Nuclear Industry Braces for Increased Scrutiny

[jpak]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/world/asia/13nuclear-industry.html

The explosion and radiation leaks at an earthquake-damaged nuclear plant in northern Japan will raise fresh questions about the country’s ambitious plans to develop nuclear energy, despite its troubled history there and years of grass-roots objections from a people uniquely sensitive to the ravages of nuclear destruction.

The damage to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan could also stir wider doubts in a world that, while long skeptical of nuclear energy’s safety, has increasingly accepted it as a source of clean energy in a time of mounting concerns about the environmental and public health toll of fossil fuels.

In France, for example, Green parties and environmental groups have called on an end to the dependence on nuclear power. A failures of the 40-year-old Fukushima plant’s cooling system apparently caused the explosion, which destroyed a structure surrounding the reactor. The reactor was unaffected, government officials and the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power, said. They described the resulting radiation leak as small and decreasing. Foreign experts have concurred with their assessment so far, although Japanese plant operators have minimized past accidents, wary of public reaction.

James M. Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said the accident had unquestionably dealt a blow to the nuclear industry. While Japan may close the Daiichi plant, one of its oldest, and point to the safety of its newer facilities, that may not satisfy public concerns in Japan and elsewhere, he said. Decades ago, after the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents, Mr. Acton said, the nuclear industry tried to argue that newer reactors incorporated much better safety features. “That made very little difference to the public,” he said.

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[FBaggins]

1. Well on that we agree.

There's no question that there will be increased scrutiny... and likely delays in current plans of at least a year or two.

You have to find out exactly what happened first. Not compile tweets of translations from unknown sources. And that's going to take months. Then you have to determine what improvements need to be made to existing designs to make them safer. THEN you get to say whether the newer deisigns already include adequate protection against what went wrong in these cases.

My first-blush incomplete-information guess is that the new designs would not have even made the news in a similar circumstance. You don't need pumps or backup generators to keep the core cool after a shutdown.

But you can't just guess at such things. It needs to be based on the results of really checking these things out.

You could continue to build the units that are just getting started in the US, but you're taking a chance that some mandated safety change would require expensive modifications after you had already reached that point of construction.

It's likely political at this point. Which fear will win out in the short term... this, or rising energy prices?

[jpak]

2. I agree - lots of unknown unknowns and conflicting low-info reports right now

I do not think Japan is out of the woods by a long shot - despite "reassuring" reports by officials

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. We need to find a safe, alternate energy source. And soon.