The ongoing crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan should cause us to question the wisdom of using nuclear technology to generate electricity. It is my belief that the potential consequences that would attend a full reactor meltdown are simply too devastating to risk.
While the chemical instability and uncontrolled conditions at the Fukushima plant are still fresh in our minds, we ought to consider how close both the reactors and the stored fuel rods came to a full meltdown, and how destructive would have been the radiation release that would have accompanied that failure.
Now is the time to consider the unthinkable and state the unspeakable.
Tokyo is only 140 miles south of the Fukushima plant. There are 52 million people residing in the central city and its immediate suburbs. There are hundreds of thousands more living between Fukushima and Tokyo.
If the worst were to happen, if two or more reactors were to explode, melt down and breach their containment buildings; if the fuel rod pools then overheated; and if the winds (and rain) were blowing from the plant toward Tokyo, the entire city and its metropolitan region could be exposed to harmful levels of radiation.
At a minimum, Tokyo residents might be asked to stay indoors for weeks, as various types of unhealthy radioactive isotopes (iodine-131 and cesium-137) would be prevalent. The potential long-term damage to the city is impossible to predict.
During the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, the explosion and subsequent fires burned for 10 days, and the emitted radiation totaled an amount roughly 10 times that released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II.
At Chernobyl today, 25 years after the accident, approximately 90 communities within the most contaminated, 20-mile-radius zone surrounding the plant, remain uninhabitable.
Already today in Japan, 200,000 people have been evacuated from a 12-mile-radius zone surrounding Fukushima, and last Saturday the zone was extended to a radius of 19 miles. Water supplies, soils, dairy products and certain vegetables are being contaminated by radioactive fallout. Officials have announced that Tokyo's tap water is no longer safe for infants to drink.
Here in the United States, many of the 104 commercial reactors — which generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity — are located dangerously close to population centers. Incredibly, the Indian Point plant in New York state is only 38 miles from New York City.
And most of our nuclear plants keep significant amounts of spent uranium fuel rods stored in cooling ponds at their sites. These rods are hazardous, radioactive waste, and they are yet another major problem and risk in utilizing nuclear technology.
In 60 years, we have been unable to solve the problem of nuclear waste disposal. The waste remains dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, and there simply is no location on this planet likely to have that duration of geological stability.
The U.S. alone has created 72,000 tons of this waste, and every year another 2,200 tons of it accumulate, much of which is stored outside of the heavy "containment" buildings.
It is time for us to conclude that nuclear power plants are inherently too dangerous a technology to rely on. Some environmentalists have embraced nuclear power out of desperation over the lack of progress in addressing climate change and rising carbon dioxide emissions. But a better response — though it is proving quite difficult — would be to reduce our use of fossil fuels. Yes, we'd be squeezing ourselves simultaneously from every direction as we phase out nukes, reduce coal and petroleum consumption, and lower our appetites generally for products and resources. But that's because we've procrastinated so long already. We've known for decades now that living on Earth is akin to performing an experiment. As we recombine and add new proportions of chemicals to the air, soil and water, how can we imagine that there won't be consequences?
Finally, given the obvious, unresolved global tensions involving population, resources, economic growth and capitalism's inherent contradictions, the future 15, 20 or 30 years out may be tumultuous, unhealthy and full of uncertainties. It is easy to imagine that power interruptions, resource shortages and infrastructure vulnerabilities could become large and common problems within our lifetimes.
The critical operational thresholds required inside a nuclear plant may not be sustainable in an unpredictable world. They may barely be regained in an intact and disciplined Japan today.
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Brian T. Watson of Swampscott is a regular Salem News columnist. Contact him at watson@nii.net.
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