The exaggeration of Fukushima: I hate fossil fuels more

Last spring/summer, I blogged, a lot, about the big news story at that time--the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  Even then, I noted in one post that our demand for energy means that, given the available technology, there will always be environmental impacts associated with how get that energy:

there are no technical answers to those challenges--as in technical answers for zero impacts.  Which is why then we resolve those trade-offs in the political domain. 

I am reminded of these trade-offs as I follow the Fukushima nuclear power story, about the potential for a partial or complete meltdown in one, two, or even three reactors there, out of the six.

Like everybody else, I am no fan of the radiation hazards and the waste issues that always worry us when it comes to generating electricity from nuclear reactions.  But then we so easily tend to ignore the hazards associated with coal, petroleum and natural gas, which, globally, are the dominant sources of power generation.

I don't suppose we have forgotten already the massive spills in the Gulf.  The explosion that killed the workers on that offshore platform.  Images of the ever spreading oil, and birds trapped to their death.  And, this was not even a natural disaster.

And that was merely one oil spill.  There are a lot worse ongoing horror stories in the oil-rich delta areas of Nigeria, in the ecologically sensitive areas of Ecuador, ... one could list them forever.

Coal is no easy matter either.  As I routinely remind students, every step along the process of electricity from coal has horrible impacts on humans, other life forms, and the physical environment.  Surely we haven't forgotten the other gripping story from last spring--the Massey Coal mine accident that killed 29 miners.  Again, this is merely one of many accidents worldwide.  Strip mining and mountaintop removal is are no advantages either.

Yet, for some reason, we time and again overlook all the complications related to fossil fuels, and focus exclusively on nuclear power.

I was afraid that I am in some echo chamber happily listening to my own voice on this matter and, therefore, started looking around.  Boy do I have some good company!

William Saletan expresses similar observations, and advises not to exaggerate the Fukushima crisis:

In advanced countries like Japan and the United States, nuclear plants are built to standards no drilling rig can touch. If a sensor, cable, or power source fails, another sensor, cable, or power source is available. Containers of steel or concrete envelop the reactors to prevent massive radiation leaks. Chernobyl didn't have such a container. Three Mile Island did. That's why Three Mile Island produced no uncontrolled leakage or injuries.

Saletan provides this comparative statistic:

If Japan, the United States, or Europe retreats from nuclear power in the face of the current panic, the most likely alternative energy source is fossil fuel. And by any measure, fossil fuel is more dangerous. The sole fatal nuclear power accident of the last 40 years, Chernobyl, directly killed 31 people. By comparison, Switzerland's Paul Scherrer Institute calculates that from 1969 to 2000, more than 20,000 people died in severe accidents in the oil supply chain. More than 15,000 people died in severe accidents in the coal supply chain—11,000 in China alone. The rate of direct fatalities per unit of energy production is 18 times worse for oil than it is for nuclear power.

Of course, it doesn't mean that we can overlook the nuclear crisis.  We need to, and will, learn from this and design additional safety features that nature will later challenge us.  But, we need to keep the destruction to life and property in perspective.  Not too far away from Fukushima was the refinery that was up in flames, and as of the latest reports those fires have not been completely extinguished.  But, above all, we need to place all this against the damage to life and property from the earthquake and tsunami, which were the causes for the nuclear crisis too.  Estimates are that the tally of the dead might exceed 10,000 and many times more rendered homeless.  Spiked tackles this line of thinking:

In contrast to the devastation across Japan, however, the accident has – at the time of writing – so far caused only 15 injuries, just one of which appears to be serious, and a handful of suspected cases of exposure to radiation, none of which appear to be serious. So why is there such a preoccupation with the nuclear power plant? 

Yeah, why such a preoccupation?  Spiked doesn't have a convincing answer, but concludes on a strong note:

it should be pointed out that earthquakes and tsunamis cause much greater problems for humans than nuclear power ever has. Furthermore, where nuclear power is a possibility ie, in wealthy economies, the effect of earthquakes and tsunamis is mitigated, and their consequences more easily ameliorated than in poorer regions. The 2004 Asian tsunami, and the earthquake in Haiti last year, were smaller in magnitude than last Friday’s events, but came at a much higher human cost than in Japan. Poverty, and the earth’s natural forces, are far more dangerous than our attempts to protect ourselves from them.

This affluence has saved lots of lives in Japan.  In contrast to the shakes in Haiti, Pakistan, China, the shaking itself did not kill comparable numbers in Japan because the wealth makes possible better and safer structures.  Even the NY Times has picked up on it:

Japan has gone much further than the United States in outfitting new buildings with advanced devices called base isolation pads and energy dissipation units to dampen the ground’s shaking during an earthquake.
The isolation devices are essentially giant rubber-and-steel pads that are installed at the very bottom of the excavation for a building, which then simply sits on top of the pads. The dissipation units are built into a building’s structural skeleton. They are hydraulic cylinders that elongate and contract as the building sways, sapping the motion of energy. ...
the United States standard is focused on preventing collapse, while in Japan — with many more earthquakes — the goal is to prevent any major damage to the buildings because of the swaying.
New apartment and office developments in Japan flaunt their seismic resistance as a marketing technique, a fact that has accelerated the use of the latest technologies

If you want to get an idea of how much such advanced engineering works, watch the skyscraper sway like a pendulum in the video below:



My point is this: it is easy to worry about the problems related to nuclear energy, and we have to be worried.  But, by focusing exclusively on this, we let the fossil fuel problems slide by as if they don't matter at all, and in reality they are worse.  But, more than anything else, all these mean that we are refusing to recognize the most basic issue: we--across the planet--have enormous demand for energy, and that demand is increasing rapidly.  What alternatives do we have right now for that huge demand for energy?