RE: “Can Nuclear Power’s Deadly Waste Be Contained in a Warming World?”

Having acknowledged the urgency, and despite no other feasible options, Charman goes on to use the Fukushima Daiichi accident as an example to “[demonstrate] the vulnerability of nuclear power plants to” the world’s increasing rate of “climate-fueled megastorms and other disasters,” [4]. Earthquakes are not strengthened by climate change, however the melting ice and global rising sea level “would dramatically increase the frequency of tsunami-induced flooding incidences,” which pose a greater risk to coastal power plants [11]. For example, in March of 2011, a tsunami from the Pacific ocean washed over the reactor facilities in the Fukushima nuclear plant and disrupted its operations. With its electrical capabilities and back up generators flooded, cooling of the many reactor cores was not possible. The cores melted, nuclear materials leaked, and the contaminated waters and particulates filled inland from the coast.

Despite this, radiation played no role in the cost of human life compared to the deadly 15-meter (49 feet) tsunami, and even the resulting evacuation deaths. Following this, the public’s perceived risk of nuclear power soared, and their demands to cease the reactor operations at Fukushima resulted in the “’cold shutdown condition’ announced in mid-December,” [8]. However, as a counter example, 75 miles North of the Fukushima accident is a nuclear reactor facility in Onagawa which sheltered hundreds of nearby citizens from the same tsunami. Its walls were constructed “to withstand nine metre high tsunamis compared with Fukushima’s 5.4 metre limit,” saving many locals and providing energy and amenities through their crisis[13]. With the proper investments and risk analyses, future and updated reactor facilities can withstand the increasingly powerful climate-fueled disasters, as well as bring awareness and thanks to the local life-saving facilities, like in Onagawa.

Charman continues on to quote risk reports from highly credible national labs as evidence of the threat of nuclear power. There is no data regarding the aftermath of the accident that supports the magnitude of fear Charman is conveying in her argument. Instead, the numbers she quotes are purely theoretical; the extremely thorough risk reports from labs like Sandia National Lab and Brookhaven National Lab are done to predict the likelihood and weigh the impacts of potential disasters. The figures that Charman brings up do less to put into perspective about their meaning within the integral context of the deadly fossil fuel industry, but rather serve to fearmonger a skewed version of reality where a nuclear-powered future is filled with vulnerable reactors, standing ready to spit radioactive waste into the environment at any point. Charman mentions statistics from the risk reports, like one about an extremely unlikely core meltdown that “could kill 100,000 people within a year, result in 40,000 subsequent cancer deaths and give another 70,000-75,000 people a range of radiation-related injuries,” which are unfortunately accurate. The scale of the numbers presented is unnerving[4]. Reality demands that risk of harm or death be taken into consideration, however low the probability; the comprehensive nature of the risk reports are necessitated by the history of reactor accidents, which has created a stringent practice that has incomparably improved the safety and reliability of the industry over the decades.

The purpose of performing any risk calculation lies in all of the possible scenarios being taken into consideration, with as many simulations performed and models fleshed out as can be reasonable. This data is used in the design basis for all reactors to ensure the best power production and lowest risk to the public, to the highest standards upheld industry wide and kept in check by extensive legislation and bureaucratic inspection agencies. Such is the duty of the field, and the public outcry and well-circulated fears in the media ensured it to be so; the safety of nuclear power should be held to a high standard, for all’s sake. Perhaps designers cannot avoid an unprecedented earthquake or freak core meltdown, but instead they can be modeled, predicted, and have every preventative measure taken to minimize possible ensuing harm. The knowledge of the risk empowers designers and engineers to build and operate the safest and most sustainable nuclear power infrastructure, addressing fuel processing, energy generation, nonproliferation, and waste storage to the benefit of all.

Charman is speaking to an audience that needs to be addressed in the climate movement. Positive public opinion of nuclear technologies has decreased since its advent, yet the need of it as “both a 24/7 baseload energy source like coal and natural gas, and also a low-carbon energy source like solar and wind” has become paramount to the success of the green movement [2]. Widespread support for a feasible green future is only possible when nuclear energy, in tangent with renewable energies, is embraced by the industry and the public. The public’s support, according to polls, is proportionally related with awareness; of those well informed of the safety, risk, and necessity of nuclear energy, “three times as many strongly favored nuclear energy (54 percent) as strongly opposed it (18 percent),” emphasizing the needed focus on responsible reporting, education, and fair representation from the media and our education systems [2].

Swaying investors is a discussion of economics, but the public’s support for “nuclear energy reflects a tradeoff people make between perceptions of need and safety concerns,” and it is important to approach the discussion with both our need and the associated risk at the forefront of it [2]. At the end of the day, some communities will need to voluntarily live near an operating nuclear plant, and education of the risks remains their strongest tool in standing for change. The public can look to modern implementations of large scale nuclear power, past concerns, and risk reports to evaluate the reality of what life and the associated costs are in a majority nuclear power consuming future.

In EU debates, the disagreement of France and Germany prompted discourse about their differing conclusions in the classification of nuclear power as clean. As discourse engaged, the German State Secretary for Energy, Andreas Feicht, claimed that “‘nuclear energy is [not] safe and sustainable nor cost-effective,’during a September meeting of EU energy ministers,” a position extended to policy as Germany rejected EU funding to invest in nuclear over safety concerns [1]. Germany decommissioned their reactors and reduced its national TWh consumption of nuclear energy. However, with the same electrical demand, and their focus on increasing energy consumption for solar and wind, but without a reliable clean baseload nor a long-term battery infrastructure, Germany had to increase their electrical consumption of GHG producing energy sources. Coal consumption increased from 22%  in 2009 to 25% in 2015, while investment in natural gas as an alternative GHG producing fossil fuel went up 3% in 2018 from 2015 [14].

Though safety considerations determined Germany’s decision to halt nuclear energy production, an “economy ministry spokesperson put Russia’s share in German natural gas imports at ‘about 40 percent,’” a shaky ally to rely so heavily on while a GHG producing fuel accounts for a quarter of Germany’s energy use [17]. Meanwhile, the French Finance Minister embraced nuclear “‘in the ecological transition,’” stating that “‘[France] cannot achieve [their] goal in terms of combating global warming without nuclear energy,’” which reflected in their legislation [1]. France has increased the production and consumption of GHG-free nuclear power since the late 1970s, with a majority 37 % consumption from nuclear power, dwarfing their second largest source of energy consumption of oil at 32% [14]. The net positives of producing less GHG emitting energy now outweigh the cons of keeping the energy status-quo at great eventual cost to every life on the planet.