nuclear-news

TODAY Complacency about nuclear safety – a killer waiting to strike!

Worrying about Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Santa Susana, Windscale, Church Rock, Tokaimura , Maya…. all those devastating nuclear accidents? That’s so old-fashioned!

True – caesium, strontium, plutonium, americium, cobalt. iodine 131,polonium – these are killer isotopes produced by nuclear fission- and released bit by bit in the nuclear fuel cycle – or suddenly in an accident.

But, aw shucks, our big boys, nuclear engineers etc – they can cope with all that. I mean some of them (though not all nuclear engineers), think that the safety rules should be relaxed. After all, how can the nuclear industry survive if we keep strict rules on when old reactors must be shut down?

And more to the point, well – I hate to break this secret news, but really, nobody can afford the financial cost of shutting down creaky old reactors, and disposing of the pools and canisters of highly toxic radioactive trash.

So much cheaper and easier to just keep it all going – at least until the next nuclear disaster!(when with any luck, our children, not us, will cop the pain and the cost)

So – thinking along these lines:

• Finland will extend the life of its nuclear reactors by over 20 years, and its “intermediate” wastes onsite until 2090. (“Intermediate” is  a nicer word for “highly toxic”)
•   Japan to extend life of nuclear power stations, and also remove rules specifying the operational periods of reactors.
• France planning to allow its nuclear reactors to operate beyond 60 years, despite its current problems of corrosion and cracks.
• Belgium, already dodgy in its safety assessments, plans to delay phaseout of its nuclear reactors.
• Russia?  The mind boggles –  Russia has traditionally been slack on nuclear safety. Is it any better now?
• Ukraine?  Omigawd!   THey want to build new ones!
• Oh and Turkey’s going ahead building its Akkuya nuclear power station, all too near to the  7.8 magnitude earthquake’s epicentre.  

All this while global heating threatens all the nuclear power plans situated on coastlines – as sea level rises. While global heating threatens to deprive nuclear reactors of the water supply they need for cooling, threatens to make them shut down as temperatures rise, threaten them with floods, wildfires, and other weather extremes

February 18, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's notes