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After 25 years Chernobyl remains a devastated, lethal ruin. (Pripyat Hospital corridor.)
By Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
JAPAN’S NUCLEAR INDUSTRY, which was never favored by majorities of the Japanese people, has been cracked, drowned and discredited by the earthquake and tsunami. Many U.S. reactors share the same design flaws and inherent dangers, yet “the United States government still has no real means of responding to disaster.” President Obama is America’s biggest booster of nuclear power – as well as the oxymoron, “clean coal.”
“The Obama administration is still pursuing increased nuclear energy capability and dismissing concerns about safety.”
There is an expression which was especially apt this past week. “Nature bats last.“ Natural disasters are a reminder of human impotence when volcanoes erupt, hurricanes make landfall, and the earth’s plates move and create earthquakes. We cannot control nature, but we can and should recognize how human actions can make these crises far worse than they would be otherwise. The construction of supposedly safe nuclear reactors in Japan is just the latest example of suffering caused by greed and political expediency.
Pripyat (the town founded to house Chernobyl operators and their families) today is an abandoned city in the Zone of Alienation in northern Ukraine near the border with Belarus, about 100 km from Kiev. The Zone of Alienation is the 30km-radius around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Pripyat and Chernobyl are 15 km apart.
The town's playground Ferris Wheel. The disaster struck a couple weeks before its scheduled inauguration.
If anything good emerges from the disaster in Japan it should be the final destruction of nuclear power. The earthquake-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi plant exploded after technicians were unable to stabilize and cool its core. Six additional reactors at two different plants were in danger of reaching similar conditions and are said to be in various states of “partial meltdown.” It is astonishing that a country known for centuries of deadly seismic activity has invested so heavily in nuclear energy. Japanese government officials continued to promote nuclear power and minimize its risks [5] even when it was clear that their nation was always in very grave danger.
“It is astonishing that a country known for centuries of deadly seismic activity has invested so heavily in nuclear energy.”
The United States is equally guilty of taking unnecessary chances with nuclear power. Despite the daily reports of a worsening situation, the Obama administration is still pursuing increased nuclear energy capability and dismissing concerns about safety.
If Japan, a nation more advanced in its concern for its citizens, is facing a nuclear catastrophe, the nation unable to protect one of its major cities from hurricane Katrina surely has no business following in its footsteps.
The salient points about the government response to hurricane Katrina were lost in a corporate media muddle focused on sensational images of tragedy. The United States government still has no real means of responding to disaster. The Federal Emergency Management Administration is no more reliable now than it was in the bad old days of Bush. When we see images of Japan, we ought to put ourselves in those pictures.
When Haiti was devastated by an earthquake its poverty and lack of development were assumed to be the reasons for great suffering. Yet even in industrial Japan, thousands of people are now without food, water or electricity. Nature doesn’t just bat last, but it trumps the best of intentions and capabilities.
“California, the American state most subject to earthquakes, has nuclear reactors that are even less secure and more vulnerable to damage than those in Japan.”
America will be in a worse state than Japan should such a disaster strike here. California, the American state most subject to earthquakes, has nuclear reactors that are even less secure and more vulnerable to damage than those in Japan.
The vague assurances coming from the Japanese and American government officials should be rejected out of hand. Already 17 American service members assisting in the rescue efforts have been exposed [6] to what we are told are “low” levels of radiation. Words like “low” and “partial” cannot be accepted at face value. An assumption that dangers are understated is the best response to these reports.
Pripyat today, Lenin Square. Some of the decay is radiation and time, some manmade.
Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. [7] Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgendaReport.com.
