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July 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

After 28 Years, Still No Solutions at Chernobyl

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2014

Twenty-eight years have passed since technicians at Chernobyl’s Unit 4 reactor accidentally set off an uncontrolled reaction early on the morning of April 26, 1986, releasing a huge radioactive plume that has affected some three billion people (and counting). Yet officials are still struggling to find a containment solution for the almost 200 tons of fuel — uranium and its highly radioactive fission by-products — and other highly radioactive materials that remain buried in the destroyed building. At least five tons of reactor fuel were released during the explosions and subsequent fire. 

Overwhelmed and unprepared for the magnitude of the disaster, Soviet officials threw large amounts of concrete and human power at the problem. Over half a million workers, many of them “volunteers” (including political prisoners and former dissidents) were involved in clean-up efforts, including construction of the initial concrete “sarcophagus” that still covers the site three decades later. Bulldozers, cranes and other equipment that was too contaminated to remove were simply buried in place. 

Though authorities declared at the time that it would last “for eternity,” the sarcophagus began leaking from almost the first day it was completed. Workers remaining onsite are tasked with pumping out radioactive rainwater that has been in contact with fuel rods inside. The Bulletin of Atomic the Scientists noted in September 1992 that “[t]he sarcophagus began cracking soon after it was built and must be strengthened or replaced. To complicate matters, the sarcophagus is also sinking into the earth, and the ground water is rather near the surface…” 

Last year, a section of the roof near the destroyed reactor collapsed, releasing radiation into the atmosphere. 

In 1995, the “Group of 7” nations agreed to finance a more long-term solution for dealing with the volatile disaster site in exchange for Ukraine’s cooperation in closing the two reactors that operated at the Chernobyl site until 2000. Finally, almost 20 years later, construction of a 20 million pound, $1.5 billion arch, designed to contain radioactive materials in the event of further degradation of the sarcophagus, is now half complete. The arch is designed to last 100 years, by which point officials hope to have a more permanent repository in place for the high-level waste. One proposal involves removing it from the disaster site in order to avoid contaminating the water supply of Kiev’s three million residents. 

It is still unclear where Ukraine will find funding for this “final” solution, and the technology for how it will be achieved has yet to be developed. Artur Korneyev, the radiation specialist who first alerted Western countries to the urgency of the problems with the sarcophagus, has doubts that long-term containment can ever be achieved. As he told the New York Times April 27, “There is not the technology available to access this fuel inside the unit. It’s really difficult because the pathways are obstructed.”

Of course, containing the fuel rods is just one of many daunting problems regional governments and the rest of the world must combat as a result of this particular nuclear power disaster. Belarus and Ukraine have spent more than an estimated $250 billion each in dealing with the aftermath of the catastrophe. No one knows the true magnitude of the deaths and health effects of the radiation release; one study has attributed more than one million deaths globally to Chernobyl. Only twenty percent of children in Belarus are considered well by official standards since the accident. And the genetic damage to the human population will persist, probably not peaking for many generations.

In early May, former tennis star Elena Baltacha became the latest person to die of cancer probably caused by the Chernobyl meltdown. The thirty-year-old athlete was just three years old when the accident happened at the reactor 90 miles from her home. She was diagnosed at the age of 19 with a chronic liver disease, which forced her to stay heavily medicated just to function on the tennis court. Her primary liver cancer was rare in the United Kingdom, where she lived for most of her life.

Researchers are only beginning to understand the human health effects of Chernobyl’s radiation, let alone the effects on the ecosystem. A study released this spring by researchers at the University of South Carolina and Universite Paris-Sud shows that because radiation harms microorganisms, the dead trees, plants and other organic matter affected by the radiation around Chernobyl do not decay nearly as quickly as those elsewhere. This creates an eerily intact landscape with 28 years’ worth of dead plant material that they fear will act as a radioactive tinderbox in the event of a forest fire, releasing plumes of radio-toxic smoke to population centers.

Despite Chernobyl’s legacy of terror, reactor operators around the world are still pushing increasingly unpopular plans for new nuclear power facilities. This April 26, over 1,000 people marched in the annual Chernobyl Way rally in Belarus, demanding a halt to construction of that country’s first nuclear power reactor, the Lukashenka facility in Astravets. Activists were detained after the rally, including one man — Yury Rubtsou — who engaged in a hunger strike to protest police brutality and judicial outrage during his 30 days in jail. Rubtsou was reportedly detained for wearing a T-shirt reading “Lukashenka, go away,” which the authorities seized. — ASP

— San Francisco Bay View, Feb. 25, 2012; Radio Free Europe, Nov. 04, 2013; Smithsonian magazine, Mar. 14; Live Science, Mar. 24; New York Times, Apr. 27; Charter 97, Apr. 28, May 26, & May 27; EcoWatch (Harvey Wasserman), May 4; the Express, May 5; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 5, 2014 

Filed Under: Chernobyl, Environment, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste

January 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Unnecessary, Uneconomic, Uninsurable, Unevacuable and Unsafe

Why Atomic Energy Stinks Worse Than You Thought
Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2013-2014
By Ralph Nader 

It has been over two years since the earthquake and tsunami that brought about the nuclear reactor crisis in Fukushima — the largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. The situation at the six reactors is still grim. Four of the reactors are damaged. Hundreds of tons of contaminated groundwater are reportedly seeping into the ocean every day. Nearly 83,000 people were displaced from their homes in the approximately 310 square mile exclusion zones. On Oct. 9, 2013, an accident resulted in six workers being doused in radioactive water. Accidents and mishaps at the Fukushima site are regular occurrences. Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has now asked the world community for help in containing the ongoing Fukushima disaster, as it continues to spiral out of control.

