A one percent risk, 100 percent too high

As news of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami of March 11 disappears from the front pages of the newspapers, some experts warn that the threats from the power plant can persist indefinitely, with one saying the mess cannot be cleaned up and “no-one will live in that area again for dozens or maybe hundreds of years.”

The New York Times last week reported that United States engineers sent to help with the crisis in are warning that the troubled nuclear plant is facing an array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely. In some cases these threats are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

In the new threats cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site.

“Among other problems, the document raises new questions about whether pouring water on nuclear fuel in the absence of functioning cooling systems can be sustained indefinitely. Experts have said the Japanese need to continue to keep the fuel cool for many months until the plant can be stabilised, but there is growing awareness that the risk of pumping water on the fuel presents a whole new category of challenges that the nuclear industry is only beginning to comprehend,” the report states.

For instance a rise in the water level of the containment structures has often been depicted as a possible way to immerse and cool the fuel in the plant. The assessment, however, warns that “when flooding containment, consider the implications of water weight on the seismic capacity of the containment.

“Enormous stress is put on the containment structures by the rising water. “The more water in the structures, the more easily a large after-shock could rupture one of them.”

David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who worked on similar General Electric reactors to those used in Japan and who now directs the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the welter of problems at three separate reactors revealed in the document made a successful outcome even more uncertain.

“Even the best juggler in the world can get too many balls up in the air. They’ve got a lot of nasty things to negotiate in the future, and one missed step could make the situation much, much worse,” he told The New York Times.

In the meantime Dr. Tom Burnett is reported on the Information Clearing House site as saying: ”Fukushima is going to dwarf Chernobyl. The Japanese government has had a level 7 nuclear disaster going for almost a week but won’t admit it.

“The disaster is occurring in the opposite way to Chernobyl, which exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactions are getting worse. I suspect three nuclear piles are in meltdown and we will probably get some of it.

“The Japanese are still talking about days or weeks to clean this up. That’s not true. They cannot clean it up. And no-one will live in that area again for dozens or maybe hundreds of years.”

Spreading contamination

Radioactive lodine 131 has recently been turning up in Tokyo’s drinking water some 240 kilometres south of Fukushima. It led to official advice not to give this water to babies.

This contamination emanated from the core of the reactors at the nuclear plant, signifying a partial meltdown, which could result in far greater contamination from other dangerous radionuclides, such as Ceasium 137, and possible plutonium contamination.

Unlike lodine 131, with a half-life of just over eight days, these long-lived radioactive substances were strongly implicated in clusters of childhood leukemia near the UK nuclear facilities at Sellafield and Aldermaston from the 1960s to the 1990s

After Fukushima

“As we pursue the abolition of nuclear weapons, we also need to phase out reliance on nuclear energy. Both are incompatible with our environmental and human security,” writes the director at the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, Rebecca Johnson on the openDemocracy website.

“There is still a long way to go before anyone can feel reassured that the disaster caused by Japan’s massive off-shore earthquake and tsunami will not result in an additional nuclear catastrophe,” she writes.

She argues that major natural disasters might not be very frequent, but they will keep happening when we least expect. So we need to factor that into our energy and security choices.

“It is an inherent problem of nuclear technologies that if something goes wrong the risks are much greater and may spread far more widely than with any other kind of weapon or energy,” she writes and adds: “… the Fukushima crisis demonstrates with chilling clarity, a nuclear crisis can turn into a long-term tragedy far more frightening for the world than the worst foreseeable oil spill, fire or fossil-fuel accident.

“Fifty years of nuclear operations have resulted in many near misses and several severe nuclear accidents that caused serious contamination outside the plant: Sellafield (UK, 1957), Three Mile Island (USA, 1979), Chernobyl (Soviet Union, 1986). And now Japan, which believed it had designed its many nuclear facilities well enough to withstand earthquakes,” she writes.

The bottom line is that by the very nature of the risks involved with nuclear technology, a one percent risk is 100 percent too high.

In an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel peace activist and author Jonathan Schell warns that “our most dangerous illusion is that we can control nuclear energy” and comes to the conclusion that what has happened in Japan could mark a turning point for the world.