Nuclear Power Radiation — Part 2

Radiation from Facility Accidents, Man-made Disasters, and Natural Disasters  

John Droz jr. May 07, 2024 @ Critically Thinking About Select Societal Issues

Recently, I posted a commentary arguing that there are good reasons to categorize Nuclear power as a “renewable” source of electrical energy, followed by another post: Nuclear Power Radiation — Part 1. That outlined radiation from normal nuclear power operations, waste, and misc. This Part 2 will briefly cover the rest of the well-known nuclear radiation possibilities…

1 - Nuclear Power Accidents

US nuclear power facilities are built to be extraordinarily safe. Even when there are accidents, there are backup systems — and often backups to the backups. The most familiar nuclear accident to us is the Three Mile Island problem in 1957. This summary states it well:

“A cooling malfunction caused part of the core to melt in a reactor, resulting in a limited off-site release of radioactivity over a multi-state area. Doses off-site were less than normal background radiation.  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission determined the accident “led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the nearby community.”

Considering the consequences, the rhetoric about this event seems out of proportion.

2 - Nuclear Power Man-Made Disasters 

The most famous case here was in Chernobyl (Ukraine: 1986). What is rarely covered by mainstream media (surprise!) is: a) there are no other nuclear reactors in the world that have the Chernobyl design, and b) the reactor failure was reportedly caused purposefully — i.e., it was not an accident.

The truth of what happened may be as evasive as the full story of the Kennedy assassination. My understanding (from reliable sources), was that there was a dispute within the facility between two groups (let’s say engineers and administrators). The issue reportedly was who was really in charge? Each group tried to “prove” to the other that they were in control — and in the process they purposefully shut off several safety mechanisms. The 100% predictable result was a catastrophic failure.

This is a reasonable account about this disaster (which soft-pedals the dispute part). Despite all the alarmism, the official total is only 45± deaths:

The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation has concluded that:

a) two Chernobyl plant workers died due to the explosion on the night of the accident,

b) 28 people died within a few weeks as a result of acute radiation syndrome, and

c) there have been 15 fatalities from thyroid cancer. Other than those 45± deaths, "there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident."

3 - Nuclear Power Natural Disasters  

The classic case here is Fukushima (Japan: 2011). Again, my understanding (from reliable sources) is not what has generally been reported. The two indisputable facts are: a) Japan was hit by a tsunami, generated by a record undersea earthquake, and b) the tsunami was so large that it flooded the diesel backup power units (sitting on the ground), that were there to properly shut down the core in an emergency.

The part that I heard was that Japanese officials had been advised prior to this event, that to be extra safe, they should elevate the backup diesel generators off the ground. That had not been done. If it had been there very likely would have been no nuclear power failure. That said, considering that there never had been anything remotely like that tsunami, their delay is understandable.

Let’s keep things in perspective:  

a) there were about 20,000 deaths due to the tsunami, and  

b) less than ten fatalities due to the nuclear power plant failures. Here is a reasonably balanced discussion of the Fukushima nuclear disasters

Takeaway Regretfully, what the mainstream media reports on any nuclear facility problem, is not an objective, factual explanation, but rather an alarmist exaggeration of reality. In other words, once again political science is trying to take over Real Science.

Considering that there are some 435 operating nuclear power facilities (worldwide), and almost all are operating basically 24/7/365, the safety of nuclear power is exceptionally good. Worldwide, over the last 60± years, less than 100 people have died from a nuclear power plant failure.

By comparison, there have been WAY more deaths related to industrial wind turbines! (See this table, where the good people tabulating the data stopped keeping track in 2012, due to the huge increase in workload.)

Another perspective is that 40,000± people die annually from US car accidents, that would roughly translate to 2 million deaths over the same 60± year period.

This is yet another example of why having critically thinking citizens is the best defense against dishonest and ignorant purveyors of information. Remember that fear is the primary tool used to control people…

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Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

• Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.
• WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.
• C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.
• Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.
• Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2023 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time - but why would you?

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We should learn what lessons from Fukushima?

Lesson #1: People died from forced evacuations, not from radiation 

Dr. Kelvin Kemm

A decade has passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake, and the name Fukushima is etched into history. But few people know the truth of what happened. The phrase, “the lessons learned from Fukushima,” is well-known. But how do people implement them, if they don’t know what happened, or what lessons they should actually learn?

It was after lunch on 11 March 2011 that a giant earthquake occurred 72 kilometers (45 miles) off the Oshika Peninsula in Japan. It registered 9.0 on the Richter Scale, making it the largest ’quake ever recorded in Japan. The undersea ground movement, over 30 km (18 miles) beneath the ocean’s surface, lifted up a huge volume of water, like an immense moving hill. Meanwhile, the ground shockwave travelled toward the land at high speed. It struck Japan and shook the ground for six terrifying minutes.

