nuclear-news

 Question 1: Why are nuclear reactors frequently clustered making problems much greater in case of emergencies? How to get to the other reactors if one melts down completely? Nuclear reactors are clustered with pairs, quadruplets or even planned clusters with six reactors located at a single site.

The reason is often logistical because of benefits of scale, optimal cooling water facilities, regulatory constraints, costs, and other practical reasons…..

Question 2: Why are many reactors built on tectonic fault lines, making them highly susceptible to effects of earthquakes?

The accident at Fukushima has shown that assumptions about the risk of earthquakes and their consequences are seriously under-estimated…..

Question 4: Why are used fuel rods from the nuclear reactors stored at the reactor site, preventing cooling in a case of emergency, thereby compromising security?…..

Question 5: Why did the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) approve nuclear reactors with such poor locations and poorly designed emergency generators? The nuclear industry is monitored and ultimately controlled by the IAEA, under the assumption that it will act in the interest of all citizens of the world.

Question 6: Why were pregnant women and children not evacuated earlier and for longer distances to avoid the well-known problems of effects of radiation on early development?

The evacuation events in Chernobyl and Fukushima revealed a number of inadequacies with surprisingly great problems in Japan compared to the surroundings of Chernobyl……..

Question 7: Why were Japanese people evacuated from an area with a radius of 30 km, when French and US citizens were advised to stay 50 km away, and airplanes owned by Air France, Alitalia and Lufthansa were re-directed from Tokyo to Osaka?

Similar questions can be raised concerning the radioactive contamination of nearly 70,000 Americans from the army and the navy during the Fukushima event (Witherspoon 2013a, b here and here). ….

Question 8: Why was the level of radioactivity in Fukushima said by the Japanese prime minister to be low, when in fact it was, and continues to be, higher than the most contaminated areas around Chernobyl, from where people are still evacuated 27 years after that accident?  

The key to proper management of nuclear reactors in a safe and responsible way was suggested a long time ago by the Nobel laureate Niels Bohr, a founding father of nuclear physics and perhaps the first anti-nuclear activist. During the development of the nuclear bomb he insisted on openness as a means of building trust and reliability among nations. Unfortunately, his words went unheeded and the arms build-up and cold war between the east and the west followed. 

The experience in Japan suggests that managers of nuclear power plants will maintain secrecy to protect their own livelihoods or the interests of their company. The “nuclear village” of this alliance of the nuclear company (TEPCO), the state, and the scientists and media who work to protect the industry is an affront that excludes ordinary citizens. Unfortunately, despite hundreds of minor accidents at nuclear power plants managers routinely ignore national or international requirements and attempt to hide such events. This is the case in authoritarian states like Russia, in Asian democracies like Japan and even in extremely open and non-corrupt Sweden, which despite this presumed openness still had a secret nuclear program to develop nuclear bombs during the 1950’s. This raises serious questions about oversight of the nuclear industry and the extent to which citizens can have confidence in corporate, government, scientific or even international regulatory agency recommendations. The main reasons for such lack of confidence arise from the lack of impartial assessment, secrecy in the case of accidents, and a complete lack of consequences for managers and government regulators even in the event of serious accidents. This lack of accountability can only be restored by involving citizens in regulatory functions of the nuclear industry. If and when ordinary citizens are given the opportunity to play a significant role in such oversight, it might be possible not only for citizens, but also governments and the industry, to trust the statements and recommendations of oversight agencies….

Question 10: Why is Tokyo Electric (Tepco) unwilling to provide information about the identity of the rescue workers and their radiation exposure? Is it ethically defensible to allow rescue workers who are working under stressful conditions to breach accepted levels of radiation exposure? (Tabuchi 2011; interview with Paul Jobin).

The reason for such limits is exactly to prevent people from being pressured to make decisions that they should or could not make based on their own knowledge. It is a moral imperative for individuals in some societies to sacrifice themselves for the common good, as shown by events in Chernobyl and Fukushima. Such rescue workers are glorified in writing and statues, but their moral dilemmas and their subsequent medical fate are rarely mentioned. The fact is that such sacrifice is not distributed equally, but is allotted to low paid short-term contract workers who generally are individuals with poor education and lack of resources (Tabuchi 2011), making it easy to impose sacrifice even to the extent that such events are no longer voluntary. Decisions about participation in clean-up should be based on sound ethics rather than forcing poorly educated part-time workers into activities with consequences that they may not even be able to judge themselves.

Chernobyl and Fukushima loom large when assessing the impacts of human technology on our planet. It is also obvious that the decisions made by humans and, therefore, an understanding of human behavior, is important if we are to learn any lessons concerning major environmental disasters. As evolutionary biologist Robert L. Trivers (2009) has stated in his recent book on self-deception, humans have evolved an entire battery of behavior to deceive themselves so to better deceive others. These behavioral mechanisms have evolved as a means to allow humans to cope with and survive small and major disasters, and our presence despite famine and major wars including nuclear war bears testimony to the efficacy of such behavior. We can only hope that thorough psychological and risk analyses of both Fukushima and Chernobyl will help us reduce the risk of future nuclear disasters by revealing the underlying mechanisms that led to these horrible outcomes.

References:…….. 

http://truth-out.org/news/item/15502-uncomfortable-questions-in-the-wake-of-nuclear-accidents-at-fukushima-and-chernobyl