Aftermath of Tohoku megaquake demonstrates the folly of nuclear power

Two days have elapsed since Japan was pum­meled by one of the largest earth­quakes human­i­ty has ever doc­u­ment­ed. In that time, we’ve begun to see the trag­ic and painful extent of the disaster.

The earth­quake (which reg­is­tered 8.9 on the moment mag­ni­tude scale) and the ensu­ing tsuna­mi it spawned have laid waste to sev­er­al pre­vi­ous­ly peace­ful pre­fec­tures, claim­ing thou­sands of lives and destroy­ing entire communities.

To make mat­ters worse, the one-two punch of the quake and the tsuna­mi have desta­bi­lized sev­er­al of Japan’s nuclear pow­er plants, pre­cip­i­tat­ing an envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis that is get­ting worse by the hour. At least two reac­tors have com­plete­ly over­heat­ed. Plant oper­a­tors are try­ing to bring the sit­u­a­tion under con­trol by cool­ing the cores with sea­wa­ter. But their response has been beset with com­pli­ca­tions, as the New York Times explains:

Usu­al­ly when a reac­tor is first shut down, an elec­tric pump pulls heat­ed water from the ves­sel to a heat exchang­er, and cool water from a riv­er or ocean is brought in to draw off that heat.

But at the Japan­ese reac­tors, after los­ing elec­tric pow­er, that sys­tem could not be used. Instead the oper­a­tors are dump­ing sea­wa­ter into the ves­sel and let­ting it cool the fuel by boil­ing. But as it boils, pres­sure ris­es too high to pump in more water, so they have to vent the ves­sel to the atmos­phere, and feed in more water, a pro­ce­dure known as “feed and bleed.”

When the fuel was intact, the steam they were releas­ing had only mod­est amounts of radioac­tive mate­r­i­al, in a non­trou­ble­some form. With dam­aged fuel, that steam is get­ting dirtier.

Sci­en­tists are now sug­gest­ing the radioac­tive releas­es could go on for months. The White House is fool­ish­ly try­ing to down­play the dan­ger, at least here in the Unit­ed States, by point­ing to mod­el­ing which sug­gests that emis­sions are unlike­ly to cause the air above U.S. ter­ri­to­ry to become more radioactive.

Even if they’re cor­rect — and we’re not sure that they are — what about Japan? What about the com­mu­ni­ties close to these reac­tors? Hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple have already been evac­u­at­ed due to the dan­ger. Are nuclear pow­er boost­ers not con­cerned about them? Are they not con­cerned about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a sim­i­lar calami­ty ensnar­ing us decades from now?

To bor­row a phrase from Pres­i­dent Oba­ma: Make no mis­take, what’s hap­pen­ing now in Japan could hap­pen to us if we’re naive enough to let nuclear pow­er boost­ers build more reac­tors. By now, the truth should be painful­ly obvi­ous to any­body who is pay­ing atten­tion: Nuclear pow­er is nei­ther safe nor clean.

Con­se­quent­ly, it can­not, under any cir­cum­stance, be part of the solu­tion to the cli­mate cri­sis or to the prob­lem of ener­gy independence.

Even if there were no such things as earth­quakes and tsunamis, and even if all nuclear pow­er plants were built with sound engi­neer­ing and oper­at­ed by human­i­ty’s finest, nuclear pow­er would still be nei­ther safe nor clean. That’s because humans make mis­takes and nuclear fis­sion pro­duces radioac­tive waste.

There’s no get­ting around this.

My reply to every worth­less col­umn pro­mot­ing the “promise” of nuclear pow­er is sim­ple: Where are you going to put the waste?

There is no good answer to that ques­tion, and that’s part­ly why there will nev­er be anoth­er nuclear pow­er plant built in the Unit­ed States. Nobody wants to live near a radioac­tive waste dump. And nuclear pow­er plants are, by def­i­n­i­tion, waste dumps. Attempts to min­i­mize the amount of waste close to reac­tors by trans­port­ing con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed mate­ri­als to an off­site loca­tion have gone nowhere. Look at the ruckus that Neva­da has made over Yuc­ca Moun­tain. Peo­ple there are not inter­est­ed in the dis­tinc­tion of being the nation’s per­ma­nent home for radioac­tive waste.

Here in Wash­ing­ton, we’ve got enough trou­ble on our hands try­ing to clean up Han­ford, the most pol­lut­ed place in the coun­try. We the tax­pay­ers are spend­ing huge amounts of mon­ey try­ing to con­tain an eco­log­i­cal catastrophe.

