Energy Addicts Are Shaking

Explosions in one containment structure and melting down in another reactor are the current earthquake-damage elements of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant (above left, a 1975 aerial view) located about 160 miles north of Tokyo. The St. Louis Beacon (March 12^th) reminds us of exactly how vulnerable that plant remains: “As for the aging nuclear power plant itself, [Ken] Bergeron [a physicist who formerly worked on simulating nuclear reactor accidents at Sandia National Laboratories] said the containment structure at the plant is certainly stronger than that of Chernobyl but a lot less strong than at Three Mile Island’ (TMI) – the nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania that suffered a partial nuclear meltdown in 1979, leading to major changes in U.S. nuclear power polic y.’ [Emphasis added] With entire towns wiped out and a death toll likely to top 10,000, the long term ramifications of nuclear power still remain background issues to this horrific devastation. But I suspect it was a background issue in Japan as well… until March 11^th.

The names Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and now, Fukushima Daiichi are part of a lengthening list of failed nuclear power plants, a list that would have been long with a single name. And of America’s 54 nuclear power stations (and 36 research reactors), way too many are located near vulnerable fault lines. At a time where energy costs are soaring, our ability to shut down a number of these mega-billion dollar facilities appears to be limited… and there are even pressures to build and deploy more of these behemoths to avert financial disaster as fossil fuels are rapidly out-pricing the market’s ability to pay, alternative sources of energy are still lagging behind in terms of large-scale practicality.

Nuclear plants aren’t the only high “earthquake risk” generating stations; some forms of energy extract appear to cause quakes. A 2006 3.4 (Richter Scale) quake appears to have been triggered by a geothermal power plant in Basel, Switzerland (what exactly happens when you release all that pent up heat and steam underground?!), leading to a permanent shutdown of the facility. This “failure” resulted in the abandonment of a number of such projects, including one in Northern California.

In California, there are four nuclear power plants (Diablo Canyon and San Onofre, center and right above) plus another vulnerable facility in Washington State. West Coast risks are obvious, but even New York City, the entire state of Utah and the middle of the United States face risks with fault lines that, sooner or later, generate quakes. That latter region bears some greater attention, according to preparednesspro.com: “Few citizens are fully aware of the New Madrid fault line affecting Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee and Mississippi. The New Madrid fault even affects some parts of Iowa and Arkansas. In 1811, a succession of 4 full strength earthquakes occurred, followed by horrific aftershocks. As a result of the earthquake, huge fissures opened in the earth and spewed ‘volcanoes’ of silt and bedrock all over the area as well. Today, this same fault line has the potential to create an 8.0 seismic sized earthquake in the next 5 to 10 years which would seriously affect the heartland of America.” And there are nuclear power plants in this region as well. We make decisions based on current needs and realities, often swallowing hard and ignoring obvious longer-term risks. Perhaps not killing or injuring future generations needs to be a bigger factor in our short-term solutions.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am still having difficulty actually picturing the pain, suffering and massive loss of life in this Japanese natural disaster.