Concurrent Reactions
By Mitch Berg
The ongoing disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant shows the perils of following the left’s policy on nuclear power.
The debris from the first hydrogen blast had barely settled when DFL-affiliated bloggers and tweeps started chanting “yeah, good job trying to lift Minnesota’s nuke moratorium! Haha! You are teh stupid!”.
We’ll come back to the DFL’s dim-witted politicization in a moment.
The headlines paint a dire (and direly confused) picture of the situation at the Fukushima plant, it’d seem nuke opponents have a point. Things sound bad.
But let’s make sure we’re clear on the facts: the Fukushima plant, like all Japanese plants, were designed to withstand ground motion equal to twice that occurring in a 1000-year quake – which in that part of Honshu is in the low 8-point Richter range (it’s not a perfect measurement scale, since Richter measures energy release, not ground motion). The Japanese earthquake was 9 points on the Richter scale – 5-10 times as intense. And yet by all indications so far, the containment vessels – the steel, lead and concrete capsule that contains the actual reactor cores – are holding up. It was the release of the intensely interactive fuel from the core – many thousands of times more intense than the fairly limited hydrogen and steam-borne radiation we’ve seen from Fukushima – that made Chernobyl the disaster it was. Bear in mind, Chernobyl had no containment vessel. The reactor cooling at Fukushima, of course, seems not to have been up to the damage it suffered in the earthquake and tsunami – or, more directly, to the complete loss of the power grid and backup diesel generators to run the cooling systems.
“Is it wise to build nuclear power plants in areas prone to very serious earthquakes and tsunamis” is a very, very valid question. It is a fact that engineering can make almost anything withstand almost any disaster imaginable – but the costs escalate drastically, as well. Power utilities can no more afford to buy plants that can survive every possible disaster than you can afford to buy a car that will protect you from every possible highway accident. Perhaps building nuke plants in active high-risk quake zones, or low-lying coastal areas, isn’t so smart.
You’ll note, by the way, that Minnesota is prone to neither earthquakes nor tsunamis.
Now, according to the latest reports from Japan, the biggest radiation danger is coming from a fire in a building that contains spent nuclear fuel – uranium that no longer can support a nuclear reaction, but is still radioactive. It’s being kept, basically, in a swimming pool – because water is an incredibly effective radiation shield…
…unless it boils away due to a fire in the building, which seems to be what may be happening.
Now, the people at Fukushima are dealing with conditions that are unimaginably difficult – even finding food to eat in that area is difficult, without having to deal with a damaged nuke plant and all the things that can go wrong.
But the best way to prevent nuclear waste from getting caught up in a building fire is to get it out of the building, and put it someplace where a fire is both impossible and irrelevant. Say, miles underground.
Which has been proposed in the United State for over twenty years; the Yucca Flats waste storage facility would have made disasters like the potential blazing waste plume at Fukushima impossible. But the American left – the “environmental” movement, in this case – scuppered that idea. Partly because of the danger of transporting waste by rail (real, but manageable); partly because of danger to future generations thousands of years from now if the signage, for example, got obscured.
Which leaves us with fifty-odd nuclear waste sites more or less like the one at Fukushima today – including two in Minnesota – vulnerable, in extreme circumstances, to the same kind of disaster.
Thanks, Democrats.
But the issue of waste disposal can’t be laid at the feet of the DFL alone; it’s a national issue.
What we can lay at their feet is the economy-crippling shortsightedness of cutting off Minnesota’s energy-production nose because of an accident that could not be replicated in Minnesota, or for that matter most of the US; with a 45-year-old reactor design, arguably built in an inadvisable place, with backup power that couldn’t withstand twin disasters that are exceedingly rare to nonexistant away from the American west coast.
Especially given that advances in nuclear technology promise to make proposed nuke plants meltdown-proof by replacing mechanical and human safeguards -which are fallible – with the laws of physics.
March 15th, 2011 at 12:49 pm
So which is safer?
Keeping 40+ year old designs and plants running? Or replacing them with more modern designs? Or replacing them with coal burning plants that will emit more radiation than 3 Mile Island every year?
Note that flying unicorns and “green energy” are not considered since they’re about equally likely.
March 15th, 2011 at 12:51 pm
I got this in an email from one of Minnesotas senators today:
“A barrel of oil now costs … Average gas prices in our state are …The only real solution is for us to decrease our dependence on foreign oil and shift our country to homegrown renewable energy — something we already do a lot of in Minnesota”
Why do I assume the senator is thinking of energy generated by the functional equivalent of unicorns and lollipops?
I think the name says it all: Senator Franken. And he’s going on a “Renewable Energy Listening Tour”.
He continues:
“As a new member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee …”
Houston, we have a problem.
March 15th, 2011 at 1:25 pm
“Renewable Energy Listening Tour”
It would more appropriately be called:
“Kowtowing to Subsidized Factory Farm and Sierra Club Wack-a-doo Tour.”
or
“The handout of barrels of cash for ADM and GE Tour.”