Ear­ly in Han­ford’s his­to­ry, radioac­tive waste was dumped direct­ly into the ground, with no thought giv­en to the envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences. This wan­ton care­less­ness was even­tu­al­ly replaced by more informed indif­fer­ence, and lat­er, denial. The Depart­ment of Ener­gy has spent more time down­play­ing, dither­ing and pro­cras­ti­nat­ing than it has spent deal­ing with the prob­lem. If you know any­thing about Han­ford’s recent his­to­ry, then you know exact­ly what I’m talk­ing about. If you don’t, I sug­gest read­ing the following:

• Radioac­tive waste from Han­ford is seep­ing toward the Colum­bia (High Coun­try News, Sep­tem­ber 1st, 1997)
• Han­ford gets dead­lines to fix under­ground con­t­a­m­i­na­tion (Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer, Sep­tem­ber 8th, 2009)
• Big cleanup ques­tions still loom at Han­ford (Seat­tle Times, Jan­u­ary 22nd, 2011)

Here’s a ques­tion not many peo­ple seem to have giv­en much thought to: What hap­pens if a big earth­quake strikes the Pacif­ic North­west and caus­es leaky old tanks to burst at Han­ford? Let’s not for­get that the Unit­ed States abuts the Ring of Fire, just as Japan does. Wash­ing­ton is Earth­quake Coun­try. So are Ore­gon, Cal­i­for­nia, Alas­ka, and Hawaii — the oth­er Pacif­ic states.

Build­ing nuclear pow­er plants any­where is a bad idea. Build­ing nuclear pow­er plants in regions that are seis­mi­cal­ly active is an even worse idea. Japan has griev­ous­ly erred by con­tin­u­ing to con­struct new reac­tors rather than plac­ing a greater empha­sis on con­ver­sa­tion and renew­able ener­gy sources. They should have known bet­ter, giv­en how fre­quent­ly they’re hit by earthquakes.

We in Wash­ing­ton were on the verge of copy­ing them, and might have done so were it not for the spec­tac­u­lar fail­ure of the Wash­ing­ton Pub­lic Pow­er Sup­ply Sys­tem, bet­ter known as WPPSS, or “Whoops!”

In the 1970s, WPPSS planned to build a num­ber of new reac­tors at Han­ford and at Sat­sop in Grays Har­bor Coun­ty to meet an antic­i­pat­ed increase in demand for elec­tric­i­ty. Sev­er­al years after their plans (which were based on erro­neous assump­tions) were set into motion, it became evi­dent that WPPSS offi­cials did­n’t have the expe­ri­ence or the exper­tise to deliv­er what they had been promising.

Costs were spi­ral­ing out of con­trol, con­struc­tion on the pro­posed plants had been plagued by delays, and mis­man­age­ment result­ed in sub­stan­dard workmanship.

In 1981, NPI’s Steve Zemke act­ed to pro­tect the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton by orga­niz­ing the Don’t Bank­rupt Wash­ing­ton cam­paign. Don’t Bank­rupt Wash­ing­ton suc­cess­ful­ly qual­i­fied an ini­tia­tive to the bal­lot that pro­posed requir­ing a pub­lic vote pri­or to the issuance of bonds for con­struc­tion of major pub­lic ener­gy projects. The ini­tia­tive was over­whelm­ing­ly approved by 58% of the electorate.

Courts ruled that I‑394 did­n’t apply to WPPSS’ exist­ing con­tracts, but I‑394 did help bring about an end to its nuclear ambitions.

Only one reac­tor out of five was ever com­plet­ed: Reac­tor No. 2, which is today known as the Colum­bia Gen­er­at­ing Sta­tion at Hanford.

Since the fail­ure of WPPSS, there have been no seri­ous pro­pos­als to build new reac­tors any­where in Wash­ing­ton. Nor will there be in the future.

The Sendai megaquake has illus­trat­ed the fol­ly of rely­ing on nuclear pow­er for ener­gy. Mul­ti­ple reac­tors in Japan have mor­phed from assets into lia­bil­i­ties in a mat­ter of hours. At this point, the most the oper­a­tors can achieve is to min­i­mize fur­ther explo­sions and emis­sions. The desta­bi­lized plants are basi­cal­ly totaled.

The debate on the wis­dom of nuclear pow­er needs to be over. It’s time for us to turn our atten­tion to devel­op­ing tru­ly renew­able sources of ener­gy, and reduc­ing demand through con­ser­va­tion. We have enough radioac­tive sludge to deal with as it is. The last thing we should be doing is cre­at­ing even more tox­ic waste.