As bad as it's gotten
Rulemaking is based on the best available data. So what has been learned from previous close calls from nuclear and nonnuclear incidents alike? On March 28, 1979, the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania suffered a partial meltdown that led to the release of radioactive materials. In the fog of confusion that surrounded the event, Pennsylvania government officials advised children and pregnant women within a five-mile radius of the facility to leave. That radius of evacuation ultimately extended some 20-miles around the plant, although the majority of local residents did not evacuate. Those who stayed were urged to remain indoors and farmers were urged to shelter their animals and feed them stored food.
In the end, despite the partial meltdown and release of radioactive material, numerous studies have found limited or no health effects. But the worst accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power history did point out flaws in evacuation planning. "Three Mile Island was a very enlightening accident in terms of how an accident progresses," Milligan notes.
First and foremost, it became clear that nuclear accidents to date, including Fukushima, are slow-moving affairs. In the case of Fukushima, there were at least 14 hours between the loss of electricity to power the pumps keeping cooling water on the nuclear fuel and a melt down. In nonnuclear emergencies, such as the release of toxic gases, only minutes may pass before catastrophe hits. "When there's conditions immediately dangerous to life and health, you don't have hours, you have significantly less time than that to get people out of the way of chlorine gas or a wildfire," Milligan says. Nuclear accidents also tend to affect a much smaller area than, for example, a major hurricane like Katrina that covered a swath of territory 400 miles wide and caused approximately two million people to evacuate Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi coastal areas. "Evacuations can occur very effectively and very quickly in this country," Milligan adds.
Evacuations around nuclear power plants in the U.S. are rare but getting people out and away from their homes is relatively commonplace. Evacuations of more than 1,000 people occur all too frequently in the U.S.--230 occurred between 1990 and 2003, a 2005 study from Sandia National Laboratories found. "A significant evacuation occurs on average every three weeks," Milligan notes, for causes ranging from deadly chlorine clouds to wildfires. "Almost all are ad hoc evacuations," meaning no one has practiced or planned for such events, unlike the nuclear industry. For example, a chemical fire and explosions at a hazardous waste facility in Apex, N.C., required the evacuation of approximately 17,000 people in a roughly four-mile radius late on the night of October 5, 2006, although the officials charged with carrying it out could call on the planning for the 10-mile evacuation zone around the Shearon Harris nuclear plant nearby.
Still, radioactive iodine released from a nuclear power plant accident can travel far and fast. To cope with that, the NRC requires that potassium iodide pills that can block the human thyroid from taking up radioactive iodine be available to those living within 10 miles of a plant--but no further. "You could get a dose out at 50 miles, especially to children, that significantly increases their likelihood of getting thyroid cancer later in life," notes physicist Frank von Hippel of Princeton University, co-chair of the International Panel on Fissile Materials. "I would have chosen 50 miles or even beyond for potassium iodide availability on an emergency basis."
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13 Comments
Add CommentA very possible solar storm can cause meltdowns at hundreds of nuclear plants.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee 400 Chernobyls? on the Aesop Institute website.
Imagine the impact if we fail to take wise action to minimize the damage!
The solar flare will be dec 21. Sounds like a good plan . The nuclear war follows. The asteroid hit prediction may do the same....or worse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Mark...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes Mark, multiple meltdowns are a possible result of a massive solar flare as big as, or larger than, the Carrington Event in the 1800's. But they could also be triggered by a successful EMP attack.
The problem is that even if the reactors could be "shut down" by fully inserting the control rods after a complete loss of main and back up power sources their are nuclear elements created in an operating reactor core that will still generate heat for hours to days after the shut down.
That, and the residual heat, in the core will result in a melt down even after shut down because there will be no power to run the cooling pumps and even gravity fed water reserves will not last long enough to prevent the melt down since in a massive solar flare or EMP event the power will be off for far too long.
But that isn't the end of the problem. It will just add to the panic, rioting, looting and other insanities that would be the result of the loss of all transportation, communications, police and fire services for an extended period of time.
So, while a good plan for dealing with a single melt down could save many lives; the chaos caused by a flare or EMP event would render any plan useless since there would be no way to implement it.
Dec 21 Eh, Mayan calendar event?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere in Normandy we have twice seen freezing fog cause 4 inch thick black ice which weighs down everything, causing trees to fragment, and all power lines and pylons to collapse. No electricity, so no pumps, so no tapwater, and no telephones, no gas in filling stations, and impossible to travel or get supplies in.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe same thing happened to Quebec. Nuclear power plants would have gone into meltdown if there had been any during such weather. So no evacuation would have been possible...
Please, someone, make a list of all fatalities due to the U.S. nuclear industry (include mining). Now, compare that to a list of all fatalities due to the production of electricity by coal (include mining).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow, make a list of alternative power sources for base-load power? Okay.
A very good look at the topic. One issue briefly noted is that sometimes an evacuation isn't necessary to ensure public safety. However, given the public attitude toward radiation it is not difficult to picture a shelter order being ignored in favor of hopping in the car and speeding away. Then there is evacaution based on the future possibility of a nasty plume occuring. As noted, these can be slow-moving events. I'd bet the local officials (who make the final call on that sort of thing) would tend to lean toward the conservative run-away approach. But moving that many scared people has its own dangers. … So if there's a 30% chance of an event proceeding to meltdown and a 80% chance that evacuation will lead to injuries from car accidents, what is the right call? (That assumes, of course, the public pays attention to the order once they've learned of the emergency.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've looked in detail at a (hypothetical) plant event in the US similar to Fukushima through my perspective as a longtime nuclear industry engineer. My novel "Rad Decision" is available free online. (Just google the title - its all there. No ads, no sponsors.) As this article makes clear, there's a lot more to these things on all sides of the argument than you might at first suppose. The more we understand, the better decisions we'll make.
