Chapter 1: The Only Thing We Have to Fear

From Earth is a Nuclear Planet by Mike Conley (Author), Tim Maloney Ph. D. (Author), Stephen A. Boyd Ph. D. (Scientific Editor)

Listen to the audio version HERE.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”- Franklin D. Roosevelt

We all know the feeling—that clutch of anxiety when board ing a plane. We remind ourselves that air travel is the safest mode of transportation, and that driving to the airport is far riskier than flying. But most of us don’t get scared behind the wheel because we’re familiar with automobiles and highways, and we’re the ones in control. We know it’s a false sense of security, and yet we feel safe.

We also know that our fear of flying is not entirely rational. But we feel it anyway, especially as we’re being herded through a wobbly jet bridge to the door of the plane, where the crew greets us with reassuring smiles. And then, like millions of people every day around the world, we swallow our fear, smile back, and step over the threshold.

Like nuclear power, flying can be scary, but it’s not dangerous.

The risk / benefit calculations we make in situations like this are shaped by the fact that the goods and services we have come to expect in modern life are rarely risk free. So we take the best precautions we can, keep calm, and carry on.

Consider these facts:

• Since 1970, commercial airline crashes have caused over 80,000

  deaths. Yet global air traffic has increased year after year. [1]

• In August 1975, the Banqiao Dam in China failed, causing an estimated 170,000 to 230,000 deaths and displacing more than ten million people. [2] The dam was rebuilt with improved safety measures, and the flood plain has since been repopulated. Despite the deadly risks of dam failure, some renewable energy advocates have been pushing for even more hydroelectric power. [3]

• In December 1984, an isocyanate gas leak from a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, injured more than 550,000 downwind residents, with more than 3,500 immediate deaths and 15,000 additional deaths in the weeks that followed. Nearly forty years later, the cleanup continues. The company (Union Carbide) is still in business, and the same pesticides are still in widespread use, even in our own back yards.

• In September 2010, a natural gas pipe exploded in San Bruno, south of San Francisco. [4] Fifty homes and eight lives were lost in the inferno. The pipeline was repaired, the utility was fined, the neighborhood was rebuilt, and most of the residents rebuilt and moved back in. To this day, gas explosions, fires, and casualties from natural gas continue to mount, all around the world. [5]

Now consider the public reaction to these three incidents:

• In March 1979, a reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania suffered a partial meltdown, releasing a small amount of radioactive steam. The average dose of radiation received by the public in the vicinity of the plant was equal to less than one chest X-ray. [6]

But sensational media reports, and celebrity led protests that linked nuclear power to nuclear weapons, stirred an understandably nervous public into unwarranted panic. The only serious fallout from the event was that the popularity of nuclear power suffered a near-fatal blow, and we expanded our use of coal. The direct result was approximately 100,000 premature deaths from increased air pollution. [7]

• In April 1986, a Soviet reactor at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine suffered a major meltdown, with multiple explosions and fires. [8] With no containment structure, the fire raged for ten days, sending radioactive fallout thousands of miles downwind. [9] Twenty-eight first responders died from radiation in the months after the accident, [10] along with fifteen local children who succumbed to thyroid cancer. [11]

Twenty additional first responders died in the two decades after the accident, though from indeterminate causes. [12] Theinfamous false estimate of 4,000 future casualties was based on a deeply flawed radiation risk model called LNT (linear no- threshold), which has since been discredited [13] (see Chapters 9 through 14). Yet some still believe, with no evidence, that the death toll was actually 1,000,000.

Neither of these scare stories have proven to be true, but one verifiable calamity did occur: Between 100,000 and 200,000abortions of wanted pregnancies were reluctantly chosen by women who lived downwind, fearing they would give birth to deformed or sickly children. [14]

Another provable calamity was the decline in life expectancy for the downwinders, brought on by alcoholism and depression aggravated by nuclear fear. Several studies have shown that these consequences were actually triggered by the fear of radiation, rather than radiation itself. [15]

The follow-on effects of that fear caused yet another calamity: the permanent and unnecessary relocation of over 300,000 people. Many suffered from the fatalism that descends when people are told they’re the victims of something incurable and beyond their control.

