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Subject: Michio Kaku's advice to Japan's Prime Minister Kan
http://tenthousandthingsfromkyoto.blogspot.com/2011/03/physicist-michio-kaku-we-are-witnessing.html
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The Rachel Maddow show, last night, and Democracy Now, this morning, continue to present the most honest, comprehensive and articulate coverage of the nuclear disaster developing in
The Risks of Nuclear Roulette
Chris Williams, author of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis,
explains how nuclear industry practices and government policies set the
stage for a nuclear disaster in
the worst in history.
March 15, 2011
Checking for signs of radiation among children evacuated from near the Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant (Kim Kyung-Hoon)
THE DESPERATE nuclear emergency at three Japanese nuclear reactors is
growing worse by the day. One of the three stricken reactors at the
Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant is now close to complete meltdown.
Should this happen, molten uranium fuel may burn through the containment
vessels, leading to a catastrophic release of radiation over the
surrounding area.
"We are on the brink," Hiroaki Koide, a nuclear specialist in
"We are now facing the worst-case scenario. We can assume that the
containment vessel at Reactor No. 2 is already breached. If there is
heavy melting inside the reactor, large amounts of radiation will most
definitely be released."
Incredibly, even in the midst of this crisis, the nuclear power
industry and its political enablers are sticking to their story--that
nuclear energy is a clean and safe alternative to fossil fuels. For
example, Kevin Book, energy analyst at ClearView Energy Partners
commented, "The problem here is not a structural problem with
containment. What really failed here was the seawall." Jack Spencer, a
nuclear research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, insisted, "This has
done nothing to show we should not be building nuclear power plants."
In other words, don't worry, maybe there were a few oversights here
and there, but we'll get it right next time. The problem with nuclear
disasters is, of course, that while they perfect their nuclear safety
technology--60 years and counting--a lot of people may die as large
areas of land, sea and air are irradiated, with huge and irreversible
long-term consequences.
In an utterly ludicrous statement in the midst of the Japanese
crisis, the previous head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,
Christine Todd Whitman, said that working in a nuclear power plant is
"safer than working in a grocery store."
As is usual with the nuclear industry--and has been ever since we
were told that electricity produced by nuclear power would be "too cheap
to meter"--not everything is as it seems. In fact, the Japanese
government's nuclear regulatory agency was warned that a tsunami
following an earthquake could cause exactly the kind of cooling failure
that is now occurring. As with other nuclear bodies around the world, it
also has a history of cover-ups.
In 2007, Japanese seismologist and professor of urban safety at Kobe
University Ishibashi Katsuhiko warned that Japanese plants built along
the coast near fault lines have a "fundamental vulnerability" due to
"fatal flaws" in their construction, thereby making an accident such as
the one now occurring at
Katsuhiko pointed to three incidents at nuclear plants at Onagawa,
Shika and Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, which were all hit by earthquakes stronger
than their design tolerance between 2005 and 2007. No action was taken
after these accidents, despite a two-hour blaze and radiation leak at
the Kashiwazaki plant.
Contrary to the rather encouraging spin being placed on the
crisis--and following the initial denial of any problem at all by the
Japanese agency responsible for nuclear power--the New York Times
reported a senior nuclear industry executive as saying, "They're
basically in a full-scale panic...They're in total disarray, they don't
know what to do."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
FOR A country permanently scarred by the nuclear atrocities of
nuclear engineers and workers scramble to avoid losing complete control
at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant.
Some 300,000 people have been told to evacuate. Up to 200 people have
been reported as having been exposed to radiation poisoning, and iodine
tablets have been distributed to counteract its effect. The American
warship USS Ronald Reagan has detected radiation 100 miles away from the
disaster site.
It is to be fervently hoped that emergency workers attempting to
regain control of the reactor vessels will be successful, and any leak
of radiation contained. However, increasingly desperate and untested
methods are now being tried, as all regular back-ups have failed under
the weight of events.
The crisis began mid-afternoon on Friday, March 1. The massive
earthquake 50 miles off the northeast coast of
automatic shutdown of the reactors at the Daiichi and nearby Daini
atomic plants.
earthquakes before--most recently, the 1995
What no one had bargained for in this instance was a titanic wall of
water that would overwhelm
high, 250 feet long and large enough to alter the orbit of the earth,
with a power equivalent to a nuclear bomb, the tsunami was hurtled
toward land, crashing over and through the vast network of coastal
defense systems.
massive concrete breakwater barriers along 40 percent of its coastline,
which rear up out of the sea as high as 30 feet. But these defenses were
completely overwhelmed by the tsunami.
As it crashed into land and inundated towns, the tsunami also swamped
the first backup power system for the reactors. Diesel generators at
the plants, designed to kick in emergency power to keep the reactor
cores within tolerable temperature limits when the electricity grid
fails, were inundated with seawater.
According to reports, the buildings housing the generators were
placed in low-lying land because no one thought a tsunami could reach
them--buildings that are currently underwater.
The loss of electrical power is critical because even after the
nuclear fission reactions have been terminated in the reactor's core,
the heat buildup continues for weeks and months as the result of ongoing
nuclear reactions. It is therefore imperative that electrical power be
maintained in order to operate machinery that can circulate coolant
through the core in order to avoid a catastrophic meltdown.
But with the failure of the power grid and the backup generator, the
nuclear plants were forced to rely on a third backup power system:
emergency batteries. These, however, are designed to last a maximum of
eight hours under the best of conditions.
By that time, it was assumed, power either from the diesel generators
or the main grid would be restored. Yet given the destruction cased by
the earthquake and tsunami, neither of those is likely for some time.
