Động Đất Khủng Khiếp Ở Nhật (57)_Are our fears about nuclear power irrational?

Are our fears about nuclear power irrational?
April 2, 2011
The Sydney Morning Herald


The crisis at Japan’s Fukushima electricity plant is the world’s worst nuclear incident in 25 years, and still seems far from resolved. Four experts debate the logic of our nuclear fear.


THE CONSULTANT BEN HEARD

Until recently I was a vocal opponent of nuclear power. Understanding the scale of the climate crisis led me - reluctantly, I'll admit - to investigate nuclear power as a solution. To my surprise, I found my fears of nuclear power were overwhelmingly irrational.

I had three main concerns. First, that nuclear power is not safe. The Energy Related Severe Accident Database set that straight. In the past 40 years, the energy chain for coal killed more than 32,000 people worldwide in severe accidents, more than 2000 of them in OECD nations. The comparative figures for nuclear? Zero in the OECD, and 43 worldwide. This includes cancer deaths from Chernobyl, a reactor with no containment building, a horrible and unique design flaw.

Advertisement: Story continues below Meanwhile, 440 reactors provide 15 per cent of global electricity, including to the world's 16 largest economies (leaving out Australia at number 13). A tsunami hitting 40-year-old reactors has caused injuries and major issues, but not one fatality.

Nuclear power is more than safe enough, and getting safer all the time.

Second, I feared high-level nuclear waste was impossible to manage safely. Cutting a long story short, it isn't. It's predictable to the point of being boring: cool, encase, contain, contain again, and monitor. And the coming generation of nuclear technology will consume it as fuel. Cross that from my list.

Third, I feared proliferation. While nuclear power and weapons programs were once joined at the hip, this is no longer true. Twenty-one nations deploy nuclear power with no weapons capability. If it's a weapon you want, there is no slower, more expensive way of creating substandard material than by using a nuclear power plant. Nuclear power is not a threat to peace.

So my concerns were not rational. But they were understandable, given we are fed a diet of fear by opponents of nuclear power, mainly comprising selective facts that have been stripped of meaningful context. This finds fertile ground among well-meaning people who trust the sources.

Rationally, we should all fear climate change. It threatens our occupation of this planet within a century. This, rather than nuclear power, is what keeps me awake at night.

The biggest contributor to climate change is coal. Renewables alone cannot displace coal quickly enough. But nuclear power plus renewables can, with minuscule risk. The only rational response is to be open to the further deployment of nuclear power, in partnership with growth in renewables.


Ben Heard is the director of ThinkClimate Consulting.

THE CONSERVATIONIST IAN LOWE

I sat in a coffee shop in High Street, Christchurch, about 12.50pm on February 22. I was looking forward to a toasted sandwich and coffee. It would have been irrational to think I was in danger.

Then the city was rocked by an earthquake. Buildings collapsed near me. Being afraid was suddenly a rational response to my situation.

When I was a young physicist, nuclear energy looked like the technically advanced way to generate electricity. No more coal mine disasters, less air pollution, relatively small amounts of radioactive materials providing clean energy. It did need huge public subsidies and there was a concerning link with nuclear weapons, but the technology seemed to work well.

Unfortunately, the promise was not fulfilled. We have regularly been reminded that human fallibility applies to nuclear energy, like all complex technological systems.

A fire at the British Windscale reactor in 1957 caused so much alarm the area was re-named Sellafield. Three Mile Island basically ended the nuclear dream in the United States, where no new nuclear power station has been commissioned since that accident more than 30 years ago.

When Chernobyl spread radioactive debris across Europe, support on that continent for nuclear power collapsed.

The industry has tried desperately to rebadge itself as the answer to climate change, but Fukushima has provided another reminder that accumulating large amounts of fissile material puts workers and the public at risk.

Recognition that climate change demands urgent action is the only reason anyone would even consider nuclear energy in Australia.

There is no doubt we must dramatically reduce our releases of carbon dioxide. A rational response compares nuclear energy with alternatives. Improving the efficiency of turning energy into goods and services is by far the most cost-effective way to cut greenhouse pollution.

A suite of renewable energy supply technologies could meet our needs much faster and almost certainly at lower cost than building nuclear power stations.

These power stations would have to be built on coastal sites to provide the huge volumes of cooling water needed, exposing them to the risk of tsunamis and storm surges. And there would always be the worry that radioactive material might be released by an accident or a terrorist attack.