[8]
• Japan nuclear power
Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-japan%E2%80%99s-katrina
Links:
[1] http://blackagendareport.com/category/asia-europe-and-middle-east/japan
[2] http://blackagendareport.com/category/us-politics/nuclear-power
[3] http://blackagendareport.com/sites/www.blackagendareport.com/files/exploding-japanese_nuclear_plant.jpg
[4] http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/another-corporate-bailout-obama-goes-nuclear
[5] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/12/japan-ministers-ignored-warnings-nuclear
[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/14military.html?hp
[7] http://freedomrider.blogspot.com/
[8] http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblackagendareport.com%2Fcontent%2Ffreedom-rider-japan%25E2%2580%2599s-katrina&linkname=Freedom%20Rider%3A%20Japan%E2%80%99s%20Katrina
BONUS FEATURE
The Unresolved Safety Problems with American Reactors Pose Huge Threats
By Lorna Salzman
The Great Earthquake at New Madrid. A nineteenth-century woodcut from Devens' Our First Century (1877)
In 1972 the Union of Concerned Scientists, representing several groups concerned about nuclear reactor safety, participated in hearings before the Atomic Energy Commission regarding the efficacy of the Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS), the major system that is intended to prevent a Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA) which can lead to a meltdown of the nuclear fuel. With the exception of Friends of the Earth, no one paid attention to these hearings or the UCS report and conclusions.
Very briefly, the main concern was (and remains today) the fact that no one is able to identify all possible causes of a LOCA or of initiating events or failures that might lead to it. In other words, loss of the ECCS due to a power failure, as happened in Japan, is simply one of many possible scenarios.
But the AEC knew that if the witnesses were allowed to introduce or raise questions about alternate scenarios, this would impede and possibly prevent the construction and operation of all nuclear power plants.
So the AEC banned any discussion of possible events or failures that could cause a LOCA. These would include earthquakes more severe than the reactor was designed to withstand (as is the case in Japan), sabotage or terrorism.
Now, we face in this country 104 reactors with cooling systems that are vulnerable to failure from various causes. Some reactors like Indian Point 25 miles north of NYC are actually located on an earthquake fault, as are two in California, a state prone to earthquakes far more than NYC. Severe earthquakes have also taken place in the American midwest, notably New Madrid, Missouri, where a destructive earthquake took place in 1811.
1812 New Madrid earthquake
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
New Madrid fault and Earthquake prone region considered at high risk today.
The 1811-1812 New Madrid Earthquakes (pronounced /nuː ˈmædrɨd/) were an intense intraplate earthquake series beginning with an initial pair of very large earthquakes on December 16, 1811. These earthquakes remain the most powerful earthquakes ever to hit the eastern United States.[1] These events, as well as the seismic zone of their occurrence, were named for the Mississippi River town of New Madrid,Louisiana Territory, now Missouri.
There are estimates that the earthquakes were felt strongly over roughly 130,000 square kilometers (50,000 square miles), and moderately across nearly 3 million square kilometers (1 million square miles). The historic 1906 San Francisco earthquake, by comparison, was felt moderately over roughly 16,000 square kilometers (6,000 square miles).
Earthquakes
▪ December 16, 1811, 0815 UTC (2:15 a.m.); (M ~7.2 – 8.1[2]) epicenter in northeast Arkansas. It caused only slight damage to man-made structures, mainly because of the sparse population in the epicentral area. The future location of Memphis, Tennessee experienced level IX shaking on the Mercalli intensity scale. A seismic seiche propagated upriver and Little Prairie was heavily damaged by soil liquefaction[3]
▪ December 16, 1811, 1415 UTC (8:15 a.m.); (M ~7.2–8.1) epicenter in northeast Arkansas. This shock followed the first earthquake by six hours and was similar in intensity.[2]
▪ January 23, 1812, 1500 UTC (9 a.m.); (M ~7.0–7.8[2]) epicenter in the Missouri Bootheel. The meizoseismal area was characterized by general ground warping, ejections, fissuring, severe landslides, and caving of stream banks. Johnson and Schweig attributed this earthquake to a rupture on the New Madrid North Fault. This may have placed strain on the Reelfoot Fault.[3]
▪ February 7, 1812, 0945 UTC (4:45 a.m.); (M ~7.4–8.0[2]) epicenter near New Madrid, Missouri. New Madrid was destroyed. At St. Louis, Missouri, many houses were severely damaged, and their chimneys were toppled. This shock was definitively attributed to the Reelfoot Fault by Johnston and Schweig. Uplift along a segment of this reverse fault created temporary waterfalls on the Mississippi at Kentucky Bend, created waves that propagated upstream, and caused the formation of Reelfoot Lake by obstructing streams in Lake County, Tennessee.[3]
Susan Hough, a seismologist of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), has recently estimated the earthquakes’ magnitudes as “right around magnitude 7. Possibly a bit below, possibly a bit above, but not as big as 7.5.”[4]
Effects
Some sections of the Mississippi River appeared to run backward for a short time.[3] Sand blows were common throughout the area, and can still be seen from the air in cultivated fields. The shockwaves propagated efficiently through midwestern bedrock. Residents as far away as Pittsburgh and Norfolk were awakened by intense shaking.[5] Church bells were reported to ring as far as Boston, Massachusetts and York, Ontario (now Toronto), and sidewalks were reported to have been cracked and broken in Washington, D.C.[6] There were also reports of toppled chimneys in Maine.[citation needed]
Eliza Bryan[7] in New Madrid, Territory of Missouri, wrote the following eyewitness account in March, 1812.
