Stephen Reader
Stephen Reader covers politics for It's a Free Country, WNYC's interactive politics site. He joined the station in 2010 and has also worked for Studio 360, WNYC's Peabody Award-winning show about art, culture, and creativity.
The Nuclear Conversation, Post-Quake
Monday, March 14, 2011
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An aerial view of a nuclear plant dammaged by the tsunami in Northern Japan. (Flickr user: DigitalGlobe-Imagery)
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We have plants exposed to tsunami risk, earthquake risk and flooding risk, so I think this is a time to take a look.
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Welcome to Politics Bites, where every afternoon at It's A Free Country, we bring you the unmissable quotes from the morning's political conversations on WNYC. Today on The Brian Lehrer Show, Neil Todreas, professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, talked about the crisis at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan. Earlier in the show, Joseph Romm, senior fellow at Center for American Progress and founder of the blog, ClimateProgress.org, discussed U.S. nuclear energy policy in the aftermath of last week's earthquake.
Natural disasters have put Japan at risk for one of the greatest energy disasters in human history. Cooling systems at the Fukushima nuclear plant, 160 miles from Tokyo, were knocked out by last week's 8.9-magnitude quake and subsequent tsunami. Without these systems, reactors began to overheat, resulting in explosions that threaten to release catastrophic amounts of radiation.
Joseph Romm puts the danger in perspective:
It's clearly worse than Three Mile Island, not as bad as Chernobyl. But now there have been explosions at two different nuclear reactors...There's the risk of two or three partial meltdowns happening simultaneously, which has never happened before.
Simultaneous meltdowns are an unprecedented danger, but so was the seismic activity that triggered this scenario. No earthquake approaching the magnitude of last Friday's had hit Japan in over 140 years; nuclear power plants in the country have never had to absorb a crisis this bad. Professor Neil Todreas said that it remains to be seen how much of the damage was unavoidable, and how much the result of inadequate planning.
The situation with the tsunami was an unexpected situation, the degree of it. Plants actually survived the earthquake in that they were shut down and emergency power from their on-site diesel generators was provided and doing the pumping. Then, half an hour later, because the quake occurred 250 miles out to sea and the wave moves about 500 miles an hour, the tsunami came and flooded the power systems that were being used. What I don't know is what the anticipated design conditions for the tsunami were, and why did these systems get flooded?
An extended global conversation about nuclear power safety is sure to follow these events. The discussion has already started in the United States, where the desire for nuclear expansion has traditionally been balanced with concerns for public health. Joseph Romm said that the case of Fukushima gives ammunition to opponents of nuclear power, who question whether any preparedness or contingency measures could adequately safeguard a plant from disaster.
The earthquake and tsunami just overwhelmed these systems. They evacuated 180,000 people, and I think even senators like Joe Lieberman, who have been pretty favorably disposed to nuclear, said we need to put a halt to new plants in this country until we understand exactly what the failure modes have been in these Japanese plants.
"We have plants exposed to tsunami risk, earthquake risk and flooding risk," said Romm, "so I think this is a time to take a look."
Meanwhile, many are watching the situation at Fukushima and wondering what's the worst case scenario. So far, there have been explosions in the buildings that surround reactors, and many workers have been injured, but there is still no immediate threat to the public. Professor Todreas said that's because the casing around the reactor itself is still intact; he's optimistic that's not going to change.
They have to see that the containment vessel, the stainless steel large vessel around the reactor, is intact. If it's intact, radiation will not be released from these reactors. The situation here is complicated because of the tsunami and earthquake; there are a number of plants involved, not just one. The situation so far is that these containments are intact, and I'm fairly confident they will remain intact.
Comments [26]
Thank you for the interview with Neil Todreas. The level of hysteria surrounding the crippled reactors in Japan has been shocking. If special interests continue to block the development of clean, safe nuclear energy in the U.S. then the economic future of our country is in peril.
@BobBogen "nuclear power insurance is obscenely expensive"
Please Google "modular nuclear reactors". Hyperion Power in NM is currently developing a modular reactor. This relatively inexpensive unit emits zero greenhouse gases (unlike energy produced by coal and natural gas).
The guest's comments about health effects were not accurate. It is very well established that radiation can cause mutations and that some mutations can and do cause cancer. The greater the dose, the greater the likelihood of a mutation. Hence the US helicopter pilots are at some greater risk of cancer than they were before they flew that mission. And the same is also true for all of the Japanese people who will experience some exposure. It takes very high levels of radiation to generate acute radiation sickness leading to death in a matter of days or weeks, but much lower exposures can be, and, statistically, ARE, hazardous. The guest really does sound like an apologist for the nuclear power industry in his answer to that question, rather than a disinterested expert.
