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The world’s nuclear priesthood faces a crisis of faith

This week the nuclear priesthood is facing a crisis of faith, as engineers in Asia’s most advanced nuclear industry struggle to contain the overheated reactor cores at Japan’s Fukushima No. 1 power plant, run by the Tokyo Electric Power Company.

Crisis of faith for nuclear brahmins, The Age, HAMISH McDONALD. March 19, 2011
Across the countries of Asia, the leaders of their nuclear industries have moved with the remote authority and mystique of brahmin or Shinto priests, intoning ancient and arcane scriptures, conducting rites and interpreting the heavens.

The blessings they offer are attractive to dictatorships and democracies alike: a source of non-polluting electricity at a stable cost, development of advanced engineering industries, and stepping stones for a quick advance into a nuclear weapons capability if a strategic need for it suddenly emerges.

This week the nuclear priesthood is facing a crisis of faith, as engineers in Asia’s most advanced nuclear industry struggle to contain the overheated reactor cores at Japan’s Fukushima No. 1 power plant, run by the Tokyo Electric Power Company.

The reaction of the nuclear establishments in the two emerging Asian super-economies has been one of assurance. Nuclear chiefs in both China and India have declared they have better safety systems than the Japanese generator.

India has two boiling water reactors of the same type as those at the Fukushima plant, also built by America’s General Electric in the 1960s and also located on a coastline. This week Srikumar Banerjee, the head of India’s Department of Atomic Energy, was called in by the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, and reassured him and the public they have been fitted with extra safety features to deal with overheating, including a ”thermo-siphon” that would passively circulate heat out of the reactor for several hours if power was cut, as in Japan………………

In Beijing a senior official was also sanguine………..

The words haven’t quite convinced the political leaderships. In China the government announced on Wednesday a suspension of approvals for all new nuclear power plants across the country, pending development of a new safety plan. In India, Singh has also ordered a safety review, though without suspending projects…….

Several of these countries sit on active geological fault lines, and their coastlines, where nuclear plants tend to be located, are vulnerable to tsunamis. Local populations are not nearly as happy as distant leaderships about nuclear power.

In India, memories of the deadly leak of gas at the Union Carbide plant at Bhopal in 1984 added to a huge backlash last year against legislation that tried to limit the liability of nuclear equipment suppliers and operators for accidental injury and damage. The bill was passed in greatly curtailed form…..

Crisis of faith for nuclear brahmins

March 22, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, Religion and ethics