. In 2002,
Ohio's
Davis-Besse
reactor was luckily caught just before its massive pressure-vessel lid rusted
through.
Regulators haven't
resolved
these or
other key
safety issues, such as terrorist threats to reactors, lest they
disrupt a powerful industry. U.S. regulation is not clearly better than
Japanese regulation, nor
more transparent: industry-friendly rules bar the American
public from
meaningful participation. Many presidents' nuclear boosterism
also
discourages inquiry and dissent. Nuclear-promoting
regulators inspire even less confidence. The International
Atomic
Energy Agency's 2005 estimate of about 4,000 Chernobyl deaths contrasts with a
rigorous 2009
review
of 5,000 mainly
Slavic-language scientific papers the IAEA overlooked. It found
deaths
approaching a million through
2004, nearly 170,000 of them in North America. The total toll
now
exceeds a million, plus a
half-trillion dollars' economic damage. The fallout reached four
continents, just as
the jet stream
could
swiftly carry Fukushima fallout.
Fukushima I-4's
spent fuel alone, while in the reactor, had produced (over
years, not
in an instant) more than a hundred times more fission energy and
hence
radioactivity than both 1945 atomic bombs. If that
already-damaged
fuel keeps overheating, it may melt or burn, releasing into the
air
things like cesium-137 and strontium-90, which take several
centuries
to decay a millionfold. Unit 3's fuel is spiked
with plutonium, which takes 482,000 years. Nuclear power is
the
only energy source where mishap or malice can kill so many
people so
far away; the only one whose ingredients can help make and
hide nuclear
bombs; the
only
climate solution that substitutes proliferation, accident, and
high-level radioactive waste dangers.
Indeed, nuclear plants are so slow and costly to build that
they reduce
and
retard climate
protection. Here's how. Each
dollar spent on a new reactor buys about 2-10 times less carbon
savings, 20-40 times slower, than spending that dollar on the
cheaper,
faster, safer solutions that make nuclear power unnecessary and
uneconomic: efficient use of electricity, making heat and power
together in factories or buildings ("cogeneration"), and
renewable energy. The last two made 18% of the world's 2009
electricity (while nuclear made 13%, reversing their 2000
shares)--and
made over 90% of the 2007-08 increase in global electricity
production.
Those smarter choices are sweeping the global energy market. Half the world's new generating capacity in 2008 and 2009 was renewable. In 2010, renewables, excluding big hydro dams, won $151 billion of private investment and added over 50 billion watts (70% the total capacity of all 23 Fukushima-style U.S. reactors) while nuclear got zero private investment and kept losing capacity. Supposedly unreliable windpower made 43-52% of four German states' total 2010 electricity. Non-nuclear Denmark, 21% windpowered, plans to get entirely off fossil fuels. Hawai'i plans 70% renewables by 2025.
In contrast, of
the
66 nuclear units worldwide officially listed as "under
construction" at the end of 2010, 12 had been so listed for over
20 years, 45 had no official startup date, half were late, all
66 were
in centrally planned power systems--50 of those in just four
(China,
India, Russia, South Korea)--and zero were free-market
purchases.
Since 2007, nuclear growth has added less annual output than
just the
costliest renewable--solar power --and will probably never catch
up.
While inherently safe renewable competitors are walloping both
nuclear
and coal plants in the marketplace and keep getting dramatically
cheaper, nuclear costs keep soaring, and with greater safety
precautions would go even higher. Tokyo Electric Co., just
recovering
from $10-20 billion in 2007 earthquake costs at its other big
nuclear
complex, now faces an even more ruinous Fukushima bill.
Since 2005, new
U.S.
reactors (if any) have been 100+% subsidized--yet they couldn't raise a cent of
private
capital,
because
they have no
business case.
They cost 2-3 times as much as new windpower, and by the time
you
could build a reactor, it couldn't even beat solar power.
Competitive
renewables, cogeneration, and efficient use can displace all
U.S. coal
power more than 23 times over--leaving ample room to replace
nuclear
power's half-as-big-as-coal contribution too--but we need to do
it
just once. Yet the nuclear industry demands ever more lavish
subsidies, and its lobbyists hold all other energy efforts
hostage for
tens of billions in added ransom, with no limit.
Japan, for its
size,
is even richer than America in benign, ample, but long-neglected
energy
choices.
Perhaps
this tragedy will call Japan to global leadership into a post-nuclear world. And
before
America suffers its own Fukushima, it too should ask, not
whether
unfinanceably costly new reactors are safe, but why build any
more,
and why keep running unsafe ones. China has suspended reactor
approvals. Germany just shut down the oldest 41% of its nuclear
capacity for study. America's nuclear lobby says it can't happen
here,
so pile on lavish new subsidies.
A durable myth
claims Three Mile Island halted U.S. nuclear orders. Actually
they
stopped over a year before--dead of an incurable attack of
market
forces. No doubt when nuclear power's collapse in the global
marketplace, already years old, is finally acknowledged, it will
be
blamed on Fukushima. While we pray for the best in Japan today,
let us
hope its people's sacrifice will help speed the world to a
safer, more
competitive energy future.
This essay is
the
first in Inside NOVA's Nuclear After Japan, a series of essays
presenting different
viewpoints on Japan's nuclear crisis and its impact on the
future of
nuclear energy. It posted with the permission of RMI. Read other
articles in
this series.