The Grit: U.S. Ramps Up Nuclear Power
On March 11, 2011, the Fukushima nuclear plant, on the eastern coast of Japan, was engulfed by a tsunami, which led to one of the most serious radiation escapes in history.
Key safety systems failed, and three of the plant’s six reactors went into meltdown.
Within a month, 370,000 terabecquerels of radiation had leaked into the environment, contaminating food and sea water, and requiring the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from a hastily set-up exclusion zone.
The exact scale of the damage is still unknown. Although no lives were lost as a direct result of the Fukushima meltdown, no one can say for sure the radiation won’t have an effect on people living nearby, or on their descendants.
The first nation to blink was Germany. Much to the bewilderment of many Western politicians, the German Environment minister, in May last year, announced the immediate cancellation of Germany’s nuclear program. Given 23 percent of Germany’s power currently comes from nuclear, this is a staggering undertaking. But by 2020, the world’s fourth largest economy will be nuclear-free. The tsunami made the world think again about nuclear energy, and the potential risks involved in deriving power from a potentially unstable source.
There are some people who think the German decision to can nuclear power is a populist reaction to a media-hyped disaster, but there are an equal number who look at Germany’s determination to become a global leader in renewable energies and conclude that if any country can do it, it can.
No other country has been so bold. China, Britain, France and India’s politicians are wedded to a nuclear future. In fact, many former anti-nuclear environmentalists have reluctantly come to the conclusion that nuclear power is mankind’s only hope.
Charging into this debate comes the good old U-S-of-A. Symbolically nailing its flag firmly to the radioactive mast, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has just approved America’s first nuclear power plant since 1978, the year before the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania. Two new reactors will be built at Vogtle, in Augusta, Georgia. They will cost $14 billion and come on stream within five years, creating at least 4,000 construction jobs in the process.
Just under 20 percent of America’s power comes from its 104 existing nuclear plants, which are spread across 31 states and operated by 30 different power companies.
All are based on designs which are at least 30 years old. A third are boiling water reactors, the same technology as the Fukushima reactor in Japan. Furthermore, 12 Fukushima-vintage reactors sit on seismically active land. Gulp!
Proponents of the new wave of nuclear power argue that modern technology has vastly reduced the risk of another Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or Fukushima from happening, and it would be somewhat worrying if nuclear safety hadn’t improved since the ’70s. So why did the man in charge of America’s nuclear program, the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, vote against the approval of Augusta’s two new reactors this month?
“I simply cannot authorize issuance of these licenses,” he wrote, “without any binding obligation that these plants will have implemented the lessons learned from the Fukushima accident before they operate.”
He was out-voted.
The human race could not progress without convincing itself that potentially catastrophic decisions are worth taking. On the flip-side, we only ever find out how wrong we can be in retrospect.
This worry is at the heart of the campaign to stop Augusta’s new plant, and the wider, global anti-nuclear movement.
In the meantime, we keep tossing the nuclear coin and mostly, we get lucky.
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