What would spark the next Fukushima?

The gung-ho nuclear industry is in deep shock. Just as it and its
cheerleader, the International Atomic Energy Agency, were preparing to
mark next month's 25th anniversary of the Chernobylaccident with a
series of self-congratulatory statements about the dawning of a safe
age of clean atomic power, a series ofcatastrophic but entirely
avoidable accidents take place in not one but three reactors in oneof
the richest countries of the world. Fukushima is not a rottingold
power plant in a failed state manned by half-trained kids, but
supposedly one of the safest stations in one of the most
safety-conscious countries with the best engineers and technologists
in the world.
Chernobyl blew up not because the reactor malfunctioned but because an
ill-judged experiment to see how long safety equipment would function
during shutdown went too far. So, too, in Japan, it was not the
nuclear bits of the station that went wrong but the
conventionaltechnology. The pumps did not work because the power
supply went down and the back-up support was not there because no one
had thought what happened was possible.
Even though Japan had been warned many times that possiblythe most
dangerous place in the world to site a nuclear power station was on
its coast, no one had taken into account the double-whammy effect of a
tsunami and an earthquake on conventional technology. It's easyto be
wise after the event, but the inquest will surely show that the
accident was not caused by an unpredictable natural disaster,but by a
series of highly predictable bad calls by human regulators.
The question now is whether the industry can be trusted anywhere. If
this industry were a company, its shareholders would have deserted it
years ago. In justone generation it has killed, wounded or blighted
the lives of many millions of people and laid waste to millions of
square miles of land. In that time it has been subsidized to the tune
of trillions of dollars and it will cost hundreds of billions more to
clean up and store the messes it has caused and the waste it has
created. It has had three catastrophic failures now in 25 years and
dozens more close shaves. Its workings have been marked around the
world by mendacity, cover-ups, secrecy and financial incompetence.
Sadly, the future looks worse. Theworld has a generation of reactors
coming to the end of their days and politicians putting intense
pressure on regulators toextend their use well beyond their design
lives. We are planning to double worldwide electricity supply from
nuclear power in the next 20 years, but we have nowhere near enough
experienced engineers to run the ever-bigger stations. We have private
companies peddling new designs that are said to be safer but which are
still not proven, and we have 10 new countries planning to move into
civil nuclear power in the next five years.
It gets worse. More than 100 of the world's reactors are already sited
in areas of high seismic activity and many of 350 new stations planned
for the highly volatile Pacific rim where earthquakes, tsunamis and
other natural hazards are certain to happen. We still have not
workedout how to store waste and, we now know that we cannot protect
stations from all eventualities.
Next time the disaster may have nothing to do with an earthquake or a
tsunami, but be because of climate change, terrorism, a fatal error in
an anonymous engineering works, proliferation of plutonium or a
deranged plant manager. If therewere no alternatives than employing
nuclear power to lightup a bulb or to reduce carbon emissions then the
industry and governments might be forgiven. But when the stakes are so
high, the scale is so big and there are 100 other safer ways, it seems
sheer folly to go on in this way.
PHOTO CAPTION
The No.3 nuclear reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant isseen
burning after a blast following an earthquake and tsunami in this
handout satellite image taken March 14, 2011.
Source: Guardian.co.uk