#17: Unsustainable Nuclear Power Plants (PART 1)

【Every 12 Years】
This past August, Hurricane Harvey pounded Houston, Texas, leaving utter devastation behind. At a chemical plant northeast of Houston in Crosby, a specialty chemical manufacturer called Arkema produces organic peroxides, which are used in making plastic products. Organic peroxides require refrigeration especially during the summer months or they become unstable, start to decompose as they warm, and create more heat quickly leading to a rapid, explosive reaction. So, at this Crosby plant, these chemicals are refrigerated with additional backup generators designed to keep refrigeration units operating in case the cooling system shuts down.
 
Yet, Harvey brought the highest total precipitation on record in the United States history, cutting off power and flooding all backup generators. Arkema warned that the failed cooling system will cause the chemicals to destabilize and, in a short time, explode. The local authorities issued a mandatory evacuation order in anticipation of imminent fire and explosion.
 
A series of explosions shook the chemical plant that sent black plumes of smoke in the air, spewing out respiratory irritants as well as toxic gasses and carcinogens. Some local residents tried to get around the mandatory evacuation order to get back home, only to be met by road blocks and police in protective gear and gas masks. Arkema denies responsibility saying they couldn’t have predicted the unprecedented flooding.
 
Such string of events reminds us of Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster of March 2011. Unprecedented natural disaster completely cut off power. Despite clear knowledge of an imminent explosion, we had no means to stop it. Mandatory evacuation order was issued, blocking the residents from getting back home. Everybody denied responsibility, asserting that the unprecedented disaster was unpredictable. Residents’ lives were instantly subjected to life or death situation, and their livelihood hijacked.
 
This Arkema incident and Fukushima disaster. Organic peroxide and radioactive nuclear fuel explain all the differences in severity. Nonetheless, Harvey has warned us not only earthquakes and tsunamis, but also unprecedented hurricanes, rains and floods can bring about a nuclear catastrophe.
 
Living through the inconceivable sorrows of Fukushima nuclear disaster and Harvey’s warning, all governments and citizens alike can no longer be excused by saying, “We couldn’t have predicted the unprecedented disaster.” We’ve already learned from Fukushima nuclear disaster to “plan” for the “unpredictable” including volcanic eruptions and terrorist attacks. As we grow wiser in our nuclear energy policy, it’s already quite clear that nuclear power plants are unsustainable.
 
The second reason for the unsustainability of nuclear power plants is the daily mass production of extremely contaminated water polluted with dangerously high level of radioactive materials. In August 2013, the Japanese government disclosed that 300 tons of such extremely contaminated radioactive water were leaking out into the sea, every single day. The government admitted they couldn’t determine exactly when the leakage began, but conceivably ever since the explosion in March 2011.
 
This is a frightening fact not only for the people of Japan and the world whose seafood consumption is high, but also for our marine life as well as animals such as birds who sample seafood. It takes 300 years for cesium and 240 thousand years for plutonium to weaken to a biologically safe level. In the meantime, these deadly radioactive materials will cross the oceans and carry on the dangerous level of contamination worldwide.
 
In an attempt to moderate the leakage of extremely contaminated radioactive water, Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant is pumping such radioactive water through a filtering system that lowers the concentration of radioactive materials. Yet, this system can’t bring down the radioactive concentration to a biologically safe level. Today’s science and technology offer no viable solution to a problem of such magnitude.
 
An enormous amount of filtered radioactive water is stocked in huge storage tanks on site at the Fukushima plant. As of July 2017, such radioactive water amounted to 780 thousand tons, an equivalent of three thousand 25meter-sized swimming pools. And even today, filtered radioactive water is continuously mass produced, daily.
 
And groundwater continues to flow into the basement of melt-down reactor buildings, mass producing extremely contaminated radioactive water. Most of such radioactive water runs off into the sea or leaches into the soil – eventually likely to make its way to contaminate the groundwater at the source. From the numerous wells dug surrounding these reactor buildings, extremely contaminated radioactive water is pumped out, filtered and stocked, day in and day out – only to moderate what mostly runs off into the environment. Yet, mounting issues are relentless – storage tanks leaking filtered radioactive water, the filtering system leaking extremely contaminated radioactive water, and releasing filtered radioactive water into the sea to free up storage tank capacity enabling even higher level of contaminated radioactive water to be stocked.  
 
Other methods were tested. For example, hoping to block the water flow between the Fukushima plant and the sea, frozen soil wall was created by freezing the ground beneath the melt-down reactor buildings. Despite the high tax payor cost of 35 billion yen (roughly US$312 million), this method is said to have been largely ineffective. Against the dangerously high level of radioactive materials, our science and technology offer no better alternative than wells, pumps and filters.
 
“Nuclear power plants are safe. Probability of an accident is one in a million years.” Advocates of nuclear energy policy repeated such sales pitch and constructed nearly 600 nuclear power plants worldwide.
 
Yet, in the 63 years of nuclear power plant history since the first switch was flipped on in 1954, we count 5 accidents involving nuclear meltdown at or above INES level 5 severity – 1957 Windscale (Great Britain, 5), 1969 Lucens (Switzerland, 5), 1979 Three Mile Island (US, 5), 1986 Chernobyl (USSR, 7), and 2011 Fukushima (Japan, 7). (International Nuclear Event Scale – INES is an international severity scale for nuclear accidents, with Level 7 indicating the most severe). This averages one accident every 12 years, an egregiously high probability especially compared to the sales pitch repeated by the nuclear advocates.
 
This is the reality. We must look at this truth without flinching – that we’re risking another Fukushima catastrophe every 12 years.
 
With only one Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster, we’ve delivered an inconceivable blow to the lives and environment worldwide. When we earnestly face this reality and our responsibility, it’s quite obvious that nuclear power plants are, indeed, unsustainable.

Read Next: Unsustainable Nuclear Power Plants (2)【True Cost】
 
Complete Series: Unsustainable Nuclear Power Plants (1)～(4)
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