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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Fukushima: Fear Only The Irrational by Nathan Myhrvold

Fukushima: Fear Only The Irrational by Nathan Myhrvold

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published Published on Jan 15, 2012   modified Modified on Jan 15, 2012

It would be grave folly to recoil from the N-option, our safest

Nuclear Is Clear

    The world needs cheap energy and, as of now, nuclear plants are the most efficient means to that end
    Switching to fossil fuel sources will add to global warming. In extremis, the oceans could boil away.
    The lesson from Fukushima is no worse than that tsunamis are a danger to everything in their path

***

After the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, the role of nuclear energy is again at a turning point—the third since the birth of the industry in the 1950s.

Views about its future are pulled between the fear of nuclear destruction and the growing need for cheap energy.

Memories of Hiroshima and the Cold War, while fading, still hold the potential to induce anxiety. The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi reactors also brought the Soviet-era disaster of Chernobyl back to mind.

The primary lesson from Japan’s recent trauma, however, is one that not everyone is willing take for what it means—that a tsunami is dangerous to everything that lies in its path, nuclear plants included.

Consider the growing needs for reliable energy, the fact that nuclear is probably the safest form of power that can meet those needs, and the unfortunate truth that fossil-fuelled alternatives emit so much earth-warming pollution that they arguably pose a much greater threat than even the darkest nuclear accident scenario.

A logician would see no reason for ambivalence, but most people are not logical when it comes to scary events. That’s why people worry about dying in a plane crash while driving to the airport, even though the drive is in fact a lot more dangerous than the flight.

So even as countries like Germany, Switzerland and, to a lesser extent, Japan, are swerving away from using nuclear energy, many faster-growing economies are staying on course or even accelerating their plans to build new reactors. They see an urgent need for vast amounts of electricity, and see no cleaner, safer, more reliable—and yes, cheaper—way to make it.

The first major transformation in nuclear technology was from atomic bombs to commercial electricity generators. The public and politicians alike were fascinated by the idea—about which there was a buzz in those early days—of electricity that would be too cheap to meter. The construction of plants around the world—more than 400 of them, as of 2010—demonstrated that nuclear power is indeed a useful way to generate energy. Although the exuberant promise of free energy never came true, the technology pretty much worked as advertised. The reactors were reliable and safe.

Despite nuclear power’s impeccable safety record, fears of leaks and meltdowns grew through the late 1960s as the environmental movement came of age and achieved important political milestones, like passage in the US of the Clean Air Act of 1970. Having cleaned up the atmosphere and public waters, many environmentalists trained their sights on eliminating nuclear power. That set the stage for the second major turning point—a turning away from nuclear energy.

That transition got a shove in 1979 from two events: The release of The China Syndrome, a fictional movie starring Jane Fonda, and the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, in the eastern United States. Public support of nuclear power flagged, and the industry was buffeted by strong economic headwinds, including a prolonged recession and a collapse in natural gas prices. The financial drag may have had more impact on the industry than the accident.

Nuclear fears and doubts trumped the perceived need. The Sierra Club and other environmental organisations lobbied for safe, ‘clean’ power plants—often, plants that burned coal. At the time, the logic must have seemed sound. Nuclear plants could, under some improbable but not impossible set of circumstances, cause large-scale environmental disaster. The 1986 disaster at Chernobyl was a case in point.

Why take the risk? What similar harm could come from burning coal? Quite a bit. As we now know, coal power plants emit enormous amounts of carbon dioxide—the main greenhouse gas that is actually changing earth’s climate. Nuclear plants do not. Today, environmental activists point to plausible scenarios in which runaway global warming causes far worse damage to the earth than if every nuclear plant on the planet were to melt down. At the most extreme, James Hansen, head of nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, offers the ‘Venus syndrome’: as warming accelerates, oceans evaporate faster, pushing more water vapour into the atmosphere. Water vapour is itself a very powerful greenhouse gas, so a vicious cycle could set in until “the ocean boils into the atmosphere, and life is extinguished”.