The shock wave travelled under 11 nuclear reactors, including two separate Fukushima complexes: Fukushima-Diani and Fukushima-Daiichi. (Diani means ‘Complex 1’ and Daiichi ‘Complex 2’.) All 11 reactors shut down, as they were designed to do, and no doubt all the reactor operators breathed a great sigh of relief. It was premature.

The mound of sea water was still traveling. As the water “hill” entered shallow water, nearer the land, it was lifted up into a towering wave as high as 40 meters (130 feet!) in places. Then, some 50 minutes after the earthquake, the tsunami struck the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station. Some kilometres away, when water struck the Fukushima-Diani nuclear power station, it was “only” 9 m (30 ft) high, which was not as devastating as at Daiichi. Diani did not make it into the news.

The water jumped the protective sea walls at Fukushima-Daiichi. The sighs of relief from a half hour before turned into concern and dread. Over at the Fukushima Diani power station, 12 km (7 mi) to the south, water also caused damage to machinery, but the reactors were not harmed. There was no risk of radiation release, so the Diani power station was of no interest to the international media. Diani was safely shut down to “cold shutdown” after two days.

As a result, over the past decade, any reference to “Fukushima” has meant only the Daiichi power station and not the other one.

The devastating tsunami swept up to 10 km (6 mi) inland in places, washing away buildings, roads, and telecommunication and power lines. Over 15,000 people were killed, mainly by drowning.

Although all the nuclear reactors had shut down to a state known as “hot shutdown,” the reactors were still very hot and needed residual cooling for many hours after the urgent fast shutdown. People instinctively know not to put their hands on the engine block of a car right after it has been switched off. Nuclear reactors are the same and need to cool down until they reach the safe state known as “cold shutdown.”

A nuclear reactor has pumps that send water through the reactor until it cools. But the Fukushima electrical pumps failed, because the tsunami had washed away the incoming electricity power lines. So the reactor system automatically switched to diesel-driven generators to keep the cooling pumps going; but the water had washed away the diesel fuel supply, meaning the diesels worked for only a short while. Then it switched to emergency batteries; but the batteries were never designed to last for days, and could supply emergency power for only about eight hours.

The result was that hot fuel could not be adequately cooled, and over the next three or four days the fuel in three reactors melted, much like a candle melts.

The world media watched, and broadcast the blow-by-blow action. Japanese authorities started to panic under the international spotlight. The un-circulating cooling water was boiling off inside the reactors resulting in a chemical reaction between hot fuel exposed to hot steam. This led to the production of hydrogen gas. As the steam pressure rose, the engineers decided to open valves to release the pressure. That worked as planned, but it released the hydrogen as well.

Hydrogen, being light, rose up to the roof, where the ventilation system was not working, because there was no electricity. After a while some stray spark ignited the hydrogen which exploded, blowing the lightweight roof off the building right in front of the world’s TV cameras. The Fukushima news just became much more dramatic. Authorities were desperate to show the world some positive action.

They progressively ordered the evacuation of 160,000 people living around the Fukushima neighbourhood. That was a mistake. As days and weeks passed, it materialized that not one single person was killed by nuclear radiation. Not one single person was even injured by nuclear radiation, either. Even today, a decade later, there is still no sign of any longer-term radiation harm to any person or animal. Sadly, however, people did die during the forced evacuation.

So one of the lessons learned from Fukushima is that a huge amount of nuclear power can be struck by the largest earthquake and tsunami ever recorded, and nobody gets harmed by nuclear radiation.

Another lesson learned is that an evacuation order issued too hastily did harm and kill people.

World Nuclear Association Director-General Dr. Sama Bilbao y León said: “The rapidly implemented and protracted evacuation has resulted in well-documented significant negative social and health impacts. In total, the evacuation is thought to have been responsible for more than 2,000 premature deaths among the 160,000 who were evacuated. The rapid evacuation of the frail elderly, as well at those requiring hospital care, had a near-immediate toll.” [emphasis added]

She added: “When facing future scenarios concerning public health and safety, whatever the event, it is important that authorities take an all-hazards approach. There are risks involved in all human activities, not just nuclear power generation. Actions taken to mitigate a situation should not result in worse impacts than the original events. This is particularly important when managing the response to incidents at nuclear facilities – where fear of radiation may lead to an overly conservative assessment and a lack of perspective for relative risks.”

Thus, a decade later, we can contemplate the cumulative lessons learned. Above all, they are that nuclear power is far safer than anyone had thought. Even when dreaded core meltdowns occurred, and although reactors were wrecked, resulting in a financial disaster for the owners, no people were harmed by radiation.

We also learned that, for local residents, it would have been far safer to stay indoors in a house than to join the forced evacuation. We also learned that governments and authorities must listen to the nuclear professionals, and not overreact, even though the television news cameras look awfully close.

Fukushima certainly produced some valuable lessons. Governments, news media and the public need to learn the correct lessons from them.

Dr Kelvin Kemm is a nuclear physicist and is CEO of Stratek Business Strategy Consultants, a project management company based in Pretoria. He conducts business strategy development and project planning in a wide variety of fields for diverse clients. Contact him at Stratek@pixie.co.za