By contrast, we do not have to worry about terrorists stealing wind turbine blades or earthquakes shattering solar panels. It is quite rational to see nuclear energy as a high-risk approach.


Ian Lowe is president of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

THE BUSINESSMAN ZIGGY SWITKOWSKI

Probably the riskiest decision the people of north Japan will make in the months ahead will be to return home and rebuild. Ditto residents of Christchurch.

Even when confronted with the probability of more earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis, history suggests people want to return to the familiar, to restart their lives. Is this irrational? Possibly. Understandable? Absolutely.

We sometimes accept risks in our lives that are much greater than those posed by unfamiliar technologies, be they nuclear, bio or nano. In the absence of an existing nuclear industry, when confronted by uncertainty, many Australians' default position is to say no.

It does not matter that for decades more than 400 nuclear reactors globally have generated baseload electricity cleanly with the lowest level of fatalities and injuries per MWhr of all energy platforms. Or that the Fukushima nuclear plant may be one of the few structures still standing in the immediate earthquake/tsunami zone. And that there have been no deaths, and radiation-induced illnesses has struck fewer than 20 emergency workers thus far - mercifully low numbers.

Or that the excess radiation exposure to the Japanese population outside the plants may not be as great as that received during a chest X-ray.

Concern about nuclear technology is longstanding. The hyperboloid profiles of cooling towers, common to most electricity plants and emitting clouds of water vapour, are seen as toxic signatures of mysterious radioactivity. And the association of the technology with weapons systems and its Cold War role as the ultimate deterrent have given opponents plenty to work with. Critics hint darkly at undisclosed nuclear accidents, genetic abnormalities and radiation-induced cancers - never once verified even as large populations and the nuclear industry have been monitored since Hiroshima/Nagasaki and Chernobyl.

It may be that the Fukushima crisis is a near-worst case of nuclear catastrophe involving 1960s reactors. If so, the saturation media coverage has served to educate us and will help us form a view about the consequences - financial and social. There remains room for concern, but no longer irrational fear.

Engineers and policy makers will analyse the Fukushima catastrophe - integrity of infrastructure, back-up systems, emergency procedures. Experts will identify opportunities for improvement, and conclude that the best option for clean, industrial strength base-load power remains nuclear energy.



Ziggy Switkowski is chancellor of RMIT University and ANSTO's former chairman.

THE ACADEMIC BEVERLEY RAPHAEL

There is consistent evidence from many studies, here and internationally, that "nuclear" is potentially "the greatest of all fears". This is all the more so when it is associated with other threats - terrorism, weapons - and less so if viewed in terms of "radiation", with significance for medical investigations and therapies.

Risks perceived are likely to be influenced not only by knowledge of statistical, quantitative measures, but also, powerfully by emotional, "experiential", "risk as feelings" elements.

Paul Slovic, a risk expert, studied threats that people might face. He found that some of these were associated with "dread", a cognitive and emotional constellation of what was perceived as: uncontrollable; catastrophic; fatal; associated with risk to future generations; "invisible" effects; little knowledge. Most people are not familiar with nuclear "issues", unless experts in the field, and may not understand the physics and biology of hazard, or what to do for protection.

Nuclear energy and nuclear power are concepts that may be associated with such "dread" and uncertainty. A British study showed that even when nuclear power is seen as an important aspect of an energy policy for climate change, it is only reluctantly accepted. Greater understanding would help but such "knowledge" is complex and not easy to weigh "rationally".

Fear may be fuelled by the apocalyptic images: Hiroshima; Chernobyl; possible "contamination"/''irradiation"; cancer; mutilation; genes, the effects on children, the future. When nuclear incidents occur, how the facts, the capacity for safety, are communicated will influence how people understand and respond to the situation. Consistent information from trusted sources about what is known and what is being done can diminish fear. Media presentations may amplify risk through the repetitive depicted images, the hype of stories, the intensity of focus, and the "dread" generated.

We all live with risk. We pursue risk as "thrill". Life involves the balancing of risks for the present and the future. This is part of our resilience, as individuals, as nations. We feel for, and with, the people of Japan, for whom such threat is so painfully evocative of their history. These "nuclear" themes, personal and distant, "rational" and "irrational", may also influence how we address our futures.

Beverley Raphael is a psychiatrist and international expert on the impact of disasters on mental health.