Investor's Business Daily, August 28th, 2007
Energy: Opposition to nuclear power has been fueled by fear of accidents, plane crashes, terrorist attacks -- and earthquakes. But in the land of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear power has passed a real-world safety test.
If any country has a right to fear the hazards of nuclear energy, Japan would be it. The Land of the Rising Sun is the only nation to have experienced the destructiveness of a nuclear weapon. It is also seismically active, giving environmentalists added fuel for opposing nuclear power plants.
Yet Japan has no fewer than 55 reactors that generate a third of the country's electricity. That makes it the third largest nuclear power producer in the world.
The nuclear facility at Kashiwazaki Kariwa, owned by Tokyo Electric Power Co. and situated on the Sea of Japan northwest of Tokyo, is the world's largest in terms of electrical output. It has seven reactors with a generating capacity of 8,212 megawatts.
Kashiwazaki Kariwa is a mere 9.8 miles from the epicenter of a 6.8-magnitude quake that hit Niigata prefecture on July 16. Photos like the one above, of smoke billowing from the facility, shot around the world, as did reports of toppled barrels of nuclear waste.
On the surface, it looked like another Three Mile Island -- and more proof that nuclear power is dangerous. Except that nothing much happened at Three Mile Island, and nothing much happened at Kashiwazaki Kariwa.
A six-member team assembled by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency and led by Philippe Jamet, director of the IAEA's installation nuclear safety division, conducted a three-day examination of the facility earlier this month.
The IAEA team concluded that even in the face of a God-zilla-size quake in which the vibration was three times the maximum assumed in the plant's design, plant safety features performed as required, and radioactivity released was well below authorized limits for public health and environmental safety.
An IAEA statement preceding the official report noted that "as with most nuclear plants, additional robustness in design had been incorporated into plant structures, systems and components," with the result that damage from the earthquake was "limited to those sections of the plant that would not affect the reactor or systems related to reactor safety."
Properly built, nuclear reactors are hardly eggshells ready to crack. Nobody died in the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pa. The 1986 accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine said more about the dangers of the Soviet government rather than nuclear technology and in the end was more hype than horror. A U.N. report put the death toll at 47 -- high but not apocalyptic. If the Japanese had built Chernobyl, the facility wouldn't today be the poster child for nuclear disaster.
A report compiled by the Chernobyl Forum of eight U.N. divisions, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, stated, "The largest public health problem created by the accident" was the "damaging psychological impact (due) to a lack of accurate information" -- a situation similar to the aftermath of Three Mile Island.
Unlike with fossil fuel production, no domestic loss of life has come from peaceful nuclear power generation since the first reactor went online in Shippingpoint, Pa., in 1957. And we'll never know how many premature deaths were prevented by nuclear power that reduced fossil fuel pollution.
Nuclear power indeed saves lives. Between 1995 and 2003, U.S. nuclear plants reduced emissions of sulfur dioxide by 34.3 million tons, nitrogen oxides by 14.8 million tons and carbon dioxide by 6 billion tons.
To burn a 100-watt light bulb for a year requires 876 pounds of coal or 508 pounds of oil or a mere 0.0007 pound of uranium. The energy in one uranium fuel pellet -- the size of the tip of your little finger -- is the equivalent of 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas, 1,780 pounds of coal or 149 gallons of oil.
In April 2005, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore told a House government reform subcommittee on energy and resources: "Nuclear energy is the only nongreenhouse gas-emitting power source that can effectively replace fossil fuels and satisfy global demand for energy."
The only thing we need to fear about nuclear power is not having enough of it.