Thus, the batteries failed sometime Saturday night at two reactors at
Daiichi.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
BY THE early hours of Saturday morning, workers were authorized to
make a last-ditch attempt to prevent temperatures rising in the core.
As temperatures rise, the coolant water that surrounds the core is
boiled off, exposing the uranium fuel rods, which are encased in
protective Zirconium cladding, to the air, allowing them to heat
further. This begins to rupture the cladding, which then allows the
uranium fuel pellets to melt, precipitating further melting and so on.
It is now clear that partial meltdowns of the core have occurred in all
three incapacitated reactor vessels in Daiichi, and possibly at another
plant 10 miles away in Daini.
Workers were given clearance from central government officials to
pump seawater into the damaged reactor vessels. Nobody knew whether this
would work, but it was the only thing left to do.
When seawater is pumped in, in order to release the immense build-up
of pressure that occurs as the water is boiled and turns into
super-heated steam, it has to be vented to the outside. It was likely
this venting that caused the multiple explosions that blew the roof off
the concrete containment building.
Workers have to balance pumping in seawater to cool the reactor with
venting the superheated--and now radioactive--steam out of the reactor
core to prevent another explosion. Unfortunately, temperature gauges in
the reactor core were by this time malfunctioning, and vents are failing
to close or open.
This is the most likely the reason that radioactive substances that
are normally contained within the reactor cores--such as the highly
dangerous cesium, strontium and iodine isotopes--have been detected in
the surrounding area. While the primary containment vessels remain
intact, radioactive steam needs to be vented, and now the secondary
outer containment vessel no longer has a roof.
The effects of these substances on the human body are catastrophic.
Radioactive cesium takes the place of potassium as an electrolyte in the
body, radioactive iodine goes straight to uptake by the thyroid gland,
and strontium will be selected in place of calcium for bone formation.
This is why iodine tablets are being distributed to people in the
surrounding areas--to try to saturate the bodies of exposed people and
prevent too much radioactive iodine from being incorporated into
peoples' bodies.
The operator of the nuclear plant, Tokyo Electric Power, has now
confirmed that the desperate pumping in of seawater failed to work at
reactor number 2, leading to fuel rods being exposed for several hours.
Should this continue, a full meltdown is almost certain. In this
case, all of the fuel rods will melt, rupture the cladding and
potentially melt through the primary and secondary containment vessels.
This will create a situation where either the entire reactor core will
explode due to an uncontrollable pressure build-up or the molten
radioactive material will burn through to the ground, where it will
interact with cold earth and create another explosion of radioactive
material.
There are many other hazards that come into play. For example, on the
roof of the secondary containment vessels, in similar fashion to all
nuclear plants around the world, spent nuclear fuel rods sit in pools of
water--they have to be kept cool for several years after use due to
ongoing nuclear decay. All of the water used for this purpose itself
becomes radioactive. It's highly likely that the roof explosion damaged
the integrity of the containment system for these rods, too, further
complicating the dangerously escalating situation at Daiichi.
No country in the world has a plan for what to do with the spent fuel
from nuclear reactors, nor all of the highly radioactive material from
the plants themselves when they are eventually decommissioned--a lengthy
and extremely expensive process in itself.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
WHETHER A full meltdown and core breach happens or not--and let us
all hope it does not--the catastrophe in Japan underlines the argument
that anti-nuclear campaigners and socialists have made since the
inception of nuclear power: There is no such thing as a safe nuclear
plant.
For every contingency and back-up plan, there will always be
something unexpected that overwhelms even the best preparations. And
when those plans center around preventing the general release of
something as inherently toxic as nuclear radiation, the only rational
answer is to avoid the problem in the first place.
The nuclear disaster at
the catastrophe of the original earthquake and ensuing tsunami that
caused a death toll in the tens of thousands by itself--has worldwide
implications. Many plants in the
One simple question must be: What kind of system makes constructing
nuclear plants on known earthquake fault lines seem a sensible
alternative to building energy sources such as wind turbines and solar
panels?
Beyond that, a reinvigorated anti-nuclear movement--determined to
stop the spread of this insanely wasteful, hugely uneconomic and
inherently dangerous form of energy--now has to respond.
This is an urgent priority. With new nuclear plants or the
reauthorization of old ones being planned around the world in response
to climate change and the nuclear industry's attempts to cast itself as
an environmentally benign, safe and "green" alternative to fossil fuels,
many mainstream environmental groups have succumbed to the arguments of
the pro-nuclear camp.
It's time for anti-nuclear activists and socialists to step up our activity and say once again: Nuclear power--no thanks!
In
50,000 people protested against Chancellor Angela Merkel's policy of
extending the life of old nuclear plants for another 12 years. She has
been forced to put those plans on hold.
Sentiment in this country remains solidly anti-nuclear. A recent poll in the Wall Street Journal
showed that three-quarters of Americans back the elimination of tax
credits for oil and gas companies to reduce the federal deficit, and 57
percent deem it "mostly" or "totally" acceptable to "significantly cut"
subsidies to new nuclear power plants. This is in direct contrast to
President Barack Obama's offer of new loan guarantees to the nuclear
industry worth more than $50 billion.
Instead, the number one and number two choices for raising money, by
overwhelming majorities, were eliminating congressional earmarks and
imposing a tax on millionaires--neither of which are on offer from the
Democrats and Republicans.
It's up to us to go out and organize once again around the demand: No nukes!
http://socialistworker.org/2011/03/15/risks-of-nuclear-roulette
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