There Was A Lot Of Death Last Week In Japan: Humanity, The Nation’s Economy and Nuclear Power

There is no intention here to sidestep, reduce, or ignore the human loss in the Northeast territories of Japan. However, I would like to talk about some serious collateral damage, and if there is a silver lining for energy production.

After twenty years of being relegated as dangerous, weapon-harboring, infinite-waste-producing energy, nuclear power was starting to crawl out from under the rock. Proponents of carbon reduction were starting to come to the realization that without major advances in technology, solar and wind power generation has many limits…as in frequency of sun and wind. Conservation’s low and mid- hanging fruit has been picked. The still-crippled US economy is at its limits of supporting and subsidizing non-hydro rewenables in our region, and finally, our democrat, Eco-freindly president had increased spending and deployment of nuclear powered electricity generating plants in his budget.

Then Kaboom! Less than a week after the tragic earthquake in Japan, more than half the news coverage from the torn county is about exposed fuel rods, pictures of exploding containment buildings, ruptured pressure vessels, and the ugly reality of an industry that has tried but can not prepare for all disaster. The risks of nuclear power are out of the bottle again. And, frankly, I believe we will learn that had Japanese officials allowed US companies and government to assist (we offered) with cooling operations on Saturday, there would be a different news broadcast tonight. Do you really think you can cool a nuclear reactor core with a 2000 gal/minute on-board pump of a common residential fire engine? Yes, that was tried.

Only time will tell how proponents and opponents of nuclear power generation will spin the tragedy and how it will impact a timid industry. The truth is, the four nuclear plants in the region that are in trouble produced about 3500-4000 MW of power. That’s more than half as much power as comes out of Grand Coulee Dam. There are risks in everything we do. If Grand Coulee every breaks loose we would see horrible human and property consequences, and it could. Radiation, flooding, space shuttle engines, take a pick. When we try to harness nature, sh__ happens.

Let’s first know that these Japanese reactors are at least forty years old, and so is the design, materials, and technology at the complex. My hope is that we learn from the accidents at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex. I hope they do get the reactor cores under control and cooled down. And mostly I hope no one is seriously injured or exposed to harmful levels of radiation.

I also hope we push forward with research and lessons from Fukushima Dai-ichi and realize nuclear plants should be smaller (500-700 MW), and better enclosed. And if a hospital needs a triple power backup system why doesn’t a nuke plant? Even with damaged containment structures, had their been electrical power available to run the pumps, this situation would be different.

Carbon, radiation, torrent floods and dead fish, or economy-crushing costs of present day solar and wind projects…power generation has its risks.

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