[E-rundbrief] Info 1546 - D. Krieger - Lessons from Chernobyl and Fukushima

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 1546 - David Krieger (Nuclear Age Peace 
Foundation): Ten Lessons from Chernobyl and Fukushima. Nuclear Energy, 
President's Message.

Bad Ischl, 2.8.2016

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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Ten Lessons from Chernobyl and Fukushima

Nuclear Energy, President's Message

July 15, 2016

David Krieger

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

https://www.wagingpeace.org/ten-lessons-chernobyl-fukushima/

George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past 
are condemned to repeat it.”  The same may be said of those who fail 
to understand the past or to learn from it. If we failed to learn the 
lessons from the nuclear power plant accident at Chernobyl more than 
three decades ago or to understand its meaning for our future, perhaps 
the more recent accident at Fukushima will serve to underline those 
lessons. Here are ten lessons drawn from the Chernobyl and Fukushima 
disasters.

     Nuclear power is a highly complex, expensive and dangerous way to 
boil water. Nuclear power does nothing more than provide a high-tech 
and extremely dangerous way to boil water to create steam to turn 
turbines.

     Accidents happen and the worst-case scenario often turns out to 
be worse than imagined or planned for. Although the nuclear industry 
continues to assure the public that nuclear power plants are safe, the 
plants continue to have accidents, some of which exceed worst-case 
projections.

     The nuclear industry and its experts cannot plan for every 
contingency or prevent every disaster. Although it was known that 
Fukushima is subject to earthquakes and tsunamis, the nuclear industry 
and its experts did not plan for the combination of a 9.0 earthquake 
and the larger-than-expected tsunami that followed.

     Governments do not effectively regulate the nuclear industry to 
assure the safety of the public. Government regulators of nuclear 
industry often come from the nuclear industry and tend to be too close 
to the industry to regulate it effectively.

     Hubris, complacency and high-level radiation are a deadly mix. 
Hubris on the part of the nuclear industry and its government 
regulators, along with complacency on the part of the public, have led 
to the creation of vast amounts of high-level radiation that must be 
guarded from release to the environment for tens of thousands of 
years, far longer than civilization has existed.

     Nuclear power plants can catastrophically fail, causing vast 
human and environmental damage. The corporations that run the power 
plants, however, are protected from catastrophic economic failure by 
government limits on liability, which shift the economic burden to the 
public. If the corporations that own nuclear power plants had to bear 
the burden of potential financial losses in the event of a 
catastrophic accident, they would not build the plants because they 
know the risks are unacceptable. It is government liability limits, 
such as the Price-Anderson Act in the US, that make nuclear power 
plants possible, leaving the taxpayers responsible for the 
overwhelming monetary costs of nuclear industry failures. No other 
private industry is given such liability protection.

     Radiation releases from nuclear accidents cannot be contained in 
space and will not stop at national borders. The wind will carry 
long-lived radioactive materials around the world and affect the 
people and environment of many countries and regions. The radiation 
will also affect the oceans of the world, which are the common 
heritage of humankind.

     Radiation releases from nuclear accidents cannot be contained in 
time and will adversely affect countless future generations. The 
radioactive materials from nuclear power plant accidents, as well as 
from radioactive wastes, are a legacy we are bequeathing to future 
generations of humans and other forms of life on the planet.

     Nuclear energy, as well as nuclear weapons, and human beings 
cannot co-exist without the risk of future catastrophes. The survivors 
of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have long known that 
nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist. The Fukushima 
accident, like that at Chernobyl before it, makes clear that human 
beings and nuclear power plants also cannot co-exist without courting 
future disasters.

     The accidents at Fukushima and Chernobyl are a wake-up call to 
phase out nuclear energy and replace it with energy conservation and 
more human- and environmentally-friendly forms of renewable energy. 
For decades it has been clear that various forms of renewable energy 
are needed to replace both nuclear and fossil fuel energy sources. Now 
it is clearer than ever. The choice is not between nuclear and fossil 
fuels. The solution is to disavow both of these forms of energy and to 
move as rapidly as possible to a global energy plan based upon various 
forms of renewable energy: solar cells, wind, geothermal, ocean 
thermal, currents, tides, etc.

The nuclear power plant accident at Chernobyl was repeated, albeit 
with a different set of circumstances, at Fukushima. Have our 
societies yet learned any lessons from Chernobyl and Fukushima that 
will prevent the people of the future from experiencing such 
devastation? As poet Maya Angelou points out, “History, despite its 
wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage doesn’t 
need to be lived again.” We need the courage to phase out nuclear 
power globally and replace it with energy conservation and renewable 
energy sources. In doing so, we will not only be acting responsibly 
with regard to nuclear power, but will also reduce the risks of 
nuclear weapons proliferation and strengthen the global foundations 
for the abolition of these weapons.

David Krieger


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Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
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