I may have missed the discussion, but the design of such reactors produce the hydrogen gas. It is folly to house the fuel in tubes made of zirconium alloy. This alloy causes the hydrogen when it is overheated, creating another peril. If further heated, the alloy can actually explode potentially scattering fuel into the environment. Zirconium was used in minute amounts in flash bulbs. There are tons of it in a reactor. See http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/12-3
Invaluable resource for those following Japan Quake / Tsunami / Nuclear Plant crises:
http://www.YokosoNews.com
This is a one-man operation, live translations of multiple Japanese news sources into English. Very informative and about as close to real-time as you can get in English.
Same old, same old. Nuke BS. We need experts explicitly with no nuclear industry potential.
As chief metropolitan planner for our region going back to the "60s and later for the United Nations in Pakistan, and energy planner for New England it has been clear that nuclear power insurance is obscenely expensive, In a word, nukes are insane.
For example: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/all/1
Oh wow now these japanese can turn into ninja turtles wif all dat radio...i hate how americans are so hipocrite about everything!!
The guest's answer to the thorium question was underwhelming. Everything I've heard about thorium makes it sound better as a fuel than uranium -- almost magically so. He seemed to think that it was largely irrelevant. I would guess that the truth is somewhere in between. Follow up, please?
in an effort to keep the funding in tact for the nuclear power industry, it's supporters from now on will refer to 'nuclear meltdown' as 'isotope change'.
Please read:
"Fukushima's safe? Say it to my face."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/12/955625/-Fukushimas-safe-Say-it-to-my-faceUpdated-X3
NYC's nuclear power plant issues:
http://www.riverkeeper.org/news-events/news/stop-polluters/power-plant-cases/riverkeeper-responds-to-japan-nuclear-plant-crisis/
Imagine being in this professor's lectures!!!
Whoa. Is it me or is the guest really, really distracted now? His...uh...ineloquence is...uh...giving me grave qualms.
Doe guest have any ties to the industry?
Nobody considers aftershocks in design, do they? Japan didn't require building to withstand this level of earthquake because it was considered unlikely to happen..
Invite a PUBLIC HEALTH expert guest please!
Measure radiation NOT per adult exposure but what about children and pregnant women?
In any discussion of nuclear dev't in the US, it's important to remember that Wall Street will not go near a nuclear power plant, so the only way a plant can be built is with gov't subsidies--our taxpayer dollars. This money would be better spent on solar and wind than on subsidies to the nuclear industry and the oil industry.
Is radiation exposure something that existed in the atmosphere before the manufacturing or the development of nuclear power? Does it have a naturally occurring presence?
Unforeseen circumstances are NOW seen! Plants in earthquake zones and near waterways should be compelled to upgrade their auxillary systems accordingly.
Edward from New Jersey: I believe we choose uranium over thorium because the military can't make weapons out of thorium.
Oh, not only can thorium not melt down like uranium, but we could burn all our current nuclear waste and never need Yucca Mountain to store it for eons.
The reports say the fuel rods are exposed. This would imply that the containment structures have been breached. The presence of cesium-137 means that the fuel rods are melting. The report of significant radiation 100 miles from the site also implies a serious issue. Can the professor explain what the impact of an exposed meltdown that is likely unfortunately present and what could be done to mitigate it.
There is a common misperception that "nuclear power" refers to all traditional uranium fueled power plants. There is a whole new generation of nuclear power plants that are not nearly as dangerous or polluting (eg: thorium). PLEASE make this distinction clear at this crucial moment in our search for innovative solutions to our energy needs.
Talk about iodine supplements administered in case of high radiation levels. How dispersed can dangerous particles spread?
Why can't gravity driven water reservoirs be used?
What do they do with the radio active containment vessel after the disaster is over?
If only we'd chosen thorium as a nuclear fuel, these accidents could never have happened. It's not too late to get rid of uranium-based nuclear energy! Step up to the plate and let's get going.
I have the impression Japanese authorities are being more open and honest than I remember Americans being at the time of Three Mile Island, and certainly more than the Russians at Chernobyl. What is your guest's opinion?
I've seen a number of articles over the past few years in the popular science press about thorium based nuclear power. They assert that it's essentially meltdown proof and doesn't generate plutonium. It sounds too good to be true. Are there drawbacks that keep thorium from being adopted in the U.S., or is the entrenchment of uranium based power more to blame?
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