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Fukushima at Ten: Aftershocks and Failed Decontamination

Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2021
By John LaForge

It’s now 10 years since the catastrophic triple meltdowns of reactors at Fukushima in Japan. As Joseph Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health project put it three years ago, “Enormous amounts of radioactive chemicals, including cesium, strontium, plutonium, and iodine were emitted into the air, and releases of the same toxins into the Pacific have never stopped, as workers struggle to contain over 100 cancer-causing chemicals.” [The Washington Spectator, Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1, 2018, p.1]

Nukewatch and hundreds of other groups and scientific journals have issued dozens of reports about the disaster. A score of books have been published on the subject, and major media have at least done annual reviews of the official evacuations, cleanups and decontamination efforts. With so much information available, it is not possible to do more than present another update on recent news and analysis.

There is news of the shortage of Fukushima health studies; big earthquakes (aftershocks) rattling reactors and waste tanks; corporate and government dishonesty about decontamination; novel radioactive particles dispersed; and renewed fish contamination.

Very few health studies

“So far only one single disease entity has been systematically examined in humans in Fukushima: thyroid cancer,” says Dr. Alex Rosen, the German chair of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. [https://www.aerzteblatt.de/nachrichten/121561/Zehn-Jahre-nach-Fukushima-Gesundheitliche-Folgen-nicht-gaenzlich-abschaetzbar] Other diseases, such as leukemia or malformations, which are associated with increased radiation exposure, have not been investigated, Rosen told the German medical journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt March 2.

Pictured: One of three large explosions that were a part of Japan’s Fukushima-Daiichi radiation disaster that began March 11, 2011 with the country’s largest-ever earthquake, the fourth largest since record keeping began in 1900. The quake smashed the reactors’ foundations, pipes and off-site electrical supply, causing a “station blackout” that halted water circulation and all cooling of the reactors. A massive tsunami destroyed emergency back-up generators needed for cooling, resulting in meltdowns in three large reactors, enormous radiation releases, and possibly the worst nuclear reactor disaster in history.

(Five studies have focused on birth abnormalities in the areas most affected: three on infant mortality rates, one on underweight newborns, and one on declining birth rates 9 months after March 2011.*)

The one disease study of the population was a screening for thyroid cancer in 380,000 local children under the age 18. In January 2018, the journal Thyroid reported 187 cases after five years. Reviewing the study, Mangano wrote in The Washington Spectator that, “A typical population of 380,000 children would produce 12 cases in five years.” The increase among children is “exactly what would be expected if Fukushima were a factor, as radiation is most damaging to the fetus, infant and child,” Mangano said.

New Earthquakes Rattle Wreckage and Nerves

Another large earthquake, magnitude 7.3, struck Feb. 13, again off the coast of the Fukushima reactor complex, and the reported 30 seconds of terror was followed by14 aftershocks up to magnitude 5. [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/world/asia/earthquake-japan-fukushima.html]

The quake was severe enough that Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) and federal regulators suspect it caused additional damage to reactors 1 and 3 where cooling water levels fell sharply, the Associated Press reported. The Feb. 13 quake was felt in Tokyo 150 miles away. Japan’s meteorological agency said it was believed to be an aftershock of the record 2011 quake. [https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-02-19/water-leaks-indicate-new-damage-at-fukushima-nuclear-plant]

At a Feb. 15 meeting, government regulators said the quake had probably worsened existing earthquake damage in reactors 1 and 3 or broken open new cracks causing the cooling water level drop, the AP said.

“Because (the 2011 quake) was an enormous one with a magnitude of 9.0, it’s not surprising to have an aftershock of this scale 10 years later,” said Kenji Satake, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Earthquake Research Institute.

There have been six major aftershocks in the Fukushima area since March 2011: April 7, 2011 (magnitude 7.1); April 11, 2011 (6.6); July 10, 2011 (7.0); Oct. 26, 2013 (7.1); Nov. 26, 2016 (6.9); and Feb. 13, 2021 (7.3).

At least 20 radioactive waste water tanks near these were “slid” by the February 13 earthquake off Fukushima Prefecture, according to Tepco. Photo by Lars Nincolaysen-DPA

Earthquake shocks are not the only recurring nightmare to haunt the survivors of the record quake that killed 19, 630. Typhoon Hagibis slammed into Tamura City in October 2019, and swept away an unknown number of bags of radioactive debris that had been stacked near a river.

