The nuclear industry is fond of suggesting that the choice humanity is faced with is polluting coal, on the one hand, or “clean” nuclear power, on the other. This “zero sum game” argument has gotten a lot of traction with the press, but it is a fool's choice.
There are so many other approaches available to us, including conservation.
Conservation got a bad name during the Carter presidency because reactionary talking heads successfully cast it in the image of people shivering in the dark, wearing sweaters.
But high fuel prices have recently shown that conservation is a rational choice that consumers can easily make if they see it is in their best interest (i.e., driving less and not blowing their entire paychecks on filling the tank).
Other alternatives to nuclear and coal include energy-efficiency measures, distributed generation technologies, and renewable energy technologies, as well as co-generation (using waste heat to generate additional power), and “combined heat and power” (in which waste heat from the generation of electricity is used to provide heating and cooling of buildings).
All of these technologies are readily available and can be implemented at a fraction of the cost of building new nuclear power plants.
But there is an additional factor we need to consider. However remote the chances might be for a major radiological accident, the fact is that when one happens - and Murphy's Law does apply here - the consequences can be so great that they can more than erase the perceived economic and environmental benefits of nuclear power.
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In the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, its former leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, famously said that the economic impact of the Chernobyl catastrophe far outweighed the benefits of the entire Soviet nuclear industry.
That is a compelling statement, and we are seeing it play out again in Japan, where the damaged reactors at Fukushima have already released about 50 percent as much radiation as was released at Chernobyl.
But Fukushima could be far worse. We are not hearing the full story from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Japanese government.
Unit 3 at Fukushima is fueled by a very toxic radioactive substance called “MOX”, which stands for “mixed oxide.” This innocuous-sounding term refers to the fact that, in addition to enriched uranium, the fuel contains plutonium, the main ingredient of modern nuclear bombs.
This is not to suggest that reactor 3 might explode like a hydrogen bomb. But in a way, it's even worse than that.
If Unit 3 has a meltdown (which has quite likely already happened), and its core emits radioactive material into the environment, plutonium will be unleashed, along with other radioactive toxins.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, plutonium's most notable adverse health effects are cancers in lungs, bones, and liver.
However, an even greater risk lies in the “spent fuel pools,” in which decades' worth of nuclear waste is stored under water.
In boiling water reactors (BWRs) like the ones at Fukushima - including Vermont Yankee - these pools are located about six stories above ground, directly adjacent to the reactor. This proximity facilitates movement of the fuel rods from the reactor core to the pool, a process that has to take place under water to avoid release of high levels of radioactivity.
Since about a third of the fuel in the reactor core has to be replaced every 12 to 18 months, a spent-fuel pool at a 30-year-old reactor will contain about 10 times as much radioactive material as is contained in the reactor core. Even when taken out of the reactor, the spent fuel remains so physically hot that it would catch fire if it were not kept in a pool of circulating cold water.
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The problem at Fukushima and all similar BWRs (there are 23 of them in the US, including Vermont Yankee) is that electric power needs to be maintained at all times to circulate and replenish the water supply in both the spent-fuel pool and the reactor (even when it has been “shut down” by inserting the control rods).
Otherwise, the water can boil away and expose the fuel rods directly to the air, with the possibility that they could overheat and catch fire. There is also a significant danger that the fuel rods themselves could melt or disintegrate, allowing the radioactive products to mass together and go “critical.”
In a worst-case scenario, the resulting superheated mass of nuclear fuel could burn its way through steel and concrete and enter the environment. This is the famous “China Syndrome.”
At Fukushima, all attention was initially focused on the reactors themselves, where loss of water allowed overheating, steam, and a huge release of hydrogen (formed when the zirconium cladding of the fuel rods interacted with the steam).
Massive explosions occurred when the hydrogen spontaneously recombined with oxygen as it was being vented out of the reactor vessel. In addition to blowing the roofs and walls off three of the reactor buildings, there is strong evidence that the explosions caused a breach in at least one of the concrete containment structures (designed to contain radioactive material in the event of a failure of the steel reactor vessel itself).
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As terrifying as that all sounds, the greater danger all along has been that there would be loss of water in the spent fuel pools. This scenario could occur if the concrete walls or floors were damaged, or if the water boiled away over time.
Since there is no cover over the pools, and now no roof over three of the reactor buildings at Fukushima, there is nothing to prevent massive releases of radioactive materials into the environment if the fuel rods in the spent fuel pool become uncovered. Further, since the radioactive decay process continues to emit large amounts of heat, the most significant danger is that the exposed fuel rods could ignite and spew huge amounts of radioactivity over very large areas. Think Chernobyl times ten.
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The lack of information coming out of Japan is really frustrating. And when we do get little tidbits, not only does the information raise more questions than it answers, but virtually every item points to a worsening situation.
For example, we learned on March 25 that the super-radioactive water through which three workers were wading was on the floor of the Turbine Building. Since the building is separate from the reactor building, we have to wonder: How in hell did the thousands of gallons of highly radioactive water get there?
Oh, one more detail. Emergency crews at Fukushima have been dousing the spent fuel pools and the reactors themselves with seawater in a desperate attempt to keep them cool.
On the morning of March 25, we heard that Unit One had 55,000 tons of salt in it, and Units 2 and 3 each had 100,000 tons. That is a proverbial “shit load” of salt! The short-term benefit of cooling overheated fuel rods could now give way to an even greater danger: corrosion, deterioration, and collapse of the fuel rods themselves.
Isn't nuclear power a wonderful thing?!