• In March 2011, a tsunami following a major earthquake caused three reactors in Fukushima, Japan, to melt down and suffer hydrogen gas explosions. No one was killed or even harmed by radiation, and UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) concluded that it is unlikely anyone will be harmed in the years ahead. [16]

But nuclear fear killed more than 2,000 Japanese citizens. Some 1,600 of them died during the panicked and largely unnecessary evacuations in the cold March weather. Others suffered stress related deaths and some were driven to suicide, triggered by long term dislocation from their homes, land, and businesses. [17] And even though 20,000 died from the earthquake and tsunami, and none from radiation, nuclear fear drove the news cycle, and still does.

1.1 FUKUSHIMA

Since the March 2011 accident is still fresh in our collective memory, let’s look closer:

On March 11, 2011, at 2:46 pm local time, a 9.0 earthquake struck off the northeast coast of Honshu, Japan’s main island. Every nuclear reactor in the country automatically shut down within seconds, with no significant damage. Fifty minutes later, a 15-meter (50 foot) tsunami inundated the coast, killing thousands of people and devastating the local infrastructure. With their backup generators drowned, the reactors at the Fukushima plant had no way to circulate the water needed to keep themselves cool, leading to three meltdowns.

Of the 1,700 evacuees who were closest to the power plant, only ten people received a dose of more than 10 mSv, [18] the equivalent of one CT scan. [19] (We’ll explain mSv, or milliSieverts, in the next chapter). Even so, rumors of a fire in Unit 4’s spent fuel cooling pool prompted the Japanese government to order a much wider evacuation than they originally called for. [20]

The gist of the rumor was that the spent fuel pool of the Unit 4 reactor was on fire because its water may have leaked out. With no way to stay cool, the decay heat of the spent fuel rods could have indeed started a fire.

But none of this actually happened. In fact, there were no troubles with Unit 4 until four days later. There had been a brief fire in the building, but the source was flammable hydrogen gas that entered the building from neighboring Unit 3, through their common gas management system. The hydrogen had come from the superheated water in Unit 3’s melted core, but neither reactor’s spent fuel pool was damaged. [21]

Nevertheless, the rumor was given credence by Gregory Jaczko, the anti-nuclear head of the United States NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) at the time, who had sent an advisory team to Japan. Jaczko’s hand waving about a fuel pool fire that never happened was largely responsible for the long term dislocation of tens of thousands of people. [22] His nuclear fear carried into his testimony to the US Congress on the unfolding situation. The performance, duly recorded on C-SPAN, went viral. [23]

Thanks to Jaczko, people were worried about spent fuel pools catching fire, even though the chances of that happening were—and are—vanishingly small, even after a record earthquake and tsunami. [24]

The reactors were safely in shutdown mode and just needed to be kept cool, but the tsunami swamped the emergency diesel generators so the water pumps didn’t work. Those same pumps also kept the spent fuel pools topped up. The concern was that if the water level dropped, the exposed fuel would overheat and its zirconium “cladding”—thelong, hollow rods that hold the fuel pellets—would react with steam to produce flammable hydrogen gas.

The entire cascade of events at Fukushima can be traced back to the glaringly obvious blunder of placing the reactors’ backup generators in a basement on the beach. (True story; see Fig. 1.) TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) installed them where they did with the approval of the Japanese government, in spite of clear warnings from our (pre-Jaczko) NRC at the time. And sure enough, the emergency diesel generators were drowned by the tsunami of 2011. The resulting fiasco supposedly proved that nuclear power is dangerous, when in fact the Fukushima meltdowns proved precisely the opposite:

Despite the arrogance of those who built where they did, and the corporate conformity of those who signed off on it, and in spite of a 9.0 earthquake, followed by a 15-meter tsunami that triggered three major meltdowns with hydrogen explosions, no one was harmed or killed by radiation.

Fig. 1: Schematic of Fukushima Dai-Ichi at Mean and Storm- surge Tides, and Tsunami Inundation Level
Source: https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/fukushima/naiic_report.pdf(see frame 14)

Imagine if an airliner crashed, and no one died or was even injured. It would be a spectacular confirmation of aircraft safety. But when it comes to reactors, the public is encouraged to panic over the same result.