Since March 2011, over 22 million cubic meters of contaminated soil, brush and other matter from areas hard hit by fallout have been collected in large black plastic bags and piled in temporary storage mounds in thousands of places. [“Fukushima residents fight state plan to build roads with radiation-tainted soil,” Japan Times, Apr. 29, 2018; https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/04/29/national/fukushima-residents-fight-state-plan-build-roads-radiation-tainted-soil/#.WuYDcy7wbX4] Yet the volume is the tip of the iceberg: According to R. Ramachandran, in The Hindu, January 31, 2020, no decontamination activities are planned for the majority of forested areas which cover about 75 per cent of the main contaminated area of 9,000 square km.” https://frontline.thehindu.com/science-and-technology/article30543453.ece)

Cover-ups and disinformation

Reporting Feb. 14 about the latest quake, the AP noted that Tepco “has repeatedly been criticized for cover-ups and delayed disclosures of problems.” [https://apnews.com/article/fukushima-nuclear-plant-seismometers-3b1411bc433cca1ac73113faf51c9331] On June 22, 2016, Tepco’s President Naomi Hirose publicly admitted that the company’s lengthy refusal to speak of the “meltdowns” it knew of at its three reactors was tantamount to a cover-up and apologized for it.

The Washington Post reported March 6, 2021 [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/fukushima-japan-radioactive-water-anniversary/2021/03/05/b0515cd0-76b8-11eb-9489-8f7dacd51e75_story.html] that, “For years, Tepco claimed that the treated water stored at the plant contained only tritium, but data deep on its website showed that the treatment process had failed.” The tanks now hold almost 1.25 million tons of highly contaminated waste water. “In 2018, [Tepco] was forced to acknowledge that 70 percent of the water is still contaminated with dangerous radioactive elements — including strontium-90, a bone-seeking radionuclide that can cause cancer — and will have to be treated again before release,” the Post reported.

Harvey Wasserman reported for Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism’s The Free Press on a July 2007 earthquake that shook Japan and forced dangerous emergency shutdowns at four reactors at Kashiwazaki. [https://freepress.org/article/earthquake-screamed-no-nukes] “For three consecutive days [Tepco] was forced to issue public apologies for erroneous statements about the severity of the damage done to the reactors, the size and lethality of radioactive spills into the air and water, the on-going danger to the public, and much more. Once again, the only thing reactor owners can be trusted to do is to lie.”

Radioactive Particles Newly identified

Work just published in the journal Science of the Total Environment documents new, highly radioactive particles that were released from the destroyed Fukushima reactors. The study was led by Dr. Satoshi Utsunomiya and Kazuya Morooka of Kyushu University. “Two of these particles have the highest cesium radioactivity ever measured for particles from Fukushima,” the research found. The study analyzed particles that were taken from surface soils collected 3.9 kilometers from the reactor site. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145639]

Speaking with Science Daily Feb. 17, Dr. Utsunomiya said, “Owing to their large size, the health effects of the new particles are likely limited to external radiation hazards during static contact with skin.” The particles were reportedly spewed by the hydrogen explosions that rocked the reactor buildings and fell within a narrow zone that stretches ~8 kilometers north-northwest of meltdowns.

But Dr. Utsunomiya also said the long-lived radioactivity of cesium in “the newly found highly radioactive particles has not yet decayed significantly. As such, they will remain in the environment for many decades to come, and this type of particle could occasionally still be found in radiation hot spots.”

Smaller radioactive particles of uranium, thorium, radium, cesium, strontium, polonium, tellurium and americium were found afloat throughout Northern Japan, according to a report by Arnie Gundersen and Marco Kaltofen published July 27, 2017 in Science of the Total Environment. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969717317953] The radioactively hot particles were found in dusts and soils. About 180 particulate matter samples were taken from automobile or home air filters, outdoor surface dust, and vacuum cleaner bags. Some142 of the samples (about 80 percent) contained cesium-134 and cesium-137 which emit intense beta radiation and is very dangerous if ingested or inhaled. “A majority of these samples were collected from locations in decontaminated zones cleared for habitation by the National Government of Japan,” the authors revealed.

Greenpeace Reports Cleanup Failures and Deception

Greenpeace Japan released two major reports March 4 that also contradict the country’s positive decontamination and human rights claims after 2011.

