Captialism's Chernobyl

ravochol posted on Wed, Mar 16 2011 4:44 AM

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We are all familiar that the terrible Chernobyl disaster was part and parcel of the incompetence of the command and control economy of the Soviet Union. While true, we seem to now be vitnessing a comparable disaster, caused not by incompetence, but the profit motive.  

Here's a good place to start - "This Could Become Chernobyl on Steroids" - video interview with nuclear engineer Arnie Gunderson.

If it really could be that bad, it's worth researching further to see how this could have happened.

Here is some information on the reactors that are failing, from an article titled "Reactor Design in Japan has Long Been Questioned"

...the type of containment vessel and pressure suppression system used in the failing reactors at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant is physically less robust, and it has long been thought to be more susceptible to failure in an emergency than competing designs. In the United States, 23 reactors at 16 locations use the Mark 1 design, including the Oyster Creek plant in central New Jersey, the Dresden plant near Chicago and the Monticello plant near Minneapolis. 

G.E. began making the Mark 1 boiling-water reactors in the 1960s, marketing them as cheaper and easier to build -- in part because they used a comparatively smaller and less expensive containment structure. 

American regulators began identifying weaknesses very early on. 

In 1972, Stephen H. Hanauer, then a safety official with the Atomic Energy Commission, recommended that the Mark 1 system be discontinued because it presented unacceptable safety risks. Among the concerns cited was the smaller containment design, which was more susceptible to explosion and rupture from a buildup in hydrogen -- a situation that may have unfolded at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Later that same year, Joseph Hendrie, who would later become chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a successor agency to the atomic commission, said the idea of a ban on such systems was attractive. But the technology had been so widely accepted by the industry and regulatory officials, he said, that "reversal of this hallowed policy, particularly at this time, could well be the end of nuclear power."

...Questions about the design escalated in the mid-1980s, when Harold Denton, an official with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, asserted that Mark 1 reactors had a 90 percent probability of bursting should the fuel rods overheat and melt in an accident. 

Industry officials disputed that assessment, saying the chance of failure was only about 10 percent...

Here are the facts about Tokyo Electric and the industry you haven't heard on CNN:

The failure of emergency systems at Japan's nuclear plants comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked in the field.

Nuclear plants the world over must be certified for what is called "SQ" or "Seismic Qualification."  That is, the owners swear that all components are designed for the maximum conceivable shaking event, be it from an earthquake or an exploding Christmas card from Al Qaeda.

The most inexpensive way to meet your SQ is to lie.  The industry does it all the time. The government team I worked with caught them once, in 1988, at the Shoreham plant in New York.  Correcting the SQ problem at Shoreham would have cost a cool billion, so engineers were told to change the tests from 'failed' to 'passed.'

The company that put in the false safety report?  Stone & Webster, now the nuclear unit of Shaw Construction which will work with Tokyo Electric to build the Texas plant, Lord help us.

There's more.

Last night I heard CNN reporters repeat the official line that the tsunami disabled the pumps needed to cool the reactors, implying that water unexpectedly got into the diesel generators that run the pumps.

These safety back-up systems are the 'EDGs' in nuke-speak: Emergency Diesel Generators.  That they didn't work in an emergency is like a fire department telling us they couldn't save a building because "it was on fire."

On top of cheaply designed reactors we also must consider possible lying to regulators about seismic qualifications, and almost certainly negligence when it comes to the diesel back-up generators. Consider that the Fukushima plant was directly on the ocean, and that an intelligently designed system could have used only gravity to lower fuel rods into a sea-water chamber to prevent melt-down in an emergency, without electricity even being necessary. Was short-term profit, not prudence, the watchword at the plant?

Surely someone would have spoken up - 

Here is some information from Wikileaks: "Leaked cable: Japanese lawmaker pointed to cover-up of nuclear accidents"

Taro Kono, a liberal Democrat and member of Japan's DIET, or parliament. Kono's father was the president of the liberal Democrats.

"[Kono]  accused METI [Japan's Ministry of Trade and the Interior] of covering up nuclear accidents, and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry. He claimed MPs have a difficult time hearing the whole of the U.S. message on nuclear energy because METI picks and chooses those portions of the message that it likes. Only information in agreement with METI policies is passed through to the MPs. Elaborating on his frustrations with the ministries, Kono noted that the Diet committee staffs are made up of professional bureaucrats, and are often headed by detailees from the ministries."...

He added that the country's major electric interests once torpedoed a series of television interviews he was filming. The companies allegedly threatened to pull their sponsorship when he began to speak frankly about the dangers and drawbacks of nuclear energy.

Now the picture is more complete - the government seems to be in bed with the nuclear industry, to the extent that the nuclear industry is censoring news that reaches lawmakers and even a member of Parliament who is the son of a party head is so frustrated he is speaking at foreign embassies to be heard. And look specifically at what happened when he tried to speak in the privately-owned, for profit media about the issue - he was censored, because the nuclear industry threatened to withdraw sponsorship. What's the difference between Communist media and Japan's for-profit media? Not much, apparently, when it comes to censoring information about potential nuclear disasters. 

Now look at CNBC's Jim Cramer (owned by General Electric) assuring us that the problem in Japan is "Not a Chernobyl Situation" (if you can stomach it.)

The disaster in Japan is now classified a level six - one worse than Three Mile Island, and one less that Chernobyl... so far. Already Japanese are fleeing Tokyo and radiation increases are being reported in Russia. If things do get worse, the prevailing winds and jet stream will bring the radiation across the Ocean to the West Coast of America;

Allowing large amounts of capital to accumulate in private hands clearly sets the stage for bribery - and the 'representative' electoral governments seem to have little immunity to being corrupted. Lack of preventative oversight is unthinkable, especially in cases like this, where one bad actor can affect entire hemispheres. A better way must be found - one in which each person has truly equal say in matters which affect them.