Fukushima water leaks and broader nuclear safety concerns

Aseries of pits Tepco dug to store some of the water also began leaking earlier this year, forcing workers to transfer the water into the steel tanks. Experts have said they suspect that more contaminated water is seeping out from under the melted-down reactors into the groundwater and the Pacific. Elevated levels of radioactive cesium in surrounding waters seem to confirm those suspicions. Tepco has said those leaks are not directly from beneath the reactors, but from maintenance tunnels that run along the coast and remain contaminated from the early days of the disaster. But it also acknowledges that the water beneath the reactors is extremely contaminated, and experts say that if it does get into the ocean, it will surpass even the leaks that occurred in the disaster’s early days. “That prospect scares me,” Michio Aoyama, a senior scientist in the Oceanography and Geochemistry Research Department at the government-affiliated Meteorological Research Institute, said in an interview this month. “It’s the ultimate, worst-case scenario,” Professor Aoyama said. Back to top The New Nuclear Craze Mark Bittman - New York Times There is a new discussion about nuclear energy, prompted by well-founded concerns about carbon emissions and fueled by a pro-nuclear documentary called “Pandora’s Promise.” Add a statement by James E. Hansen — who famously sounded the alarm on climate change — and, of course, industry propaganda, and presto: We Love Nukes. Before we all become pro-nuclear greens, however, you’ve got to ask three questions: Is nuclear power safe and clean? Is it economical? And are there better alternatives? No, noand yes. So let’s not swap the pending environmental disaster of climate change for another that may be equally risky. Despite all-out efforts and international cooperation, Fukushima, which scared Germany right out of the nuclear power business, still isn’t under control. Proponents of nuclear power promise new and safer technology, but these discussions are filled with “coulds”; no such plants exist. Nor would they reduce the risks of proliferation. (Oh, that little thing.) Nor would they do much to mitigate the all-too-infrequently discussed dangers of uranium mining, which uses vast amounts of water in the West — an area that can ill afford it— and is barely regulated or even studied. Thousands of uranium mines have been abandoned, and no one seems to know how many remain to be cleaned up. The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry. Then there’s disposal of spent fuel, which is not contained at the same safety level as active fuel, itself a scary thought. Decades into the nuclear age there remains, incredibly, no real plan for this; a patchwork scheme by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which appears to be even more industry-friendly than most federal agencies, was rejected by an appeals court last year, and the Obama administration is standing by its campaign promise (shocking, | know) to abandon the nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The economic viability of nuclear power is no more encouraging. Plants continue to close and generation rates continue to drop. Operators may indeed continue to make money on reactors, but that’s only because federal subsidies are enormous. Insurance costs are limited. Loans are guaranteed (the Solyndra loan guarantee was half a billion dollars; in contrast, loan guarantees for new nuclear plants may run $8 billion); cost recovery and return on investment are also assured for decades, and some operators are able to collect costs from ratepayers (and pay dividends to shareholders) years before plants come online — even if they never come online. So they’re economical as long as you’re the owner, because historically, subsidies for nuclear power have been more than double the expense of power generation itself. While estimates of the costs of power generation vary wildly — allowing both HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028624