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Fukushima fallout

After the Fukushima disaster, Electricite de France CEO Henri Proglio said ‘Nuclear is a formidable source of energy.’ Maybe a nuance there lost in translation? Regardless, views do seem to have changed. In a public opinion poll in France just after the Japanese disaster, 55% said they were not in favour of a proposal by France’s main green party to drop nuclear power, but 42% were in favour. This in the most pro-nuclear country in the world.

As you might expect, in anti-nuclear Spain a 40-year old Spanish plant built to the same design as Fukushima’s reactor 1, became engulfed by calls for a shut down. In anti-nuclear Germany all the old plants were shut and there were massive anti-nuclear demonstrations, a swing to the Green Party in the regional elections, and talk of closing all the plants by 2020, a position now backed by the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW). And even in allegedly pro-nuclear UK, support for nuclear fell 12% ( from 47% to 35%). A safety review followed in the UK, and stress tests were carried out across the EU. Meanwhile China halted all new nuclear projects and initiated a review of policy..

Given that the core containments seem mostly to have held so far, the Fukushima accident wasn’t seen as being of the same order as Chernobyl, although it did involve several reactors, rather than just one, as well as several spent fuel storage ponds, including material stored above the reactor, some of which was evidently scattered around. But we have yet to see what exactly the final impact will be. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/asia/06nuclear.html?_r=1

At the time of the quake/ tsunami in Japan, there were 3,400 tons of spent fuel in seven storage pools at Fukushima, some of it still very active, plus 877 tons of active fuel in the cores of the reactors. That totals 4,277 tons of nuclear fuel at Fukushima- the storage pool above reactor 4 alone contained 135 tons of spent fuel. For comparison, the Chernobyl reactors had about 180 tons when the accident occurred in 1986 and about 6% of that was released into atmosphere. We don’t know yet what percentage was released in the air, land and sea at Fukushima- it will presumably be much lower in percent terms- but Ieakages are still ongoing.

Chernobyl recounts

Although there were deaths due to the explosions, so far no radiation deaths have been reported at Fukushima, and some commentators have argued that it will remain so. This hopeful view was buttressed by a new report from the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation published in February, which says that the known death toll from Chernobyl was just 28 fatalities among emergency workers, plus 15 fatal cases of child thyroid cancer by 2005, some of which may have been avoided if iodine tablets had been taken (as they have now in Japan). And it says ‘To date, there has been no persuasive evidence of any other health effect in the general population that can be attributed to radiation exposure’. It doesn’t speculate about future deaths ‘because of unacceptable uncertainties in the predictions’, but previous IAEA/WHO reports have talked of around 4000. www.unscear.org/docs/reports/2008/AdvancecopyAnnexDChernobyl_Report.pdf

For a very different view see ‘Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment’ published in 2010 by the New York Academy of Sciences and authored by Russian biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov; Dr. Alexey Nesterenko, a biologist /ecologist in Belarus; and Dr.Vassili Nesterenko, a physicist and at the time of the accident director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. Its editor is Dr. Janette Sherman, a physician and toxicologist involved in studying the health impacts of radiation.

It concludes that, based on records now available, some 985,000 people died, mainly of cancer, as a result of the Chernobyl accident, between when the accident occurred in 1986 and 2004. More deaths, it projects, will follow. www.wagingpeace.org/articles/dbarticle.php?articleid=141

High estimates like this raised some hackles, including some bitter comments from the Guardian’s George Monbiot, a new convert to the nuclear cause. However, there are clearly differing view on the impacts of radiation, one view being that some low level emitters, if ingested/breathed in, can cause much more damage than is usually assumed. A review of the New York Academy’s report in the journal Radiation Protection Dosimetry .concluded that it makes clear ‘that international nuclear agencies and some national authorities remain in denial about the scale of the health disasters in their countries due to Chernobyl’s fallout. This is shown by their reluctance to acknowledge contamination and health outcomes data, their ascribing observed morbidity/mortality increases to non-radiation causes, and their refusal to devote resources to rehabilitation and disaster management.’

The debate over numbers will no doubt continue. One might hazard a guess that the truth is somewhere in between the extremes. For example the independent 2006 TORCH report estimated the final death toll as likely to be 30,000-60,000, which seems more credible. www.chernobylreport.org

However it’s clearly an area of continuing dispute, which will no doubt become even more fraught given the estimate by Prof. Chris Busby that there could eventually be over 400,000 deaths from Fukushima: http://llrc.org/fukushima/fukushimariskcalc.pdf

While predictions like this may be provocative, the reality seems to be that we just don’t know for sure, or at least can’t agree, and it’s that uncertainty that may be the most worrying thing to many people.

What next?

We now await the various safety reviews and policy responses Some other countries have already moved quickly (some say too quickly) to change, or reassert, existing policies. But it seems unlikely that the UK government will make radical changes. Although he accepted that there could now be more financial problems, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne was still upbeat. He told the House of Commons on 24th March ‘We have to put an emphasis on safety. That is why we commissioned Dr Mike Weightman’s report’. However, although he said that ‘we will have to wait to see its results and base the debate on the facts’, he added ’ I do not anticipate that it will lead to enormous changes’. And later on he was quoted as saying ‘There is no intention for us to do anything but learn the lessons… for example, about the back up for cooling.’

That seems to be the very minimum necessary, and even that would surely require the government to reconsidered the conclusions of its ‘Nuclear Justification’ exercise: the still to be completed ‘Generic Design Assessment’ for the new plants has already been extended. One thing seems clear, if we still do go ahead, with all the proposed new plants and their waste stores being at sea level on the coast, the extra cost of improving safety, tightening regulation and upgrading insurance cover and evacuation procedures could be large.

Huhne has said that: ‘We can do the 80% reduction in emissions by 2050 without new nuclear, but it will require a big effort on carbon capture and storage and renewables.’ It could well be that the balance has now tipped and that this alternative approach, with energy efficiency also included, could be preferable- and could cost less. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently claimed that wind and solar may compete with fossil fuels, without subsidies, within the next decade. Can the same be said of nuclear?

Posted by Dave Elliott on April 10, 2011 12:58 PM | Permalink