Now the world has focused on the danger of global warming and on the need for technologies that can supply large amounts of power all day, every day, without emitting carbon dioxide. Nuclear plants are the only proven technology that fits that bill, because they actually deliver 90 per cent of their rated capacity. That means a reactor rated at 1,000 MW pumps a full 900 MW onto the grid, averaged over a decade or so. In contrast, the vicissitudes of sunlight and wind mean that, over a similar period, a solar plant delivers less than 20 per cent of its rated peak capacity even if it is located in a sunny desert, and a wind farm generates less than 30 per cent of its potential. With no good technology at hand to store large amounts of energy, power companies must add baseload generators (nuclear, gas or coal) as backup for every wind and solar facility.

The need for low-emissions power is particularly acute in emerging economies like India and China. Estimates based on figures from the International Energy Agency show that whereas a typical American consumes the equivalent in all forms of energy of about 6,700 watts of power, averaged over a year, and a French citizen consumes about 3,500 watts, a typical resident of China draws about 1,400 watts, and someone in Africa uses a meagre 650 watts or so.

Use in China, the Middle East and Africa has been growing—and so far that’s been a good thing. In poorer parts of the world, electricity is displacing dirty sources of heat and light, like home coal or wood fires, which sicken and kill hundreds of thousands every year with their smoke and soot.

The energy problem for the 21st century is giving every citizen of earth enough energy to support a modern standard of living—a feat that probably means quadrupling the output of electrical plants worldwide. Advances in efficiency could, in principle, lower that number a bit. But more likely other factors will raise it. Today, for example, only about 1,500 watts of all the energy a typical American uses comes in the form of electricity. But if we continue to use more electricity to power cars, trains and other vehicles, demand for electrical power will probably soar another sevenfold.

Where is all that electricity going to come from?

We call earthquake-induced waves tsunami—it’s natural that we use a Japanese word, for these giant sea swells have pounded Japan with some regularity for millennia. Living near the seashore in Japan is wonderful in many ways, but it carries with it this unavoidable danger of inundation. Although the people of Japan understand that risk, their engineers and planners made some unfortunate, tragic decisions. Schools, hospitals, houses—and even nuclear reactors—were built where a tsunami could reach them.

The reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, which were designed in the era of the slide rule and are far less safe than modern reactors, were part of a plant that was created to survive a 5.7-metre tsunami. And Japan had been hit by a 29-metre tsunami as recently as 1933.

When the waves of the March tsunami, which are thought to have exceeded 14 metres at Fukushima, did sweep through the plant, consequently disabling the reactor cooling systems, reactions by operators and officials compounded the damage. The lesson that the accident at Fukushima teaches us is that nuclear plants—like hospitals, schools and other structures that are hard to evacuate quickly and safely—should not be built where tsunamis are likely to reach them.

The Germans, apparently, took away a different lesson. Although Germany is not prone to tsunamis, the German government decided this summer that it would shut down seven reactors immediately and turn off all the rest by 2022. It’s not clear whether this policy will stick, for the country decided to get rid of nuclear power once before—about a decade ago—but that planned phaseout never happened.

Nor is it clear how the country will meet the commitments it has made to make steep reductions in national carbon dioxide emissions if it turns off all its reactors. The Germans have heavily subsidised solar power and have also bet big on wind power, both of which are backed up, when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, by electricity imported mainly from nuclear plants in France, Poland and Russia. Is it really fair to call yourself a nuclear-free nation if you effectively outsource the plants?

Germany is a prosperous country, and perhaps its taxpayers can afford the financial costs of subsidising solar power, bailing out Greece, winding down nuclear power and other dubious hobbies. But money is just one of the things that is at risk here. If Germany does turn away from nuclear power, its carbon dioxide emission levels will inevitably be greater than they would have otherwise. And that will harm the environment everywhere. One hopes that, in the land of Faust, Germans understand the relevance that the bargain he struck has to their current choices.

The future of nuclear energy hinges on how we reconcile our fears with our needs. For Germans, the emission of carbon dioxide appears to be the lesser evil, at least at the moment.

But in just the past few months, Brazil, South Africa and Saudi Arabia announced plans to move ahead with the construction of new nuclear plants—16 of them, in Saudi Arabia’s case. In those nations, and in India, China and other parts of the world, where nuclear reactors are scheduled to go up by the dozens, the complex calculus of risk may yield a different result.

Formerly with Microsoft, the writer now runs Intellectual Ventures, an idea incubator firm that includes N-power in its portfolio.

Outlook, 2 January, 2012, http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?279491

Tagged with: Energy



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