 “Successive governments during the last 10 years … have attempted to perpetrate a myth about the nuclear disaster. They have sought to deceive the Japanese people by misrepresenting the effectiveness of the decontamination program and ignoring radiological risks,” said Shaun Burnie, Senior Nuclear Specialist at Greenpeace East Asia and co-author of the first report.

A Reuters image of a Fukushima reactor in ruins following three hydrogen gas explosions that were in turn brought on by meltdowns inside three reactors.

Key findings of the radiation report Fukushima 2011-2020 are:

  • Most of the 840 square kilometer Special Decontamination Area (SDA), where the government is responsible for decontamination, remains contaminated with radioactive cesium. … an overall average of only 15% has been decontaminated. • No long-term decontamination target level will be achieved in many areas. Citizens will be subjected for decades to radiation exposures in excess of the … recommended maximum. • In the areas where evacuation orders were lifted in 2017, specifically Namie and Iitate, radiation levels remain above safe limits, potentially exposing the population to increased cancer risk.

Key findings of The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station decommissioning report are:

  • The current decommissioning plan in the timeframe of 30-40 years is impossible to achieve and is illusory.
  • Radioactive waste created at the site should not be moved. Fukushima Daiichi is already and should remain a nuclear waste storage site for the long term.

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Court Orders Veterans Affairs Department to Replace Flawed Science Used to Deny Benefits to Vets Poisoned in Plutonium Disaster

Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2021
By John LaForge

In a major class action ruling issued Dec. 17, 2020, the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims in Washington, DC, has ordered the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to re-examine how it evaluates disability claims from veterans exposed to deadly alpha radiation during cleanup operations following a disastrous nuclear weapons accident at Palomares, Spain.

The ruling follows oral arguments made Sep. 2, 2020, and comes one year after the court’s historic decision to certify “class action” status for the veterans of the radioactive disaster response effort. The Veterans Legal Services Clinic of Yale Law School, which since 2016 has assisted in litigating the case, Skaar v. Wilkie, along with the New York Legal Assistance Group, announced the decision.

On Jan. 17, 1966, during an airborne refueling gone wrong, an Air Force B-52 bomber exploded over the village of Palomares. Seven crew members were killed and four hydrogen bombs were thrown to the Earth. Upon impact, conventional explosives inside two of the H-bombs detonated, blasting two giant craters and spreading as much as 22 pounds of highly radioactive, carcinogenic pulverized plutonium across the Spanish village and countryside. (See Dec. 18 report, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/18/air-force-veterans-of-plutonium-dust-disaster-win-class-action-standing)

Air Force personnel worked where nuclear bomb explosions dispersed plutonium dust. Credit USAF

In its new decision, the court said the VA violated federal law requiring that its assessment of veterans’ radiation exposures be based on sound science. The VA has so far relied on faulty methods to deny disability benefits to veterans for radiation-related illnesses caused by the nuclear weapons disaster, the legal services clinic said, calling the decision “a long-awaited step toward recognizing the Palomares veterans’ service and ensuring they have access to the benefits they earned,” it said. Even a single particle of plutonium if inhaled or ingested can cause cancer.

The injured veterans’ lawsuit is led by Chief Master Sergeant Victor Skaar (USAF, Ret.) of Nixa, Missouri, who participated in the cleanup. Skaar and the class argue that the VA’s radiation exposure methodology “ignored 98 percent of the radiation measurements taken from veterans after the incident,” an error so grave that, “Dr. von Hippel and even the VA’s own consultant have faulted the method,” the law clinic said.

Skaar and at least 1,500 others were sent to clean up plutonium-contaminated debris and lived amidst the wreckage and the plutonium dust for weeks — handling it, cleaning it from clothes, washing it off of village surfaces, placing contaminated soil in barrels, and even incinerating truckloads of poisoned debris. Now, “many of the veterans have radiation-related illnesses that require medical treatment. Others have died from these conditions…” the law clinic said.

Referring to a December 2017 report by Princeton University physicist Frank von Hippel about 26 GIs who were identified in 1966 as having received the highest exposures, the court wrote: “Dr. von Hippel concluded that ‘The Air Force’s dose estimates have huge uncertainties and the maximum doses incurred by those not in the “High 26” could be hundreds of times higher than those that the Air Force has recommended to the VA for determination of benefits.’”

