Nuclear Update
Random, long-term, unavoidable—a bit like life: the consequence of
nuclear radiation
An update on the nuclear situation. My first point is that the optimism of last week, reflected in my previous email, has not been maintained. Au contraire, the situation
appears to have deteriorated. Radiation leakage has continued, and the reactor cores are not only not inert, but may have melted down further.
We now know that bombarding the reactors from helicopters with water probably damaged the equipment, caused local flooding, and dumped huge volumes of salt over the equipment. Drowning the reactors in water has caused radiation run-offs in the adjacent areas. It would be great if much of this went into the ocean, which has the capacity to absorb it. But some of it will leach into the local water supply and food stocks. I am not going to start comparing radiation levels, and declaring whether or not we are safe. There is an abundance of data, which is not exactly contradictory. But it’s SO abundant that you can argue both sides of the argument. This is because radiation measurements fluctuate wildly, not just from place to place, but also within the same place, within short time spans.
We do have almost a ton of uranium fuel fizzing away on Fukushima, with a dash of extra-zesty plutonium from reactor 3 (and that’s not counting the 1000s of spent fuel rods). That’s the biggest amount of hazardous radioactive materials in one place ever seen in the history of nuclear energy. Efforts to cool it this week have proven of dubious success. One core, in reactor 2, is believed by at least some newspapers to have actually accelerated its heating. This happens when fuel rods melt together, reversing the natural cooling process. (Even when down to 1 percent of their peak heat, hot fuel rods can evaporate 200 tons of water per day).
We will not get the site encased in concrete, like at Chernobyl, until those cores are inert. The concrete tomb of Chernobyl emerged after the fire in the reactor core had burned out. You can’t pour concrete on a core which is still burning, since it would be inadequate against the inevitable explosion. Yet, as water is poured on, radioactivity continues to escape into the environment. There is no easy win. But does it matter? Even with that amount of nuclear waste, the effects of radiation can be summed up in three words: random, long-term, unavoidable. I don’t see how we can be insulated from radioactivity completely. We do live on the same island as Fukushima, and we are not THAT far away. But there are so many random factors (weather, water, food) that a solitary cloud burst over Sendagaya (for example) could lead to a sharp spike in cancers in 30 years time—but the next street down could be completely unscathed.
Can this be effectively guarded against? Distance, as we all know, is a pretty good barrier. But to get complete insulation you’d have to stop the radioactivity leaching into ground water and the atmosphere, and you’d have to stop exports of all vegetables, meat and dairy products for scores of miles around. How could you block potentially dangerous weather and ground water, without creating a futuristic dome reaching both inside the earth and into the sky above the area? In any case, how could Japan absorb the economic hit of quarantining Tohoku would entail, even if it were technologically possible? In practice, I believe the government will have to accept that levels will rise fractionally (at least) for everybody, that random concentrations of radioactivity will occur, and that in many decades time, you will have local outbreaks of typical radiation cancers.
Foreign Press:
I also want to explain quickly to you how the foreign press works. The early hysteria criticized in many quarters has turned out to be
more credible than many people supposed. As a former hack, let me explain how the process goes. Seeking information is a bit like shaking a tree. Quite a lot can fall out of a tree when you shake it vigorously.
It may take some time to distinguish the bad apples from the good
apples. But we have to shake: that’s their job. If you don’t shake,
nothing falls out at all. Shaking the tree is basically a reaction to an
information vacuum. Making a lot of noise is also a threat to whoever is in charge: If you don’t give us the information we need, we will assume the worst. That’s a sort of “duty of care” to our readers. Remember, during Chernobyl, the Soviet Union put a lid on information disclosure, and many people died as a result.
— Dan Slater