Freedom Rider: Japan’s Katrina

By Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
“The Obama administration is still pursuing increased nuclear energy capability and dismissing concerns about safety.”

There is an expression which was especially apt this past week. “Nature bats last.“ Natural disasters are a reminder of human impotence when volcanoes erupt, hurricanes make landfall, and the earth’s plates move and create earthquakes. We cannot control nature, but we can and should recognize how human actions can make these crises far worse than they would be otherwise. The construction of supposedly safe nuclear reactors in Japan is just the latest example of suffering caused by greed and political expediency.

Pripyat (the town founded to house Chernobyl operators and their families) today is an abandoned city in the Zone of Alienation in northern Ukraine near the border with Belarus, about 100 km from Kiev. The Zone of Alienation is the 30km-radius around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Pripyat and Chernobyl are 15 km apart.

If anything good emerges from the disaster in Japan it should be the final destruction of nuclear power. The earthquake-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi plant exploded after technicians were unable to stabilize and cool its core. Six additional reactors at two different plants were in danger of reaching similar conditions and are said to be in various states of “partial meltdown.” It is astonishing that a country known for centuries of deadly seismic activity has invested so heavily in nuclear energy. Japanese government officials continued to promote nuclear power and minimize its risks [5] even when it was clear that their nation was always in very grave danger.

“It is astonishing that a country known for centuries of deadly seismic activity has invested so heavily in nuclear energy.”

The United States is equally guilty of taking unnecessary chances with nuclear power. Despite the daily reports of a worsening situation, the Obama administration is still pursuing increased nuclear energy capability and dismissing concerns about safety.

If Japan, a nation more advanced in its concern for its citizens, is facing a nuclear catastrophe, the nation unable to protect one of its major cities from hurricane Katrina surely has no business following in its footsteps.

The salient points about the government response to hurricane Katrina were lost in a corporate media muddle focused on sensational images of tragedy. The United States government still has no real means of responding to disaster. The Federal Emergency Management Administration is no more reliable now than it was in the bad old days of Bush. When we see images of Japan, we ought to put ourselves in those pictures.

When Haiti was devastated by an earthquake its poverty and lack of development were assumed to be the reasons for great suffering. Yet even in industrial Japan, thousands of people are now without food, water or electricity. Nature doesn’t just bat last, but it trumps the best of intentions and capabilities.

“California, the American state most subject to earthquakes, has nuclear reactors that are even less secure and more vulnerable to damage than those in Japan.”

America will be in a worse state than Japan should such a disaster strike here. California, the American state most subject to earthquakes, has nuclear reactors that are even less secure and more vulnerable to damage than those in Japan.

The vague assurances coming from the Japanese and American government officials should be rejected out of hand. Already 17 American service members assisting in the rescue efforts have been exposed [6] to what we are told are “low” levels of radiation. Words like “low” and “partial” cannot be accepted at face value. An assumption that dangers are understated is the best response to these reports.

[8]
•    Japan nuclear power
Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-japan%E2%80%99s-katrina
BONUS FEATURE

The Unresolved Safety Problems with American Reactors Pose Huge Threats
By Lorna Salzman

In 1972 the Union of Concerned Scientists, representing several groups concerned about nuclear reactor safety, participated in hearings before the Atomic Energy Commission regarding the efficacy of the Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS), the major system that is intended to prevent a Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA) which can lead to a meltdown of the nuclear fuel. With the exception of Friends of the Earth, no one paid attention to these hearings or the UCS report and conclusions.

Very briefly, the main concern was (and remains today) the fact that no one is able to identify all possible causes of a LOCA or of initiating events or failures that might lead to it. In other words, loss of the ECCS due to a power failure, as happened in Japan, is simply one of many possible scenarios.
But the AEC knew that if the witnesses were allowed to introduce or raise questions about alternate scenarios, this would impede and possibly prevent the construction and operation of all nuclear power plants.

So the AEC banned any discussion of possible events or failures that could cause a LOCA. These would include earthquakes more severe than the reactor was designed to withstand (as is the case in Japan), sabotage or terrorism.

Now, we face in this country 104 reactors with cooling systems that are vulnerable to failure from various causes. Some reactors like Indian Point 25 miles north of NYC are actually located on an earthquake fault, as are two in California, a state prone to earthquakes far more than NYC. Severe earthquakes have also taken place in the American midwest, notably New Madrid, Missouri, where a destructive earthquake  took place in 1811.

1812 New Madrid earthquake
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

New Madrid fault and Earthquake prone region considered at high risk today.

The 1811-1812 New Madrid Earthquakes (pronounced /nuː ˈmædrɨd/) were an intense intraplate earthquake series beginning with an initial pair of very large earthquakes on December 16, 1811. These earthquakes remain the most powerful earthquakes ever to hit the eastern United States.[1] These events, as well as the seismic zone of their occurrence, were named for the Mississippi River town of New Madrid,Louisiana Territory, now Missouri.

There are estimates that the earthquakes were felt strongly over roughly 130,000 square kilometers (50,000 square miles), and moderately across nearly 3 million square kilometers (1 million square miles). The historic 1906 San Francisco earthquake, by comparison, was felt moderately over roughly 16,000 square kilometers (6,000 square miles).

Earthquakes


Effects
Some sections of the Mississippi River appeared to run backward for a short time.[3] Sand blows were common throughout the area, and can still be seen from the air in cultivated fields. The shockwaves propagated efficiently through midwestern bedrock. Residents as far away as Pittsburgh and Norfolk were awakened by intense shaking.[5] Church bells were reported to ring as far as Boston, Massachusetts and York, Ontario (now Toronto), and sidewalks were reported to have been cracked and broken in Washington, D.C.[6] There were also reports of toppled chimneys in Maine.[citation needed]

Eliza Bryan[7] in New Madrid, Territory of Missouri, wrote the following eyewitness account in March, 1812.
The Shaker diarist Samuel Swan McClelland described the effects of the earthquake on the Shaker settlement at West Union (Busro), Indiana, where the earthquakes contributed to the temporary abandonment of the westernmost Shaker community.[8]

The NRC will resist the re-opening of hearings on the capability of operating reactors to meet these higher non-design basis standards. It will stand behind its infamous WASH-1400 report, the Rasmussen report, about the unlikelihood of a severe nuclear accident occurring. It will stand behind the ECCS and its limited list of possible causes of LOCAs.

Lorna Salzman is a lifetime environmental activist.