The court said further that the VA never explained why it adopted the flawed methodology. The court’s opinion, written by Judge Michael Allen, admonished the Board of Veterans’ Appeals declaring that it may not “abdicate its responsibility to assess whether the evidence before it is ‘sound.’” The court ordered the VA to review the parties’ evidence and provide considered analysis of the methodology to ensure that only sound scientific evidence is used to determine veterans’ eligibility for disability benefits.

John Rowan, Air Force Veteran and National President of Vietnam Veterans of America said in a statement, “Thanks to the court’s decision and the continuing advocacy of Mr. Skaar and other class members, the VA must now justify its practice of arbitrarily dismissing the exceedingly high levels of radiation these veterans encountered and continue to suffer from … [and] fulfill its duty under law to assist these veterans and ensure their claims are evaluated using methods that are both scientifically and legally sound.”

Startlingly, the Air Force has never included the weeks-long Palomares plutonium cleanup on its list of “radiation risk activities” which it uses to rule on disability claims, in spite of its own 1967 finding that service members’ “health is in no jeopardy from retention of radioactive materials as a result of participation in the [Palomares] operation.” Asked how the Air Force can keep such an admittedly radiation-heavy cleanup operation off the list, the law clinic’s Molly Petchnik told me the list was drawn up long ago and the military is reluctant to expand it.

The official list in the Code of Federal Regulations recognizes only four service-related radiation risk areas since 1966, including work at nuclear weapon production sites in Paducah, Kent.; Portsmouth, Ohio; and Oak Ridge, Tenn. in 1991; and on Amchitka Island, Alaska in 1974, involving underground hydrogen bomb tests.

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Reactors and Radioactive Waste: “safe, clean, too cheap to meter”

Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2021
By Christine Manwilller
“Millions” of Radioactive Shipments Move Cross-Country Every Year

On Feb. 18, 2021, an exclusive investigation by WKRC-TV’s chief investigative reporter Duane Pohlman in Cincinnati looked into widespread US transportation of radioactive materials and associated risks of poor regulation and management. Every year around three million shipments of radioactive material travel across the US, most in trucks on the highways, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. While the EPA assures that these shipments are safe, individuals directly involved aren’t convinced. In an interview with Pohlman, trucker Andy Charles relayed his experience hauling radioactive materials, traveling non-stop from Ohio to Kentucky, and from Tennessee to Texas. Many warning signs came up that Charles now wishes he had taken more seriously.

First was the lack of cargo information, “They did tell us it was uranium, but that was pretty much it.” Exactly how radioactive the cargo was remained a mystery. Charles also doubted the effectiveness of the cylindrical shipping containers, and although such shipments are supposed to be in “special containers,” government agencies admit that they are often not used. Charles spoke of concerns for the safety of other travelers, “We were blazing down the highway, 60-70 miles an hour. If there’s any kind of leak, or whatever, it’s blowing in the wind.” Drivers wore no safety gear, only a dosimeter which was rarely checked by safety officers. Charles told Pohlman, “It was not like they was really concerned with it.” A panic button was installed in the truck cab, with the promise that “if we noticed any suspicious activity from cars or anything around us, that we would push that button and somebody would be to us in minutes,” Charles said. The designated route to be traveled could not be deviated from, and had to be completed non-stop.

Charles was right to doubt his safety. Jim Walburn, a retired transportation specialist, worked at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Piketon, Ohio, one of Charles’ drop points. In his interview with Pohlman, Walburn insisted they did “what the federal regulations required us to do.” He did admit some of the shipments likely exceeded permitted radioactivity limits, and said, “I don’t have any proof.” Radioactive material occasionally leaked during transport, requiring the floorboards in trucks to be disposed of. “The metal itself could be cleaned,” Walburn told Pohlman.

If anything, Walburn’s experience reinforces Charles’ concerns about his own safety, and that of other travelers driving right next to such dangerous cargo. Pohlman’s report ends with Andy Charles’ haunting words. “I look back now and I wished to God that I’d never done it.”

— Duane Pohlman, WKRC-TV, Local 12, Cincinnati, Ohio, Feb. 18, 2021; https://local12.com/news/investigates/semis-trains-hauling-millions-of-radioactive-loads-across-the-country-duane-pohlman

Spectacular Bribery Shows Nuclear Can’t Compete, Has to Cheat

In Ohio, a $61 million bribery scheme surrounding FirstEnergy Solutions (now known as Energy Harbor) and Republican House Speaker Larry Householder became public in July 2020.

