Fukushima nuclear crisis: Time to end the 'business as usual' syndrome

Fukushima is just one among many similar disasters waiting to happen worldwide; governments and regulators have systematically downplayed the risks and hidden the real costs of nuclear power. There is no place for nuclear in a truly green energy portfolio, and there is a lot we can do to put the nuclear genie back into the bottle, says Dr Mae-Wan Ho.

Nuclear safety in the spotlight

THE Fukushima disaster dominated a recent meeting in Vienna of signatories to the Convention on Nuclear Safety that was supposed to prevent a repeat of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

'I know you will agree with me that the crisis at Fukushima Daiichi has enormous implications for nuclear power and confronts all of us with a major challenge,' Yukiya Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the participants. 'We cannot take a "business as usual" approach.'

It has been clear for some time now that the 'business as usual' approach is inadequate. A detailed assessment of nuclear accidents and malfunction carried out by Gordon Thompson of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology revealed a litany of design faults in nuclear reactors that fail to protect the public adequately against accidents and malfunction due to human error, mechanical hitches, or external events such as tornadoes and earthquakes. In particular, there is no protection against malevolent or terrorist attacks. This applies to both existing nuclear reactors and 'Generation III' reactors in the pipeline or under construction. So in many ways, Fukushima was a disaster waiting to happen. But it is by no means alone.

In particular, Thompson condemned the calculation of risk in risk assessment (which applies to everything from nuclear power to genetically modified organisms), in which risk = hazard x probability. However big the hazard, it can be reduced to a very small acceptable risk if the probability is close to zero - such as a magnitude 9 earthquake followed by a giant tsunami.

Nuclear rethink

The Fukushima disaster has triggered a re-evaluation of nuclear energy programmes worldwide. Leak of water from the Canadian Pickering Nuclear Generating Station into Lake Ontario, five days after Fukushima, caused many Canadians to question the safety of nuclear power plants. In the United States, a New York Times editorial called for Americans to 'closely study' their own plans for coping with natural disasters. Mark Hibbs, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment's Nuclear Policy Program, said Fukushima was 'a wake-up call for anyone who believed that, after 50 years of nuclear power in this world, we have figured it out and can go back to business as usual.' Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced a freeze on all nuclear power development projects, including design of a nuclear power plant contracted with Russia. China froze nuclear plant approvals on 16 March.

The US Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) reported 14 near-misses at US nuclear plants in the past year alone. The serious lapses included engineers accidentally switching off safety systems, electrical circuits failing and workers not knowing how to activate the system to summon emergency services. The UCS report released on 18 March came as President Barack Obama ordered a comprehensive review of the US' 104 active nuclear power plants. The report says the review is much needed, as the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a mixed safety record, catching some problems but overlooking others, or allowing them to be neglected.

UK Energy Secretary Chris Huhne said Britain may back away from nuclear energy because of safety fears and a potential rise in costs after the Fukushima disaster.

Countries around the world are reviewing their nuclear options. German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a three-month review of plans to continue operating her country's 17 nuclear power plants. Switzerland suspended the approval process for three nuclear power plants, so safety standards can be reconsidered. And India has ordered safety inspections for all of its nuclear plants. Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard said her country has plenty of alternative sources of energy and does not need nuclear power.

The Japanese government has criticised Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the owner of the Fukushima plant, for its handling of the nuclear disaster, including giving confusing radiation readings, and being slow to admit the seriousness of the situation and in its response. Many Japanese people no longer trust the company.

The WikiLeaks website released recent US embassy cables expressing unease over all the different nuclear power companies operating in Japan, of which TEPCO is the biggest. Taro Kono, a member of the Japanese parliament, told US diplomats that these firms were 'hiding the costs and safety problems associated with nuclear energy'. That is not news. A report several years ago found that TEPCO falsified nuclear safety data at least 200 times between 2000 and 2007.

