Nuclear energy: Lessons on risk from Japan (and Murphy)

Dominion Virginia Power said Monday that it intends to move forward with plans for a third reactor at its North Anna Power Station as the international nuclear energy industry reels from the disaster at the Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Japan.-WSLS10, March 15, 2011

The operator of Japan’s tsunami-hit nuclear power plant sounded the alarm on the gravity of the deepening crisis of containment at the coastal site on Friday, saying that there are more than 200,000 tons of radioactive water in makeshift tanks vulnerable to leaks, with no reliable way to check on them or anywhere to transfer the water. -The New York Times, August 23, 2013

A friend asked me recently whether I thought the ongoing disaster at the Fukishima nuclear plant in Japan would have repercussions here in Virginia, where Dominion Power operates four nuclear reactors at two plants and wants to build another. I feel pretty sure the answer is no. Economics will kill Dominion’s nuclear dream, but not risk. We just don’t think that way.

We think like this: Fukishima was taken out by a tsunami. There are no tsunamis in central Virginia. Ergo, there is no risk to Virginia’s nuclear plants from a tsunami, so Japan’s sudden revulsion against nuclear power shouldn’t put us off our feed half a world away.

So why did countries like Germany, which also has no tsunamis, freak out and swear off nuclear for good?

They drew an entirely different lesson: Japan is a smart, technologically-advanced nation. Japan did not anticipate the disaster that destroyed Fukishima. Ergo, unanticipated disasters happen even in smart, technologically-advanced nations.

Or put another way: Murphy’s Law also applies to nuclear plants. We ignore Murphy at our peril.

But ignore him we do. We had our own brush with nuclear disaster two years ago, when a rare, magnitude 5.8 earthquake shook central Virginia and led to a months-long shutdown of the two North Anna nuclear reactors. No one expected an earthquake of this strength there, least of all the plants’ designers. Fortunately, the reactors survived intact, but I don’t know of anyone who wants to repeat the experiment. Presumably Dominion intends the “next” North Anna reactor to be designed to withstand stronger earthquakes. Do you feel better about nuclear now, or worse?

Murphy’s Law operates with ferocity across the energy sector. An industry expert told me the BP oil spill in the Gulf happened in spite of four different safeguards in place on the drilling rig, each of which should have stopped the blowout from happening. And that spill was not an isolated incident; only the year before, a similar blowout off the coast of Australia created a 2,300 square mile oil slick-about the size of Delaware. U.S. papers largely ignored it. Spills are so common in oil drilling that they rarely warrant a headline. Yet somehow those who support offshore oil drilling off the coast of Virginia feel sure it won’t happen here.

Or take mountaintop removal coal mining (please). Right now powerful explosives are blasting away the tops of mountains in southwest Virginia and across Appalachia. The rubble is being dumped into stream valleys, while huge machines scrape off the thin seams of coal. Federal law provides that no streams should be harmed, and the mountains should afterwards be restored-requirements so fanciful that neither mining companies nor state officials take them seriously. So it’s not surprising that streams and rivers are polluted, species disappear, building foundations crack, and residents die young. That’s not the plan going wrong, it’s the plan.

In the past most Americans participated in an unspoken agreement to ignore the risks involved in producing energy, because we had no intention of stopping what we were doing. If it’s a choice between risky energy and no energy, we will go with risky every time. Denying the risks is a coping mechanism that lets us sleep at night. Not incidentally, this is also the strategy used by fossil fuel interests to keep the public from demanding action on climate change.

But the widespread availability of cleaner alternatives gives us energy options we didn’t feel we had before. Increases in energy efficiency and tumbling prices for wind and solar mean we can afford to look more honestly at the damage we do and the risks we run by powering our 21st century economy with 20th century fuels.

I like to think the Virginia legislature’s decision to maintain the ban on uranium mining-for now-shows that our ability to ignore risks has its limits. Mining anything hazardous is inherently risky in a climate like Virginia’s, where rainfall continually recharges the water table. Put nasty stuff between the rain and the water table, and you will find contamination downstream. The idea that water can be kept out of millions of tons of radioactive mine tailings for thousands of years strains credulity. The idea that this might be accomplished by a mining company whose sole purpose is to make money strains credulity altogether.

The fact that a good many of Virginia’s politicians lined up on the side of the mining company anyway is not necessarily evidence of their capacity for ignoring risk. More likely, it simply demonstrates how extreme is the corrupting power of money in Virginia politics. Unfortunately, that shows no signs of changing.