The Earthquake that screamed “NO NUKES!!!”
BY HARVEY WASSERMAN
Black smoke streams from a nuclear power plant damaged
by a major earthquake that hit northwest Japan on July 16, 2007.
The
massive earthquake that shook Japan this week nearly killed millions
in a nuclear apocalypse.
It also produced one of the most terrifying sentences ever buried
in a newspaper. As reported deep in the New York Times, the Tokyo
Electric Company has admitted that “the force of the shaking
caused by the earthquake had exceeded the design limits of the reactors,
suggesting that the plant’s builders had underestimated the
strength of possible earthquakes in the region.”
There are 55 reactors in
Japan. Virtually all of them are on or near major earthquake faults.
Kashiwazaki alone hosts seven, four of which were forced into the
dangerous SCRAM mode to narrowly avoid meltdowns. At least 50 separate
serious problems have been so far identified, including fire and
the spillage of barrels filled with radioactive wastes.
There are four active reactors
in California on or near major earthquake faults, as are the two
at Indian Point north of New York City. On January 31, 1986, an
earthquake struck the Perry reactor east of Cleveland, knocking
out roads and bridges, as well as pipes within the plant, which
(thankfully) was not operating at the time. The governor of Ohio,
then Richard Celeste, sued to keep Perry shut, but lost in federal
court.
The fault that hit Perry
is an off-shoot of the powerful New Madrid line that runs through
the Mississippi River Valley, threatening numerous reactors. The
Beyond Nuclear Project reports that in August, 2004, a quake hit
the Dresden reactor in Illinois, resulting in a leak of radioactive
tritium. Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, slated as the nation’s
high-level radioactive waste dump, has a visible fault line running
through it.
More than 400 atomic reactors
are on-line worldwide. How many are vulnerable to seismic shocks
we can only shudder to guess. But one-eighth of them sit in one
of the world’s richest, most technologically advanced, most
densely populated industrial nations, which has now admitted its
reactor designs cannot match the power an earthquake that has just
happened.
In whatever language it’s
said, that translates into the unmistakable warning that the world’s
atomic reactors constitute a multiple, ticking seismic time bomb.
Talk of building more can only be classified as suicidal irresponsibility.
Tokyo Electric’s
behavior since the quake defines the industry’s credibility.
For three consecutive days (with more undoubtedly to come) the utility
has been 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.
Prior to the March 28,
1979 disaster at Three Mile Island, the industry for years assured
the public that the kind of accident that did happen was “impossible.”
Then the utility repeatedly assured the public there had been no
melt-down of fuel and no danger of further catastrophe. Nine years
later a robotic camera showed that nearly all the fuel had melted,
and that avoiding a full-blown catastrophe was little short of a
miracle.
The industry continues
to say no one was killed at TMI. But it does not know how much radiation
was released, where it went or who it might have harmed. Since 1979
its allies in the courts have denied 2400 central Pennsylvania families
the right to test their belief that they and their loved ones have
been killed and maimed en masse.
Prior to its April 26,
1986, explosion, Soviet Life Magazine ran a major feature extolling
the virtually “accident-proof design” of Chernobyl Unit
Four.
Then the former Soviet
Union of Mikhail Gorbachev kept secret the gargantuan radiation
releases that have killed thousands and yielded a horrific plague
of cancers, leukemia, birth defects and more throughout the region,
and among the more than 800,000 drafted “jumpers” who
were forced to run through the plant to clean it up.
Since the terror attacks
of September 11, 2001, the industry has claimed its reactors can
withstand the effects of a jet crash, and are immune to sabotage.
The claims are as patently absurd as the lies about TMI and Chernobyl.
So, too, the endless, dogged assurances from Japan that no earthquake
could do to Kashiwazaki what has just happened.
Yet today and into the
future, expensive ads will flood the U.S. and global airwaves, full
of nonsense about the “need” for new nukes.
There is only one thing
we know for certain about this advertising: it is a lie.
Atomic reactors contribute to global warming rather than abating
it. In construction, in the mining, milling and enriching of the
fuel, in on-going “normal” releases of heat and radioactivity,
in dismantling and decommissioning, in managing radioactive wastes,
in future terror attacks, in proliferation of nuke weapons, and
much much more, atomic energy is an unmitigated eco-disaster.
To this list we must now add additional tangible evidence that reactors
allegedly built to withstand “worst case” earthquakes
in fact cannot. And when they go down, the investment is lost, and
power shortages arise (as is now happening in Japan) that are filled
by the burning of fossil fuels.
It costs up to ten times
as much to produce energy from a nuke as to save it with efficiency.
Advances in wind, solar and other green “Solartopian”
technologies mean atomic energy simply cannot compete without massive
subsidies, loan guarantees and government insurance to protect it
from catastrophes to come.
This latest “impossible” earthquake has not merely shattered
the alleged safeguards of Japan’s reactor fleet. It has blown
apart—yet again—any possible argument for building more
reactors anywhere on this beleaguered Earth.
Harvey Wasserman’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR
GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He is
senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information &
Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org, where
this article first appeared.
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