The Japanese government has attempted to downplay the health hazard from the radiation leaks, as have governments and regulators worldwide. They have also been at pains to minimise the deaths from past nuclear disasters. The official number of deaths attributed to Chernobyl by the IAEA is 4,000. But senior Russian scientists documented deaths and illnesses at least 100 times more.

Fukushima the last nail in the coffin?

Fukushima should be the last nail in the coffin for the nuclear industry, as so much damning evidence has emerged indicating that it is extremely uneconomical and unsafe as well as highly unsustainable. Nuclear is not a renewable energy. In terms of savings in carbon emissions and energy, it is worse than a gas-fired electricity generating plant when available uranium ore falls below 0.02%, as it would in decades, just simply keeping up with existing nuclear facilities.

There are other repercussions.

Japan's nuclear disaster is toxic, not just for the environment - in the huge amounts of radioactive wastes spewed out into the atmosphere, deposited on land, leaked, and indeed flushed out into the sea - it is also toxic for TEPCO. The UK's Guardian newspaper reports the company facing a financial meltdown while its engineers are struggling to bring the nuclear meltdown under control. TEPCO's share price plummeted by 18% on 4 April to a 60-year low; the Japanese are losing faith in their nuclear industry.

TEPCO faces hefty costs for replacement power, construction of new generation capacity in place of damaged plants, and decommissioning at least four and possibly all six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. It is also liable for compensation to local businesses and residents affected by the radiation leaks, and lawsuits are likely. An analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimated compensation charges of over œ74 billion if the crisis continues for more than two years.

TEPCO is being propped up by the Bank of Japan and other big Japanese banks, and three major financial institutions are lending 1.9 trillion yen to deal with the crisis. Nevertheless, TEPCO's credit rating has been downgraded by Moody's and Standard & Poor's. Moody's said: 'TEPCO will remain highly leveraged and unprofitable for an extended period of time and will face substantial risk regarding nuclear liability.'

TEPCO's financing is so intricately bound up with the big banks that its demise will definitely send shivers throughout the world's financial markets already knee-deep in national debts and recession.

There is talk of nationalisation to prevent loss of confidence in the world markets.

Financial markets have already responded with sharp falls. The stock prices of many energy companies reliant on nuclear sources dropped, while the one silver lining in this unmitigated disaster is that renewable energy companies rose in value dramatically by 15 to 20%. It reaffirms the conclusions of a report by the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) and Third World Network, Green Energies: 100% Renewables by 2050, that a wide variety of affordable and truly green energies - renewable, environmentally friendly, healthy, safe, non-polluting and sustainable - are already available for all nations to become energy self-sufficient and 100% renewable within decades. Policies and legisation that promote innovations and internal markets for decentralised, distributed small to micro-generation are the key.

ISIS has explicitly ruled out the nuclear option, with a recommendation that existing nuclear power stations should be decommissioned at the end of their designated lifetimes. Uranium mining should cease and clean-up should begin. At the same time, weapons-grade uranium should be consumed in existing reactors in accordance with nuclear disarmament. In addition, major public investment should be directed towards making safe toxic and radioactive nuclear wastes by means of low-energy nuclear transmutation1, a new scientific development that is still being ignored by the mainstream. There is hope for putting the nuclear genie back into the bottle.                                  

Dr Mae-Wan Ho is Director and co-founder of the UK-based Institute of Science in Society (ISIS). The above is extracted from an article which appeared on the ISIS website (www.i-sis.org.uk).

Endnote

1.    Ho MW, Cherry B, Burcher S and Saunders PT. Green Emergies: 100% Renewables by 2050, ISIS/TWN, London/Penang, 2009, Chapter 35. See also Ho MW. 'Transmutation, the alchemist dream come true', Science in Society, 36, 2007; and Larsen L. 'LENRs for nuclear waste disposal', Science in Society, 41, 2009.

*Third World Resurgence No. 248, April 2011, pp 18-19