Energy Addicts Are Shaking

"I pray for the safety of as many people as possible." Emperor Akihito

Explosions in at least one and possibly three containment structures, serious radiation leaks in two reactors (containment covers blown or burned off), fire (firefighters/water-dropping helicopters couldn’t get close because of radiation) and melting down in two or even three reactors 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 emergency pumps were taken out by the quake, the back-up diesel generators were then washed out by the tsunami, the fuel truck was low, and the back-up batteries provided on 4 hours of power… when the pump valves failed as well. This older plant doesn’t have the water tank suspended over the reactor core (the last-stage, “use gravity” when all else fails) that is more typical in more modern facilities… and everyone builds those reactors for damage in the 90% (plus or minus) range and not for the “worst case scenario.” Aftershocks – big ones – continue to roll through as plant workers were momentarily withdrawn from the scene on Tuesday.

That radiation will be leaking for months (and may reach full meltdown status before too long), the mandatory evacuation radius is expanding, the remaining water around several rods is boiling away, 70% of those rods are probably damaged, experts are battling to contain additional meltdowns or iodine pills are being distributed to regional residents are only evidence of the further devastation that looms above. From a threat level, we are well past the Three Mile Island threshold and zooming towards and probably past the Chernobyl meltdown, the latter which disaster rendered the area around the plant site uninhabitable for thousands and thousands of years, and the Japanese economy, already in a sustained down-swing, seemed destined to shudder to an even lower level for a long time.

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 policy.’ [Emphasis added] With entire towns wiped out by what is now called a 9.0 quake (powerful enough to move Japan 12 feet closer to the U.S.) and a death toll likely to top a whole lot over 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 March 15^th New York Times reports about one U.S. study that describes the potential damage from exposed and uncooled fueling rods – the situation that has occurred is and expanding at Fukushima Daiichi: “ ‘I’m still hopeful that they can contain all this,’ Thomas B. Cochran, a senior scientist in the nuclear program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group in Washington, said in an interview. ‘You’ve got time to put fire hoses up there and get it filled if it’s not leaking,’ he said of the pool…. [But a] 1997 study by the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island described a worst-case disaster from uncovered spent fuel in a reactor cooling pool. It estimated 100 quick deaths would occur within a range of 500 miles and 138,000 eventual deaths… The study also found that land over 2,170 miles would be contaminated and damages would hit $546 billion… That section of the Brookhaven study focused on boiling water reactors — the kind at the heart of the Japanese crisis.” In this plant, relying on the concrete barriers remaining still leaves a 42% chance of total meltdown according to experts at New Mexico’s Sandia labs.

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 (add 36 private research reactors plus a few more government systems along the way for a total of 104 U.S.-based reactors), way too many (about 20) 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.

How did the U.S. alter its nuclear energy policy as a result of the Japanese debacle? The March 14^th Washington Post: “‘At this time, we don’t have any information that would cause us to do anything different,’ said Gregory B. Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, at a White House briefing… White House press secretary Jay Carney, at the same briefing, also defended the use of nuclear power, saying it ‘remains a part of the president's overall energy plan.’” Japan gets (got?) 30% of its electrical power from nuclear facilities; the U.S. gets 20% of its electrical energy needs from such plants.

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) are on or near fault lines on the ocean front. Additional vulnerable facilities sit in quake prone Oregon and Washington. 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 sizeable 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.