Nuclear power is increasingly incapable of competing with safe renewably energy sources, forcing operators to consider shutdowns, but some state legislatures have approved “socialism for the rich” bailouts to keep high-priced, retirement-age reactors operating.

Last year, the US Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, David DeVillers, charged Speaker Householder and four others with racketeering for accepting $61 million in bribes to pass House Bill 6, a bailout measure to save the Davis Besse and Perry reactors. “The conspiracy was to pass and maintain a $1.5 billion bailout in return for $61 million in dark money,” DeVillers said. Householder has pleaded not guilty.

FirstEnergy Solutions, one of Ohio’s largest utility companies, failed for many years to win legislative subsidies to prop up its reactor operations. It turned to bribery to push through House Bill 6, dubbed “the Ohio Clean Air Fund.” In fact it was “a smoke screen for the real purpose: to siphon nearly $150 million annually to FirstEnergy,” DeVillers said. In neighboring Illinois, Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) a subsidiary of Exelon, was also charged with bribing House Speaker Michael Madigan to achieve similar ends. ComEd is paying a $200 million fine to settle the bribery charges.

Reactor operators in New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York have also been gifted with legislative bailouts to keep retirement-age reactors on life support. According to the Public Service Enterprise Group, “Since 2018, three nuclear [reactors] have closed in the eastern US, all for economic reasons, and the impact has had a ripple effect.” As the cost steadily drops for renewable energy sources like solar and wind, they are outperforming the nuclear dinosaurs. However, large utilities and others are heavily invested in old reactors, and are using their political clout in increasingly underhanded ways to keep their income sources in operation. — Reuters Legal, Feb. 1, 2021; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Feb. 12, 2021; Nukewatch Quarterly, Fall 2020, & Augusta Free Press, Sep. 8, 2020

Lawsuit Filed Against Licensing of Texas Radioactive Waste Dump

Beyond Nuclear, the watchdog group in Takoma Park, Maryland, filed suit Feb. 10, 2021 to prevent the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from permitting a “consolidated interim storage facility” (permanent high-level radioactive waste dump) in Andrews County, Texas. The proposed ground-level storage facility would gather 40,000 metric tons of highly radioactive irradiated waste fuel from US nuclear reactors. Planned by Interim Storage Partners (ISP), the facility would be on the site of an existing “low-level radioactive waste” burial project. The location is near the Ogallala Aquifer, a source of water for many of the High Plains states. Above-ground storage of this waste is dangerous for workers handling or transporting the casks, and for people living along transport routes, and in the dumpsite vicinity where chances of earthquakes, floods, wildfires, and plane crashes all pose accident risks.

Beyond Nuclear’s suit challenges the federal government’s taking ownership of the high-level waste (now owned by private companies) through transportation and storage — ownership that is prohibited by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act prior to the licensing of a centralized national repository. The Department of Energy suggests such a federal site will not be available until 2048. In 2020, the NRC dismissed the waste ownership question by indirectly pushing Congress to alter the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. One of the group’s attorneys, Mindy Goldstein, said in announcing the suit, “The Commission lacks a legal or logical basis for its rationale that it may issue a license with an illegal provision, in the hopes that the ISP or the Department of Energy won’t complete the illegal activity it authorized.… The NRC is not above the law, nor does it stand apart from it.” The final Environmental Impact Statement is expected by July 2021. As license approval hangs in the balance, over 70,000 tons of the high-level radioactive waste fuel is currently stored at US reactor sites, cooled underwater in deep pools, or in concrete and metal “dry cask” containers.

New Mexico Target of “Nuclear Colonialism”

Holtec International, a self-described energy company “widely recognized as the foremost technology innovator in the field of carbon-free power generation, specifically commercial nuclear,” is pushing plans for a “temporary” collection pad for highly radioactive waste from power reactors dubbed “Consolidated Interim Storage.” Targeted for New Mexico, between Hobbs and Carlsbad, the site could potentially hold 174,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste fuel from nuclear reactors across the US.