As it turned out, the quake was not the proximate cause of the accident. Every reactor in Japan, including the ones at Fukushima, survived the earthquake intact and shut themselves down within seconds, exactly as designed. The non lethal industrial accident at Fukushima was due to a blatant construction management error and a disastrous lack of regulatory oversight, not nuclear technology. Indeed, the official report by the Japanese government on the accident put it like this:

“What must be admitted—very painfully—is that this was a disaster ‘Made in Japan.’ Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the program’; our groupism; and our insularity.” [25]

The seaside parcel of land on which Fukushima was built originally featured a high natural bluff, some thirty five meters (115 feet) above sea level. The Fukushima inundation, one of the largest tsunamis in recorded history, reached less than half that height. But since it’s easier (and cheaper) to bring in construction materials by sea, TEPCO excavated the site down to just ten meters above sea level. [26] They apparently ignored the hand-chiseled “tsunami stones” stones that dot the coast, left behind by their ancestors to warn them of such foolishness. [27]

Loosely translated, the messages boil down to this cautionary haiku:

Don’t build on the beach

In the same country that coined

The word tsunami

Tsunami Stone
Credit: T. Kishimoto (CC-BY-SA-4.0)

Eighty miles up the coast, north of the town of Sendai, the Onagawa nuclear power plant was closer to the epicenter than any other nuclear plant in Japan; if any reactor melted down it should have been at Onagawa. But all four Onagawa reactors came through the disaster unscathed, providing power and shelter to the local population. [28]This is because Onagawa put their backup generators where they belong—on a seaside bluff, higher than any tsunami has ever reached.

The best automobile ever made will fail without a functioning cooling system. And just like most cars, a feature of Generation-II and Gen-III reactors is an active water cooling system that continues to run after shutdown. You may have noticed this with a big car on a hot day, when the radiator fan keeps running after the engine has been shut off. This strategy, and its limitations, are the same for water cooled reactors. Think of them as the big block V-8s of the nuclear industry.

Fig. 2: Honshu Island (Japan)

To qualify as a Generation-IV design, a reactor must be able to shut itself down and cool itself off with no outside help by humans, machines, or computers. Plant personnel could literally walk away and have a cup of coffee. A Gen-III+ reactor like the Westinghouse AP-1000 or the Chinese CAP-1000 comes close to this ideal—you could walk away for seventy two hours before operator action is required. [29] With a Gen-IV reactor, you could walk away forever.

The Fukushima evacuation radius set by the Japanese government on March 12, one day after the disaster, was initially set at twenty kilometers (12 miles). But in response to the nonexistent fuel pool fire, our NRC director Jaczko recommended a 50-mile radius for any US citizens in the area. In the midst of such an unprecedented emergency, Japan deferred to his purported expertise and imposed his recommendation on their own citizens. [30]

Fig. 3: Fukushima Evacuation Map
Source: https://sites.suffolk.edu/fmadkour/2012/01/30/a-lesson-learned-through-fukushima-daiichi/

By acceding to the head of our NRC, the Japanese government’s authority on nuclear matters diminished in the eyes of their people. [31] In fact, Jaczko’s fearmongering was so effective that, even now, most evacuees still won’t return. This is in spite of encouragement to do so by their own government, which originally ordered them to flee. After years of unnecessarily frightening their citizens, the government has now resorted to paying them nearly $20,000 to return. [32]

This ongoing tragedy of errors was caused, in no small part, by Gregory Jaczko’s bad advice. With a doctorate in particle physics but no particular experience in nuclear technology, he worked as an aide to the staunchly anti-nuclear congressman (now senator) Ed Markey (D-MA), who later co-authored the 2019 Green New Deal. [33] Jaczko then served as a science policy advisor to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), whose state hosts the Yucca Mountain spent fuel repository, a project Reid had long opposed. Two years before Fukushima, Reid persuaded President Obama to appoint Jaczko as chairman of the NRC, and things at the agency went downhill from there. [34]

Motivated by nuclear fear, the misplaced panic in Japan has inflated the country’s cleanup and relocation costs to an outlandish degree, and this somehow “proves” that nuclear is expensive. [35] Similar to Chernobyl a quarter century before, nuclear fear has magnified the long term social and psychological consequences—and the expense—of an already disastrous earthquake and tsunami.

