Three decades after the world’s worst ever nuclear disaster, 60 per cent of Engineer readers believe Chernobyl still holds the nuclear industry back in the UK
We had an emphatic response to our poll on the effects of Chernobyl, with 60 per cent of the 447 respondents agreeing that the disaster still engendered caution over nuclear installations in the UK from the public and politicians. The next-largest group, 20 per cent, thought that it was well-understood that the problems that caused the disaster were specific to the design of the Chernobyl reactor and the former Soviet nuclear industry. A further 15 per cent thought that the UK sector had not taken account of the lessons of Chernobyl; while 3 per cent thought that the disaster was to long ago to affect the industry today. A further 3 per cent declined to pick an option.
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Fukushima anyone? Redundancy is a swear word. MBAs are keen on reducing redundancy as unnecessary costs. If we had put all that tax money that went into the nuclear industry into green projects, from sustainable business, over 8 hour working days in the healthcare sector, renewable resources, “alternative” energy, we’d be truly the leader of the world. Now we just aim to be like Albania after a Brexit.
The nuclear industry you lament was constructed on the back of a nuclear weapons programme. Tax payers money was spent on building bombs, the nuclear power industry was needed to support the endeavour and this is why our nuclear industry was so expensive and created so much waste; because it was little more than a means to an end.
So no, tax payers money would never have been spent on “green initiatives” whatever that truly mean (no human activity is green, all energy production is detrimental to the environment / ecosystem. Its just some demonise one set of effects over others).
Tax payers money was spent on weapons and wasn’t ever going to be diverted to windturbines etc.
Exactly. Just like no EU money will ever be spent on the NHS after Brexit. But that’s besides the point. “Green” things are always “too expensive”. While for war there is always money.
When thinking about “green” ways of energy production first thing to think about is why would I need that energy? If I don’t need 80% of the heating energy for a home by insulating it properly, then I wouldn’t need to produce it. If there’d be residential buildings beside the bank, then banksters could walk to work.
If companies would use a recession to train their people, they’d have trained people when business is picking up and moving to where the work is would be more efficient. You could live there long enough to see your kids grow up instead of moving around every few years, or every day.
On the other end of the spectrum is the polluting factory producing gasmasks for people to wear against the pollution. The job to earn money to spend on commuting. The power plant to generate the energy needed to build a new power plant.
It is more the perception of a hazard than the actual risk that scares people. The reporting of nuclear risk is generally very poor, failing to compare for example the level of radiation from the accident with typical natural levels or converting it into a risk level. The Engineer recently repeated its article after Fukushima, pointing out that whereas the tragic tsunami killed around 18,000 people, the nuclear release killed no-one. The worst affected victims, the emergency crew who dealt with the fire, increased their risk of dying from their work by about the same amount as the increased risk of being a “white van man” for 40 years. Not trivial and not to be ignored, but totally out of balance with the thousands who die every year in coal mines that are an alternative source of energy to nuclear power.
However well managed, however well designed, accidents will happen. In the case of radio active pollution, the result is catastrophic and long lived. I cannot believe we are allowing the Chinese to construct a huge nuclear power station on our soil which is unproven.
The PR problems of the nuclear industry started with Nevil Schute’s book “on the Beach”. Then the cold-war threats kept the fear-factor huge.
It is difficult to explain to the media that Chernoby / Fukushima etc. actually demonstrate that nuclear problems are containable and in historic terms minor events. The enormous number of operating sites with now over 40 years operational history is forgotten in the hysteria. France has benefitted more than is recognised generally from having the lowest cost electricity in Europe, and we import about 3 GW of this.
Problem was due to lack of maintenance particularly to the vital cooling systems.
Except it wasn’t. Read up on the event.
The FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) spread by the anti nuclear activists cause significant problems for the nuclear industry.
No one died due to radiation in Fukushima but it is still in the headlines. 18,000 plus died in the earthquake and tsunami but we don’t hear about that anymore.
If you read the headlines Chernobyl is a total no go area due to radiation, yet the other reactors continued producing electricity for many years and people are working on site on the clean up operation.
This website explains some of the reality:
http://radiationreality.blogspot.ch/
Best regards
Roger
I’m a nuclear engineer.