March 15th, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Minnesota is prone to neither earthquakes nor tsunamis.
Mentally ill Democrat governors? That’s another threat.
And Troy, Al Franken is from NYC. What he knows about Minnesota can be carried in a very thin Manilla envelope.
March 15th, 2011 at 2:41 pm
This seems like a good time to remind you Twin Cities folks that I do not recycle. The state charges a six-cent per container beverage deposit, but I don’t use enough beverage containers to make it worthwhile to store & redeem the bottles. Into the landfill they go!
Also paper and plastic. They have bins for these disposables down at the landfill, but I don’t use them. Into the landfill they go!
It is the job of the State to serve my needs, not my job to serve its needs.
March 15th, 2011 at 3:33 pm
Future aluminum and plastic miners will thank you, Terry!
March 15th, 2011 at 3:49 pm
Since the first breeder reactor came online in 1952, there have been 27 “notable” incidents at nuc plants. The death toll? 50; all at Chernobel (sp).
We lose more people skydiving in 1 year than the world has lost in 60. Get those rods glowin’ boys.
March 15th, 2011 at 8:58 pm
Can’t build new because there is no place for the waste (Obama Administration scrapped Yucca so now the government must start over) yet the President says he is for nuclear power generation. Governor Dayton will allow nuclear if the utility company that builds it never raises it’s rates. Why just nuclear Governor? Ban rate increases forever for all utilities period so the playing field is fair. Shees! And these are our leaders?
March 15th, 2011 at 9:32 pm
Minnesota has some very stable geology up north. Ideal for storing radioactive waste.
Where I live there is very little exposed rock that is more than a few thousand years old. There are a few places in MN where the old basalt has been exposed by blasting (the bridge over the St. Croix in Taylors Falls, for example). That stuff is a few hundred million years old and it looks exactly like basalt blocks here that were laid down a few years ago.
March 16th, 2011 at 5:51 am
I’d been searching in vain, I thought, for some kind of objective reporting on the reactor fires and radiation release until I happened to watch CBS news last night. The resident medical expert, Dr. John LaPook, reported on the insane stockpiling of potassium iodide by panicked Californians. He then proceeded to interview somebody that actually knew about radiation and made a comparison between the amount of radiation in a chest xray and what was being released at Fukushima. A small step for mankind.
Let’s face it, the anti-nuclear left is going to do its best to hamstring atomic power with all its energy, while urging that we move to expensive, allegedly safer modes like solar and wind, which continue to be too intermittent to use for reliable energy sources.
I came across an interesting video clip of the late Michael Crichton discussing the nuclear accident at Chernobyl and why he decided not to use it as a basis for a novel about a worldwide disaster:
http://neoneocon.com/2011/03/15/crichton-on-science-and-fear/
March 16th, 2011 at 6:35 am
From all of the info that has come out, the general consensus is that the earthquake did not affect the reactors. There was a nuclear scientist from MIT on Fox news the other day and he stated that nuclear plants are equipped with motion sensors that trip switches and pulling the power from the grid and transfering it to generators when an earthquake occurs. Sounds like a good fail safe, except in this case, the tsunami swamped the generators and shorted them out, shutting many of them down immediately and the rest failed or were under water when they attempted to start. Basically, there was no power to run the pumps for the cooling water. This scientist stated that as long as there was water covering those rods, there would be no China Syndromes!
March 16th, 2011 at 7:40 am
Minnesota is prone to neither earthquakes nor tsunamis.
While not tsunamis, if New Madrid Fault starts going, we will be shaking here as well.
March 16th, 2011 at 7:49 am
The media and politicians are responding to the Japanese problem as they did to the Gulf oil spill – hysterically – because that’s the only tool in their bag.
It now appears sober analysis confirms that thing X had to happen for the oil rig to blow, which was tremendously unlikely because it meant Things A – W had to happen and not be repaired.
Similarly, engineers can build a nuclear reactor to withstand an earthquake, or a tidal wave, or a fire. But liberals always respond with Oh yeah? Well what if all three happen at once? Then what, huh? Huh? See, nuclear power is unsafe. Windmills!!
My response: Dude, we’re building a society, not making a Hollywood movie. Life is dangerous. Either live with it or do Mother Earth a favor and reduce the surplus population – starting with yourself.
.
March 16th, 2011 at 7:53 am
Yeah, we have to watch out for that New Madrid Fault. It is only about a thousand miles from the Twin Cities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Seismic_Zone
March 16th, 2011 at 8:34 am
Big Government has a story on a local “Non-Profit” CEE making big bucks, mostly thanks to laws transferring money from energy producers to enviromentalists. Thanks Tim Pawlenty and Democrats.
http://biggovernment.com/tsteward/2011/03/15/subsidized-energy-saving-programs-pay-off-big-for-nonprofit-provider/
March 16th, 2011 at 11:30 am
nate;
Please don’t use technical terminology like Thing X.
You need to use Thing 1 and Thing 2 like everyone else…oh…wait! That’s Cat in the Hat. Never mind!