The Japan syndrome

By: North County Times Opinion staff | Thursday, July 19, 2007 9:19 PM PDT ∞

Our view: Earthquake aftermath is worrisome, but nuclear power still a vital energy option

It wasn't the best week to have a nuclear plant in your backyard, not with an earthquake in Japan damaging a key nuclear plant there. But we can't afford to allow an old, unfounded fear to trump the historical record.

Nuclear power remains one of our best sources of clean, cheap energy, and it's a vital asset in the effort to minimize the buildup of carbon in our atmosphere that appears to be raising global temperatures.

The facts about what happened at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant are still emerging . Meanwhile, officials from Southern California Edison, which operates San Onofre, are predictably assuring us that whatever happened in Japan couldn't possibly happen here.

Edison spokesmen say the domes that protect the reactors at San Onofre are built to withstand a quake as strong or stronger than 7.0 on the Richter scale, or a large tsunami, as well as internal stresses that are actually more dangerous. But Japan, perhaps the world leader in earthquake engineering, experienced a rude awakening after hearing similar claims.

Besides, San Onofre's domes don't concern us as much as the pools beside them, in which rods of nuclear waste, also called spent fuel, are stored. Edison representatives say Kashiwazaki's cooling pools were probably the source of radioactive water that leaked into the Sea of Japan.

Our local nuclear plant wasn't meant to store so many spent fuel rods, but it doesn't look like the Yucca Mountain storage site in Nevada will be open for business anytime soon. That means that we're stuck with adding more waste to the pools for the forseeable future. And that, despite Edison officials' best efforts, isn't all that reassuring.

Given all those risks, how can nuclear power still be a good option for powering North County?

Nuclear energy is cheap and abundant. Even more important to a state that is trying to reduce greenhouse gases, nuclear energy is a source of zero-emission electricity.

And, despite all of the oft-repeated fears, the Nuclear Age, now in its 62nd year, has proven to be about as safe as any other. Even Chernobyl, the site of the worst nuclear accident in history, did not result in the long-predicted, worst-case scenario of a meltdown.

In fact, one of the things we do know about the incident in Japan is that, despite the potential for catastrophe, the plant's safety mechanisms worked and its operating reactors automatically shut down during the quake. That's been the rule, not the exception.

On the other hand, power plants that burn fossil fuels, which supply most of our power, may be even worse. They are not only filling our atmosphere with carbon but also filling our lungs with deadly pollution. A 2000 report by the Clean Air Task Force , a collection of environmental groups, pinned the blame for 30,000 premature deaths each year on plants that burn oil, natural gas and especially coal.

These plants have accidents, too: A gas leak from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India , killed 4,000 people while they slept in 1984 and is believed to be responsible for as many 14,410 deaths total. By comparison, the World Health Organization estimates that 9,335 people are likely to die of cancers caused by radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster .

Nuclear is an important option. However, it probably doesn't belong on or near earthquake fault lines. Unlike Japan, which has far fewer options, the United States has a whole continent on which to select more suitable locations for nuclear facilities. Of course, building them will mean overcoming the objections of Americans who don't want a nuclear facility in their backyards and who will offer any reason ---- legitimate or otherwise ---- not to build them. That's why Yucca Mountain is stalled .

Both unresolved problems ---- moving nuclear plants away from seismically active areas and improving waste storage ---- are more political than technical. As we learn the true cost of burning the fossils that fueled the last 200 years, nuclear power will only grow more attractive.

The quake in Japan gives both concerned citizens and regulators a good excuse to reexamine safety at nuclear power plants in this country. Let's not in the process eliminate the one alternative energy that actually works.

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