Public hearings regarding the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) switched to online platforms due to coronavirus restrictions, ignoring requests by New Mexico lawmakers to pause the hearings. The move by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) potentially shut out dissenters that would have made public their concerns about the proposed facility. Many tribal areas in New Mexico have limited access to the internet. Leona Morgan of the Nuclear Issues Study Group protests this action, calling it “nuclear colonialism.” The EIS is due for release in July 2021.

If Holtec is given a green light, as many as 10,000 heavy waste casks could be concentrated, and the company’s track record is notoriously corrupt. Holtec originally designed storage systems for radioactive waste like the casks that could be used at the New Mexico site. Holtec’s regulatory and criminal violations over 40 years — bribery, tax fraud, and questionable offshore banking among them — should arguably disqualify the company from future government work. But enforcement of regulations is weak.

Elsewhere, Holtec’s improper handling of rad waste also raises alarms. During the movement of waste fuel at the beachside San Onofre reactor site in southern California, a 50-ton canister was nearly dropped down an 18-foot concrete silo. The canister being loaded was thicker than the ones employees practiced with, and the larger size caused the cask to get stuck during placement. Workers allowed the heavy cask to hang unsupported for an hour. For failing to report the potentially catastrophic accident to the NRC, Southern California Edison was fined $116,000.

This incident revealed other problems during loading, namely “scratching or gouging” of canister walls which increases the chances of corrosion in the salty coastal sea air. Donna Gilmore, founder of the premier watchdog group SanOnofreSafety.org, is alarmed by the violations in California Edison’s flawed loading system. Holtec’s operating license prohibits “contact between the canister and the interior of the [ground-level burial silos],” she says. And Gilmore reports, “The NRC admits Holtec is out of compliance, but refuses to cite Holtec for this violation.” To put things in perspective, she says, “Each canister holds roughly the radioactivity of a Chernobyl disaster, so this is a critical issue people need to know about.”

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Bomb Test Blowback

Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2021

Winds from the Sahara Desert blew north over Spain, France, the UK, and Ireland in February, carrying tons of the desert’s dust. The dust, heavy enough in places to tint the sky orange, caused a measurable spike in atmospheric radiation, and after investigating the French Association for Control of Radioactivity in the West (ACRO) announced that the dust is literally radioactive blow back from France’s colonial Cold War-era nuclear bomb tests. In 1960, France began detonating nuclear weapons above- and under-ground in the Algerian Sahara, contaminating local populations, the surrounding desert, and the French troops assigned to the experiments. (It detonated another 193 nuclear weapons on French Polynesia.) ACRO researchers gathered some of the dust from car windshields and its lab analysis found cesium-137, a radioactive isotope not found in nature but produced in great quantities by nuclear weapons blasts. How much was inhaled or ingested across Europe is unknown. ACRO said in a statement, “This radioactive pollution — still observable at long distances 60 years after the nuclear fire — reminds us of … perennial radioactive contamination in the Sahara for which France bears the responsibility.” — Guardian, Mar. 9; IFL Science online (UK), Mar. 4; and Euronews.com, March 1, 2021

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Reactor Closures Leave Long-term Risks Behind

Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2021

Five nuclear reactors in the United States will close in 2021— a record for one year — four in Illinois, and one in New York state. The shutdowns reflect a long-term shift from poison power to safe energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal and “negawatts” derived from efficiency and conservation. Over the next 30 years, 24 reactors are projected to close, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Shutting down nuclear reactors in the United States will slow the accumulation of radioactive waste and the industry’s push to move it away from reactor sites. Yet the dilemma of designing, testing, building, and enacting extremely long-term waste isolation remains.

Without a central federal waste repository, each of the country’s 56 operating reactor stations have to manage and guard their own waste — for decades. This ad hoc arrangement was intended to be temporary, so even the 36 US reactors that have closed continue to store their waste on site. This open air parking lot system poses risks from floods, earthquakes, sea level rise, and plane crashes, and it creates easy targets for groups who might want to use radioactive waste to harm human health.

In Japan where most of the power reactors remain closed after the Fukushima catastrophe, former prime ministers Naoto Kan and Junichiro Koizumi urged the current Japanese government to abandon plans to reopen reactors or build new ones. At a joint press conference March 1, Koizumi praised Japan’s abundant solar, wind, and hydropower electricity sources. “Why should we use something that’s more expensive and less safe?” — Kyodo News, March 1; and Houston Chronicle, Jan. 12, 2021

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