Nuclear Power Plans for More Disasters

[Tom Rinaldo]

30. Yes. This is key

I have long opposed nuclear energy with two arguments central to my conclusion. You make note of both here. One is the unreliability of humans above and beyond the reliability of the technology we devise. The other is the extreme mulch-dimensional aspect of a nuclear catastrophe I have argued that it wasn't the vulnerability to a tsunami that make Fukushima so dangerous, it was the inherent human tendency to cut corners and fail to properly prepare for contingencies that were seen as unlikely. In Japan it turned out to be a tsunami, somewhere else it may prove to be a coordinated terrorist attack that "no one could have foreseen". Somewhere else it could be defective building materials and faked inspections that officials were bribed to sign off on.

In Southern California it could end up being the Hosgri earthquake fault that was discovered and initially covered up after the plans for the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power plant had already been approved. It was literally during a massive civil disobedience blockade of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power plant in the early 80's that an engineer blew the whistle on the inconvenient fact that somehow the plant owners, PG&E, had screwed up installing the earthquake supports that were ordered for the two units after the new fault line was discovered running very close to the plant. The two units had symmetrical but inverted layouts, and millions of dollars worth of retrofitting on each got installed for both using blueprints that, in each case, were intended for the opposing unit. Which meant that the retrofits were useless and added no structural strength to either unit. Although it has never been confirmed I am certain that the very expensive error that took years to subsequently correct would never have been revealed had thousands of protesters and international media not been converging on Diablo Canyon on the literal day when the error "was discovered".

This is where the second issue which I call the mulch-dimensional aspect of the nuclear threat comes in. When engineers screw up the design of a parking garage, or contractors shave cost with lower grade steel, and it collapses a tragedy can follow, but that tragedy is contained for the most part to the immediate vicinity and to those lives that were directly touched by the physical collapse of that structure. Radiation is different. Virtually all releases into the atmosphere or seas ultimately move toward global. Radiation is ingested and moves up the food chain. Microscopic partials lodge in the body and can cause death a decade or more later. Radiation can mutate our genes making the threat it causes inter-generational. Because of the half life of the radioactive isotopes created and released large areas of land and major water bodies can become fatally contaminated for decades, centuries, or longer.

Nuclear wastes must be isolated from the environment for eons. Not only does that require technology that we have not mastered, it requires an assumption of extremely long term societal stability regardless of the technology utilized. The United States government still can't safely contain radioactive wastes that we are actively monitoring in Washington State a half century after it was created. Japan, another first world nation, can't contain the radioactive sea water it is creating trying to prevent further fuel melt downs at Fukushima. Both nations are among the richest in the world and have full access to state of the art technology. What about the rest of the world where nuclear power plants operate? During my lifetime the Soviet Union collapsed and Iran went from being a front line U.S. client state to being one of this nations leading Geo-political adversaries. Pakistan may become as ungovernable some time in the not so distant future as Somalia is today. How many civilizations have come and gone during the half life of plutonium?