At the time of Chernobyl, Italian politicians and journalists carried out a systematic misinformation campaign spreading ridiculous info about the nuclear technology. A taxi driver told me he had carried two people coming from a nuclear power plant and afterwards he started itching; he asked me whether that had been due the radiations emitted by those two people.
The Italian people, and among them that taxi driver, banned the nuclear energy with a referendum, probably fearing all the possible scratching.
Both installations failed because they lost their primary cooling systems; each for entirely different reasons, however this loss caused the overheat and complete breakdown of their reactors.
Sizewell B (UK) could suffer exactly the same fate; if struck by tidal water, since it’s sea water pumps and ultimate heat sink are not in water tight structures. Although soundly engineered and equipped with control systems that are second to none, the sea water pumps; (just the same as Fukushima) are housed in light weight industrial fabricated buildings, which will give no protection against flood water. In fact the 11k volt supply powering them them would instantly shut down.
To the north of the UK lie several enormous volcanic structures, one is estimated to be perhaps as much as two hundred years past its “eruption due” date. Some learned persons have estimated such an eruption would send an 80 metre high wall of water down the North sea.
Perhaps such a wall of water should be written into the safety requirement for all existing and planned developments; ere we lose half East Anglia.
An 80m high wall of water down the east coast of Britain would make a complete loss of Sizewell B, including complete loss of containment, meltdown, (presumable)submarine explosion of the core and according dispersion of the isotopes therein a minor inconvenience in the state of things, since at least 40% of the UK’s population (pretty much everyone East of a line from Glasgow- Sheffield and the south East including , London and Kent) would be displaced/killed by it and at least as many again in France, Belgium, Holland, Northern Germany, Norway and Denmark.
I believe Fukushima is running out of storage space for the contaminated cooling water that is being pumped into and out of it. It is perhaps too early to judge the scale of that problem.
The scale of the Chernobly problem was never fully reported. Cumbrian lamb was inedible for many years. Surveyors in Lancashire were measuring high radiation levels that were never reported.
I would prefer that all un-necessary lighting was switched off than see more nuclear power. The stars are glorious when you can see them!
For anyone interested in radiation in general and recent videos from Chernobyl, have a look at the YouTube channel for “Bionerd23” She has explored Pripyat (the town nearby) and recently made a video tour of CHP itself (obviously not inside the remains of reactor 4).
It is not true that no one was killed by Fukushima – it will take years from the lives of many and there is a huge uninhabitable area around Chernobyl for the next ….. years.
If we have learned the lessons from these events then please explain what fail safe we have to intervene in loss of coolant incidents? How many reactors are there operating world-wide?
We have none – yet our leaders are brazen to expand the use of a technology
where we could not stop a fire – if our life depended on it. By the way it does. JCS
Anyone who has filled in a risk assessment knows that there are 2 components; likelihood of occurrence, and severity of outcome. That is the fundamental problem with nuclear – when it goes bang the whole world hears it. The trouble with stating that Fukishima has low casualties is that they may take a generation to show up in the statistics, as 30 years on the figure for Chernobyl is still contested by orders of magnitude.
The capital expenditure requirements, safety record and overall culture of nuclear power make it intrinsically unsuited when the alternatives are considered.
I would suggest that an 80m high wall of water would effectively devastate so much of the east coast of Britain that the problems of the Nuclear plants would be relatively insignificant as in Japan. A large stretch of coastland is still not rebuilt, 10s of thousands are still displaced, large areas are contaminated by chemicals from destroyed factories. This is however not news because it’s not nuclear.
A similar argument was used by the Swiss Greens that if the Sihl dam failed a 7m wall of water could affect one of the Swiss NPPs so the NPP should be shut down. They completely ignored the fact that the city of Zürich (pop ~0.5Million) was between the dam and the NPP! Typical FUD.
Best regards
Roger
Can you explain your comment above? As far as I can find the greatest effect on the residents of Fukushima was the mostly unnecessary evacuation and the fear caused by the lies from the nuclear activists.
The same applies to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, most of the health problems for the population were caused by the evacuations, not by the event itself.
Best regards
Roger
And then there are those who attribute the low death rate to the quick evacuation.
The problem is this. I have been to Pripyat. The town evacuated by Chernobyl. The radiation in 1996 was around background levels. I was there measuring it for the IAEA. The radiation is practically zero. And has been for 30 years. The Russians (Ukranians) are very pragmatic and are looking at long term fauna and flora implications. Great experiment.