Not to downplay the huge mess that is Fukushima, but let us remember that in the absence of nuclear power something else will need to be in operation to generate a massive power output. Coal, natural gas, even windmills and solar panels each have their own pros and cons - especially when scaled up to nuclear size.
There is a surprising possibility that a strong solar storm will change the energy and economic landscape in the near future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe odds we will be spared such a nightmare are not good.
A solar megastorm can collapse critical power grids worldwide.
That opens the door to meltdowns of large numbers of nuclear plants.
See the Aesop Institute website for an overview.
Wise action to minimize the impact can sharply accelerate superseding fossil and nuclear fuels. It would also boost the economy and generate jobs.
New technologies can protect the grid and may be able to provide the missing long-term standby power at nuclear plants.
Black Swans, highly improbable energy innovations with incredible implications are being born. They can provide cheap green decentralized power - faster than might be imagined.
We may soon recognize we are in an unanticipated race for human survival.
If we wake up soon enough, there is a chance we can do what is necessary.
But, at the moment, lack of recognition of this mortal threat does not lead to optimism.
Such a storm would dwarf the impact of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
What is needed is a world-wide response equal to the challenge - which can be viewed as similar to an attack on all humanity.
We are playing Russian Roulette with the sun...and are bound to lose if we continue to ignore the problem.
Nonsense. Maintaining cooling during a loss of Grid Power is a MINIMUM acceptable standard for all Nuclear Power plants. You are being ridiculous. The problem in Fukushima came not from loss of Grid Power but the flooding of their Emergency Power Generators, which were stupidly located at a low level, and the associated switchgear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe NRC has determined that all NPP's in the USA can withstand an EMP, Solar Flare or Geomagnetic event without loss of Emergency Power to maintain Cooling sufficiently.
But after the Fukushima incident, plans are being developed to establish a fast response International Agency that can quickly air drop containment/cooling equipment/generators/personal to any Nuclear LOCA event. This is a similar plan to the one drafted to contain a Mega-Oil-Spill, like the DeepWater Horizon one in the Gulf of Mexico, using specialized equipment, kept ready to move fast to any such disaster.
Events happen, planes crash, ships sink, pipelines explode, chemical plants release deadly toxic clouds. Morons respond by demanding complete shutdown of all facilities forever, sensible people examine what happened, why it happened and determined actions that can be done to prevent it, within an acceptable probability level.
You can't ignore probability:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2012/03/02/the-fukushima-question-how-close-did-japan-really-get-to-a-widespread-nuclear-disaster/
The Worst Possible Accident, there is no such thing. by Bernie Cohen:
"...imagine a gasoline spill causing a fire that would wipe out a whole city, killing most of its inhabitants. It might require a lot of improbable circumstances combining together, like water lines being frozen to prevent effective fire fighting, a traffic jam aggravated by street construction or traffic accidents limiting access to fire fighters, some substandard gas lines which the heat from the fire caused to leak, a high wind frequently shifting to spread the fire in all directions, a strong atmospheric temperature inversion after the whole city has become engulfed in flame to keep the smoke close to the ground, a lot of bridges and tunnels closed for various reasons, eliminating escape routes, some errors in advising the public, and so forth. Each of these situations is improbable, so a combination of many of them occurring in sequence is highly improbable, but it is certainly not impossible..."
dwbd : I doubt if you have ever seen the effects of massive freezing fog : Nuclear power station roofs would probably collapse under the weight of ice. This happened to the superphenix fast breeder reactor in france with just 40cm of snow! Black ice will jam solid any any electromecanical devices such as emergency pumps, sealed in six inches of hard crystalline ice. And piping bends and snaps under the weight which it was never designed to withstand. Personally I have lived through two ten day periods of freezing fog and everything was paralysed, with no water or food in shops and impossible to walk or drive, so no evacuation possible. If the freezing fog had lasted any longer there wouldn't have been a single tree or bush left standing. Everything collapses under the weight of the ice. Tell me which nuclear plants are designed to support that! And remember that the colling water source will have frozen up too...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYep I have, if Nuclear Power plant would collapse under the weight of ice, then EVERY - I repeat EVERY building in the effective area would be down - every one. And there wouldn't be a tree or power line left standing. And all city water lines would be broken. And NG & Oil supply lines would be broken causing massive fires that could not be extinguished because all the fire trucks would be dead.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are being ridiculous, Ice Storms are one of the first things Nuclear Risk Assessment planners take a hard look at, and if there is any chance - like 1 in one million reactor-years, they would order counter-measures - which wouldn't really be all that difficult.
dwbd : What were the odds of an earthquake and tsunami taking out the Fukushima plant? The planners got it wrong, including the french security experts. Have you never heard of Murphy's Law?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYeah, and you don't give a damn about the 3 million who die every year from your fossil fuel emissions - that's not might, possibly, some day, if there is a 1000 yr event possibly maybe a couple may day. That's WILL, DEFINITELY CERTAINLY DIE - a long with millions of acres of wildlife of plants. You don't care about that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd thousands that die from your deadly natural gas explosions and oil mega-fires and mega-spills. You don't care about that either. And Coal mountain top removal and 80,000 mine workers killed in the past 10 yrs. You don't care about them either. Or mega hydro disasters.