The Pale of Fukushima

By Mike Mulvihill

While most of the actions taken at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami have been sound, the situation is still in doubt. The primary problem continues to be an inability to get power to pumps to keep nuclear materials covered in water necessary to prevent further and larger releases of radiation. Today, while workers continued to try to cool the plant’s reactors with water, the situation has become more complex as the plant must figure out how to dispose of highly contaminated water used to cool the reactors. All this at a plant site right on the Pacific Ocean where radiation in the adjacent water has increased to dangerous levels

While Japan continues to get this situation under control, the incidents in Fukushima have cast a pale on the entire nuclear energy sector. At an Energy Forward Community Conversation event last week, the level of renewed consumer fear regarding nuclear power was palpable.  Across the world, every country with a nuclear power plant is quite rationally stepping up inspections and reviewing safety procedures.

Utility regulators in Arizona held hearings today with the operators of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, the nation’s largest nuclear power plant, to assess safety procedures. Located about 50 miles west of downtown Phoenix, the Palo Verde triple-reactor plant supplies electricity to about 4 million customers in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California.

Meanwhile, in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel (in the midst of elections this week) has called for closing older nuclear reactors, which account for 25 percent of the country’s atomic energy. Of the country’s 17 nuclear reactors, the seven oldest nuclear reactors will go offline as part of a nationwide safety review to run through June. Germany, which relies on reactors for 23 percent of its power, is the first European country to take such measures. Germany’s move raises the prospect of a call for a nuclear-free Europe, said Guenther Oettinger, the European Union energy commissioner, in a TV interview last week.

Germany is a different situation that most of Europe. Most Germans are in favor of closing nuclear plants as soon as possible with 70 percent of the population saying that the incidents in Japan could be repeated in Germany. The scale and impact of the anti-nuclear movement in Germany is large. However, according to the poll conducted by the German newspaper Tagesschau, more than 40 percent of respondents consider the nuclear safety measures announced by Merkel a PR-move designed to win votes which she will abandon soon after the elections.

If you are a proponent of alternative energy, you should know that the ramifications of the Fukushima incident isn’t all positive for alternative energy. Germany’s energy companies have already announced that they will stop making payments into a fund earmarked for the development of alternative energy sources. They were obliged to pay 300 million euro annually in exchange for an extension of operating licenses for nuclear power plants now slated to be closed. And, Germany is already considering options to partially replace nuclear energy with fossil fuel energy sources, most notably natural gas, which could take a decade to accomplish.

The now tentative future of nuclear power generation should be taken in its full perspective. In over 14,000 cumulative reactor-years of commercial operation in 32 countries, there have been just three major reactor accidents in the history of civil nuclear power – Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and, now, Fukushima. One(Three Mile Island) was contained without harm to anyone, the Chernobyl involved an intense fire without provision for containment, and the third is severely testing the containment structure.

Yet, because an accident can have such dire consequences, we may be tempted to throw the baby out with the bathwater. As one European Union energy commissioner said prior to meeting with European energy ministers, company executives and regulators in Brussels to discuss reactor safety, “It has to raise the question of whether we in Europe, in the foreseeable future, can secure our energy needs without nuclear power.”

Good question, pretty obvious answer.