Instead of evacuating, if everyone downwind had just taken the usual precautions for fallout (shelter in place for a few days, seal openings to minimize the intrusion of fallout dust, etc.), no one in the evacuation zone would have received a dose anywhere close to 100 mSv, which is a safe yearly dose for any adult. This is something the French Academy of Sciences has known for years:

“Epidemiologic studies have been unable to detect in humans a significant increase of cancer incidence for doses below about 100 mSv.” [36]

Our planet’s average natural background radiation dose is around 3 mSv per year, but the scientific literature shows that receiving up to 100 mSv per year, even all at once, is no cause for alarm. [37] Indeed, life on Earth evolved billions of years ago by adapting to much higher background radiation levels than we have today. A dose of 100 mSv is not a cause for wholesale evacuation, or for removing millions of tonnes of topsoil from Fukushima farmland as a precaution.

Nerd Note: A “tonne” is a standard metric measurement of mass (often referred to as weight), equal to 1,000 kilograms, or 2,204.6 lbs; also known as a metric ton.

Other terms you may encounter (but not in this book): A “short ton” is a measurement commonly used in the United States, equal to 2,000 lbs. A “long ton,” still used in the UK, is equal to 2,240 lbs.

Nonetheless, the Japanese government initially set the repopulation threshold at a ridiculously low 20 mSv per year. [38] They’ve since relaxed the threshold to 28 mSv, even though the difference between these two “safety standards” is essentially meaningless. As the Health Physics Society points out:

“Below levels of about 100 mSv [greater than] background from all sources combined, the observed radiation effects in people are not statistically different from zero.” [39]

The Japanese government’s overwrought caution has been playing out for more than ten years now, though several populated areas around the world have considerably higher background levels than 28 mSv per year. And these regions have normal rates of cancer.

You may have heard that the Japanese Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry awarded compensation to a Fukushima cleanup worker who developed leukemia. The claim was paid even though the man received a cumulative dose of just 15.7 mSv. [40] In another instance, the family of a man who received 74 mSv and died of lung cancer was awarded a death benefit. Even so, this does not mean the meltdowns were the cause: in Japan, workers’ comp pays out regardless of whether the injury is job related. The claim was awarded despite the fact that lung cancer takes decades to manifest, and had no apparent link to the accident. [41] This point was lost on the global public, whoassumed that since the award was paid, meltdown radiation must have been the cause. It wasn’t.

Another common argument against nuclear power is that higher rates of thyroid tumors were found post-Fukushima. This new statistic, however, is the result of the Japanese government testing every downwind child. [42] Usually, doctors only test if symptoms are present, since most thyroid nodules are asymptomatic and benign. If it requires medical attention, thyroid cancer will announce itself, and when it does the success rate for treatment is over 90%. [43] That’s why testing every child after Fukushima showed an apparent increase in cases. Even so, no excess thyroid cancer deaths have been reported since the accident.

1.2 “LET US NOT TALK FALSELY NOW, THE HOUR IS GETTING LATE.” — BOB DYLAN

Perceptions of danger can be strongly influenced by disinformation and fear. The misinformed response to Fukushima, for example, has turned a casualty-free industrial accident into a traumatic global event. Nuclear fear has made the recovery from Fukushima far worse than the accident itself.

While researching these books, we have become more sensitive to the concerns that some people have about nuclear power. The more we examined the facts, the more empathy we’ve come to have for the misinformed among us, because no one can reach a correct conclusion with incorrect information. Our ire is reserved for those who continue to misinform—and in some cases deliberately disinform—the public with talking points that have repeatedly been debunked. It’s tiresome, and the world no longer has the luxury of rehashing the same bogus issues, over and over again. So we’re losing patience. Scaring the public away from a safe and well-proven technology that can do the job that needs to be done, in the time we need to do it, is an outrage.

So please bear with us if we fly off the handle every now and then, or drop the occasional snide remark. It’s a sign of the times.

Endnotes available in actual book

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