Nuclear crisis in Japan – Time to support the Japanese effort

With everything going on due to this major natural disaster in Japan, it is absolutely incredible to watch how much of the reporting is about the Fukushima plant that goes well beyond the current status of the plant and efforts to get the situation under control.  There is a lot that has already been said.  Some of what has been written is strongly against nuclear power and some has been supportive.  And way too much poor reporting with too many self appointed experts fear mongering.  Lots of use of extreme language and use of varying and inconsistent measurement units for radiation so that it is nearly impossible for anyone in the public to really understand the risk.  Of course it is still too early to analyze the event and over time this will be done to the extreme once the situation is resolved.

Let’s use calmer heads. At this point here are the high level facts.

There was a 9.0 magnitude earthquake in Japan. This was followed by a tsunami with devastating force. This natural disaster destroyed large amounts of land including essential farmland and thousands of homes and businesses. Many thousands of people have died and many more have lost everything – their homes and belongings. Survivors are doing their best to cope with winter weather, no clean water and lack of the basic necessities of life.  They have a long hard road ahead of them.

A true disaster and our thoughts are with the Japanese people in this time of extreme need.

During this event 11 nuclear reactors were affected, the worst impact being at units 1,2 and 3 at Fukusima Dai-ichi and now in the used fuel bay at Unit 4 (the current issue of most concern).   Again the details of the plant response will be the subject of ongoing study for the foreseeable future.

What we do know is that these units are quite old, about 40 years of operation. (in service in 1971, 74, 76 and 78 respectively) and quite early versions of the BWR design.

We also know that the plants survived the initial earthquake but then many systems succumbed to the subsequent tsunami. Now it is my understanding that these plants were designed for tsunami but this tsunami was indeed stronger than the plant was designed for (even those in tsunami shelters suffered as some were under designed as no one had anticipated the 15 meter tsunami that crashed through the city).

Why?  Well this was the strongest earthquake in Japan in recorded history and this plant was designed in the 1960s.  I’m sure that reasonable assumptions were made based on knowledge at the time. This is also the first nuclear accident to impact a number of reactors at a site at the same time definitely challenging the workers with trying to deal with all the ongoing issues.  And of course this is in an overall context of a devastating disaster in the country that is stressing recovery resources to the extreme.

Yes the outcome has been somewhat tenuous. There have been numerous failures as has been described in detail elsewhere. And at this time efforts are continuing to get these units under control.  Were there issues? Yes. Were there mistakes made? Maybe. Were there releases? Some.

But at this point I fully expect that the releases will prove to be limited and of no public consequence and that even a 40 year old design will demonstrate the benefits of nuclear power’s “defense in depth” approach to safety and the ability to manage albeit with some difficulty with this beyond design basis event.

Many are already questioning the future of nuclear power. Using this event for political gain at this time in its evolution is reprehensible.   At this time all efforts should be to support the Japanese to get things under control and minimize the impact to the Japanese people.  It is Interesting to note that in this same event a dam burst wiping out 1800 homes. Also a tragedy but no one is publicly questioning the long term safety of dams.   That being said we accept this in the nuclear industry. We accept the increased public scrutiny and we are proud of our unwavering commitment to safety.

As said by Nicholas Taub in his book the Black Swan it takes low probability large consequence events to move society forward. And no industry is better at learning from events than the nuclear industry.   As time goes by there will be studies and many recommendations. These will include improvements in design, operator actions and how we react to extreme natural events.   I expect that every nuclear operator in the world will have their post Fukushima action plan.  And we will all be better off for it.

And of most importance we will learn these lessons following a very extreme event that will most likely have a very limited impact to the public with no long term health impacts.

So at this time let’s offer our deepest condolences to the Japanese people for their human tragedy and let’s offer the full knowledge of the global nuclear industry to help Tepco continue to manage this extreme event to a successful outcome.

We are best to leave the armchair quarter backing to later when all the plants are in a safe state and analysis has been done.