On the 16th of December, 1811, about two o’clock, a.m., we were visited by a violent shock of an earthquake, accompanied by a very awful noise resembling loud but distant thunder, but more hoarse and vibrating, which was followed in a few minutes by the complete saturation of the atmosphere, with sulphurious vapor, causing total darkness. The screams of the affrighted inhabitants running to and fro, not knowing where to go, or what to do — the cries of the fowls and beasts of every species — the cracking of trees falling, and the roaring of the Mississippi — the current of which was retrograde for a few minutes, owing as is supposed, to an irruption in its bed — formed a scene truly horrible.
The Shaker diarist Samuel Swan McClelland described the effects of the earthquake on the Shaker settlement at West Union (Busro), Indiana, where the earthquakes contributed to the temporary abandonment of the westernmost Shaker community.[8]
It is quite clear that no reactors in the world have been designed or built to accommodate worst case accidents, because the costs involved would be prohibitive and because the required evacuation zone would far exceed what the Japanese AND the US NRC say it should be. With ten million people living 25 miles south of Indian Point – not to mention millions to the northeast and on Long Island – evacuation out to the required zone is IMPOSSIBLE.
Hence it is vital to the survival of the industry to downplay the likelihood of an accident AS WELL AS its consequences. In other words, health and safety standards are imposed AFTER the reactor is designed so that they only fit (presumably) conditions the reactor is supposed to handle. Ass backwards, that is. You can be sure, therefore, that any modelling done now to supposedly improve safety standards will NOT exceed the design-basis accidents or postulate new as-yet-undescribed causes of accidents or suggest more widespread radioactive contamination. In fact the NRC director recently stated clearly that design=basis accidents were based on past knowledge of the conditions at a particular site. Obviously deviation in the future is unknowable.Japan’s reactors were designed to withstand a 7 magnitude quake; this one was 9 on the Richter scale.
The NRC will resist the re-opening of hearings on the capability of operating reactors to meet these higher non-design basis standards. It will stand behind its infamous WASH-1400 report, the Rasmussen report, about the unlikelihood of a severe nuclear accident occurring. It will stand behind the ECCS and its limited list of possible causes of LOCAs.
It will also, along with politicians and government, stand behind the claim that we will need more energy in the future of a kind that does not add to global warming. It is likely to approve the huge loan guarantees for reactors that Obama wants. And it is unlikely to change or abolish the Price-Anderson Act, which exempts utilities from liability in the case of accidents….the single act that allowed the whole civilian nuclear power program to move ahead.
In the months ahead, the public will, with luck, understand the full range of obstacles that faced nuclear opponents in the 1970s. These will be reinforced because of the Japanese disaster and will therefore necessitate even more intense soothing propaganda. Citizens will therefore need access to impartial sources of information. The media are profoundly ignorant of the technology and thus incapable of asking the searing questions that are needed. The industry will put its own flaks on wide display, claiming we have no alternatives. Congress will dither, dawdle and delay because they only know what the industry and the NRC feed them. The public must make extra efforts to get full accurate information, from groups such as NIRS, Low-Level Radiation Campaign, www.nukefree.org, Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center (Japan), Union of Concerned Scientists, and from numerous books and articles published in the 1970s, such as those by John Gofman and others. I will be happy to provide more book titles for those who want them. (Of special interest are the proceedings of the AEC hearings in which UCS participated (see above) but I am not sure whether copies of this 1972 report are still available).
Lorna Salzman is a lifetime environmental activist.