Just a quick update on the situation in Japan relative to the nuclear facility at Fukushima: The rating for the accident has risen to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s highest level. As people have been at pains to point out, it is not – as yet – as bad as Chernobyl. It is, nevertheless, now at the same level of concern. The IAEA describes a Level 7 event here as
“An event resulting in an environmental release corresponding to a quantity of radioactivity radiologically equivalent to a release to the atmosphere of more than several tens of thousands of terabecquerels of 131I.” (131I is the radioactive isotope Iodine 131.) Further, “This corresponds to a large fraction of the core inventory of a power reactor, typically involving a mixture of short and long lived radionuclides. With such a release, stochastic health effects over a wide area, perhaps involving more than one country, are expected, and there is a possibility of deterministic health effects. Long-term environmental consequences are also likely, and it is very likely that protective action such as sheltering and evacuation will be judged necessary to prevent or limit health effects on members of the public.”
For more and for daily updates, see this page from the IAEA. See also the expert perspective of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
So, while the situation remains grave in Japan, are we any nearer to closing down dangerous nuclear power plants, phasing out the industry as a whole, and getting to the serious work of spending the hundreds of billions necessary to safely store the lethal waste of decades of our folly? Maybe not. An article in the NY Times yesterday put me in mind of the old Pete Seeger song about Vietnam: “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.” Down in South Carolina, there is a plant designed to take plutonium and make it into nuclear fuel. The article reports that this particular type of fuel is contained in Reactor #3 in Fukushima and is the source, among many others there, of considerable concern.
After all the radioactive waste that’s been generated, all the money spent on subsidies – worldwide, with the full knowledge that the nuclear waste has to be well managed for centuries, and with the understanding, acknowledged or not, that we could be infinitely better spending our money, time and expertise on clean, renewable, cost-effective approaches to energy generation, too many nabobs continue to insist that nukes are the way to go. Let’s even infuse them with even more dangerous levels of radioactivity!
“We’re waist deep in the Big Muddy, and the Big Fool says to push on.”
