This is a report on what atomic scientists are saying in the journal, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
The lessons of Fukushima in which Hugh Gusterson observes the politics of who is pro, con, and middle ground on the future of nuclear reactors. He recalls the nuclear meltdown for which Britain hid the details for half a century and for which a longer discussion is here: BBC documentary reveals government reckless in drive for nuclear weapons
Windscale was the public face of Britain's drive to produce an atom bomb and the BBC documentary about it was released only four years ago because the British government hid the information about what happened at Windscale.
Fifty years since fire spread through the core of the Windscale nuclear reactor in Cumbria, tape recordings of the inquiry are finally made public.
Some of the men who risked their lives to fight the blaze are still bitter as they explain how they were made scapegoats for the disaster.
Windscale was the public face of Britain's drive to produce an atom bomb and warnings of leaks and overheating were ignored in the rush to get the reactor running.
Cover-up is always a bad idea and a fifty-year cover-up is unspeakable.
Hugh Gusterson, author of the first in the series that appeared this week in The Bulletin is an anthropologist with expertise in nuclear culture, international security, and the anthropology of science. His fieldwork is in the US and Russia, where he studied the culture of nuclear weapon scientists and antinuclear activists. Two of his books capture this effort--Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War (University of California Press, 1996) and People of the Bomb: Portraits of America's Nuclear Complex (University of Minnesota Press, 2004).
Gusterson addresses the present crisis in more detail than I am quoting:
The US government, including its regulatory agencies, has been largely captured by the corporate sector, which, by means of campaign donations, is able to secure compliant politicians and regulators. (In this context it is not entirely irrelevant that employees of the nuclear operator Exelon Corporation have been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and that Obama appointed Exelon's CEO to his Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Energy Future.)
We have examples from the not-so-distant American past of the government learning important lessons from big mistakes. After the Great Crash, the government reformed the banking system. After the near disaster of the Cuban Missile Crisis, US and Soviet presidents began signing arms control agreements. After the discovery of the Love Canal environmental contamination, Congress passed Superfund legislation.
But we now have a government captured by special interests, paralyzed by partisanship, and confused by astroturfing political groups and phony scientific experts for sale to the highest bidder. Our democracy and our regulatory agencies are husks of what they once were. It is unclear that such a system is capable of learning any lessons or indeed of doing anything much beyond generating speeches and passing the responsibility for failure back and forth like a Ping-Pong ball between our two yapping political parties. While we are distracted by the theater of Congress and the White House, our fate lies in other hands.
He's got more to say. Read it here.
The second article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in response to the crisis is by nuclear engineer and physicist Charles D. Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists and author of the forthcoming Nuclear Energy: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, April 2011). He outlines the next steps for Japan.
Japan's leadership has failed to enact effective policies for greater use of renewable energies. In particular, the renewable portfolio standard has been set too low so that the current low-level use has easily met the most recently passed standard. Lobbyists from large power utilities have opposed more ambitious renewable energy goals. Ten large utilities have monopoly control over Japan's major electricity-usage regions. Collectively, these utilities produce more than 85 percent of Japan's electricity. They have substantial influence at the local and national governmental levels.
Although it will be extremely hard to do because of Japan's dysfunctional political system, which has gone through five prime ministers in as many years, Japanese leaders should exert -- for the good of their country -- the courage and political power needed to form a more effective energy policy that is more resilient to natural disasters and that is not unduly influenced by monopolies. With a combination of safer nuclear plants and much greater use of renewable energy, Japan will significantly reduce its dependence on foreign fossil fuels and will serve as a global leader in shifting toward a sustainable pathway with renewable sources.
The third article in the series, "Earthquake 9.0: What this magnitude might mean for Japan's future" is by geologist Jeffrey Park, director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies and former chair of the standing committee of the IRIS Global Seismographic Network Park's expertise is in theoretical seismology, geological time series analysis, and the role of seismology in monitoring compliance in present and future test ban treaties.
He writes:
Japan is not the only perilous case. Without a fortuitous tsunami measurement in Japan in the year 1700, we would not know for certain that the US Pacific Northwest is also capable of a 9.0 megathrust event...
...Whether we have evidence for a prior event or not, the world looks much more dangerous than in 2004, before the 9.3 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake killed more than 220,000 people. Still, megathrust occurrence is limited by the slowness of plate motion; 300 to 500 years are necessary to build up the tremendous strains that they release.
Seismologists distinguish between earthquake prediction and earthquake forecasting. Earthquake prediction is short-term, conjuring Hollywood images of sirens and radios ordering citizens to sleep in tents outside their houses. Earthquake forecasting is more like "pledge night" on PBS: earnest pleas for public investments to mitigate a distant possible catastrophe. The difference between the two, however, is that earthquake forecasting is possible now, and earthquake prediction isn't. Seismologists do not yet understand how earthquakes begin to rupture. Though much has been learned from laboratory studies of rock fracture and field studies of earthquake zones, neither practical nor theoretical models have thus far captured properly the dynamics of an imminent large earthquake....
...Although it occurred within an earthquake-prone nation, the Christchurch earthquake is instructive because, though associated with a larger 7.0 earthquake five months prior in New Zealand, it occurred in a region with little recognized earthquake hazard. The earthquake risk associated with stable geologic regions was recognized by the US Atomic Energy Commission in the early decades of nuclear energy. For years the commission supported regional seismographic networks throughout the United States to monitor small earthquakes and identify active fault zones....
For perspective, geologic evidence tells us that a business-as-usual fossil-fuel energy policy will almost certainly lead to a sea-level rise from melting ice caps, comparable in height to that associated with the Tohoku tsunami. As with earthquakes, the main uncertainty is the timing of ice-cap melt, but all coastlines will be affected -- not only those next to subduction zones. Unlike with tsunamis, the seawater won't recede.
As the events in Japan have illustrated, the country faces a crisis from this megathrust earthquake, but it also faces an additional crisis from nuclear power plants sited in the area that was damaged most. Nuclear power facilities are often sited near the coastline to use seawater as a convenient source of coolant, and are thus vulnerable to coastal earthquakes and tsunamis.
There are few risk-free choices in energy policy -- and it might not be too soon to rethink natural-hazard policy so that it includes energy policy.
Go read the full article. It is much better than these snippets.
The fourth article in the crisis series in The Bulletin is a call for government transparency, by Jennifer Sims, a member of The Bulletin's science and security board, and recipient of the intelligence community's highest civilian award, the National Distinguished Service Medal.
Sims writes:
Releasing information about the status of the nuclear plants, the extent of the damage and the risks of further radioactive emissions can serve to dampen negative commentary and worst-case speculation. Even bad news can be accepted and calming if it builds trust that the government is not hiding anything. Denied such transparency, media outlets and the public may come to distrust official statements.
Although outsiders need to be patient, recognizing the enormous stress all Japanese are experiencing as they cope with this crisis, Japanese officials need to appreciate that social networking can magnify noise; poor information policies will exacerbate their national security crisis, not alleviate it.