Earlier this week, I participated in a panel discussion in New York City called “The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident: Ongoing Lessons.” The event featured notable long-time experts on nuclear technology discussing the crisis in Fukushima and the current state of the heavily subsidized nuclear industry in the United States. The panel participants were former US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Peter Bradford, former NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko, former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, and nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen.

Mr. Bradford presented a detailed power point that showed how competing forms of energy already are leading to the decline of the nuclear industry.

The panel discussed safety concerns regarding the Indian Point nuclear power plant located about 30 miles from New York City. Indian Point has long been rife with safety problems and its location near an earthquake fault is a source of great concern for many New York residents.

In the 1960s, the Atomic Energy Commission determined that a class-nine nuclear power accident could contaminate an area the size of Pennsylvania and render much of it uninhabitable. A nuclear disaster at Indian Point would threaten the entire population of New York City and its outlying metropolitan area. The continued existence and operation of Indian Point is like playing a game of Russian Roulette with the lives and homes of the nearly 20 million people who live within a 50 mile radius of the reactor. Consider the difficulty New Yorkers have simply commuting to and from their workplaces during rush hour, and imagine the horror of a mandatory evacuation due to a nuclear emergency at Indian Point. The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that a serious accident could, in addition to massive casualties, “cost ten to 100 times more than Fukushima’s disaster” which would be in the trillions of dollars.

If Indian Point were closed today, there is enough surplus energy capacity to last the state until 2020 as alternative energy sources are developed and deployed. Governor Andrew Cuomo has called for the shutdown of Indian Point, as did Hillary Clinton during her time in the Senate. A principle reason is that an emergency evacuation of the population up to 50 miles around these two nukes is impossible.

So what’s the delay? Mainly, resistance from the nuclear industry and a compliant regulatory agency. The NRC has faltered in its watchdog role by acting to protect and even bolster the dangerous, expensive and unnecessary nuclear industry. The industry’s latest claim is that it avoids greenhouse gases. But as physicist Amory Lovins says, if the investment in nuclear reactors is shifted to renewables and energy conservation, it will produce less demand and more environmentally benign energy by far, and with more jobs.

Anti-nuclear advocates have warned against potential dangers such as earthquakes for decades. Although a new nuclear power reactor has not been ordered and built in the US since 1974, there are currently 65 nuclear stations operating 100 reactors here — many of them aging, many of them near earthquake faults, many of them still not in compliance with NRC fire prevention regulations, all of them significant national security risks. Under President Obama, the first two nuclear reactors since 1978 were authorized to be built at the Vogtle site near Atlanta, Georgia. Commissioner Jaczko was the lone dissenter in the 4-1 NRC approval vote.

To truly understand the cost of nuclear energy, one must consider the absurdity of the uranium fuel cycle itself. It begins with mining and its deadly uranium tailings, then the fabrication and refinement of the fuel, the risky transport of these rods to the multi-shielded dome-like reactors where they are installed, and then firing up the core so it goes critical with a huge amount of radioactivity. Dealing with volatile nuclear reactions requires flawless operation. And then there is the storage and guarding of hot radioactive wastes and contaminated materials that persist for 250,000 years. No permanent site has been located and licensed for that lengthy containment.

What is the end purpose of this complex and expensive chain of events? Simply to boil water — to generate steam to turn turbines to produce electricity.

With all the technological advancements in energy efficiency, solar, wind and other renewable energy sources, there are better and more efficient ways to meet our electricity needs without burdening future generations with deadly waste products and risking the radioactive contamination of entire regions — should anything go wrong.

It is telling that Wall Street, which rarely considers the consequences of gambling on a risk, will not finance the construction of a new reactor without a full loan guarantee from the US government. Nuclear power is also uninsurable in the private insurance market. The Price-Anderson Act of 1957 requires taxpayers to cover almost all the recovery, decontamination and compensation costs if a meltdown should occur.

No other industry that produces electricity poses such a great national security risk should sabotage or malfunction occur. No other means of generating electricity can produce such long-lasting catastrophic damage and mayhem from one unpredictable accident. No other form of energy is so loaded with the silent violence of radioactivity.

Nuclear energy is unnecessary, uninsurable, uneconomic, unevacuable and, most importantly, unsafe. The fact that it continues to exist at all is a result of a ferocious lobby, enlisting the autocratic power of government that will not admit that its product is unfit for use in the modern world. Let’s not allow the lessons of Fukushima to be ignored.

— Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and Green Party presidential candidate, is a lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, The Menace of Atomic Energy, and he contributed to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion. This article appeared in Counterpunch Oct. 14, 2013.

 

Filed Under: Chernobyl, Fukushima, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste

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