Climate Change Increases Nuclear Danger

In the coming months, you’re going to hear presidential candidates talk about climate change. You probably won’t hear them say much about nuclear safety. But the two are inextricably linked. A warmer climate leads to more severe storms, which increases the chances of a Japan-style nuclear meltdown…..Either we need to get out of the nuclear energy business or reduce our greenhouse gas emissions — or both.-

Climate change, nuclear power risks linked, Sun Sentinel August 05, 2011|By Anthony Orlando

It can’t happen here.

The Japanese tsunami was a freak occurrence. Once in a thousand years. It can’t happen to our nuclear power plants.

But freak occurrences are happening more often nowadays.

It all started with heat. Last year tied the record for the hottest surface temperature. It’s hardly a coincidence that 2010 also set the record for the most precipitation over land. Hot air warms the oceans, evaporates the water, carries the water in clouds and empties over land in the form of rain or snow. It was all in your middle school textbook.

Some of that precipitation was frustrating, like the unusually ferocious snowstorms that pummeled the East Coast. Some was downright dangerous, like the tropical cyclones that are increasing in intensity.

Or the Atlantic hurricanes whose season is lasting longer and whose geographic range is expanding. Or the strongest non-coastal storm on record in the United States, which dealt 67 tornadoes to Minnesota in October 2010.

Or the summer monsoon in China that lasted longer than ever before, killing 1,911 people, leaving behind $18 billion in damage and setting off landslides that killed another 2,137 people. Or the floods in Pakistan that killed 1,985 people and did $9.5 billion in damage. Or the Queensland flood in Australia, which killed 35 people and did $30 billion in damage. Or the heaviest rains that Colombia has seen in 42 years, killing 528 people, racking up $1 billion in damage, and leaving 2.2 million people homeless. Or the heaviest daily rainfalls in Nashville, Tenn., history, flooding the city, killing 30 and leaving $2.4 billion of damage.

That was then. This is now, when we open the newspapers to read that 11,000 residents of Minot, N.D., evacuated just before water spilled over the levees. Last month, it was the tornadoes that erupted across the country, generating more damage (estimated at $4 billion to $7 billion) than any spring weather disaster in U.S. history.

There’s no escaping the facts: Weather is becoming more extreme, more costly, and more deadly.

But surely our nuclear reactors are safe. We protect them from severe weather. It can’t happen here.

Not according to a recent AP investigation, which found example after example of regulators loosening regulations instead of enforcing them. Inside our power plants are brittle vessels, leaky valves, cracked tubing, and corroded piping — and they’re increasing.

Another AP investigation found that three out of every four nuclear sites have leaked radioactive tritium, sometimes into the groundwater. The government responded that they’re not sure how to detect or stop the leaks.

Either we need to get out of the nuclear energy business or reduce our greenhouse gas emissions — or both.– ..

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2011-08-05/news/fl-aocol-nuclear-climate-change-orlan20110805_1_nuclear-power-nuclear-reactors-power-plants