I am certain you have heard of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown of March 2011. Take a second now, before you read the next sentence, to ask yourself how many people were killed in that disaster. The number of confirmed deaths resulting directly from the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe was: zero. Meanwhile, the earthquake and tsunami that triggered the meltdown took 15,889 lives.
To be fair, the zero casualties figure does not tell the whole story. Japan had to undertake a massive, prolonged, and expensive evacuation and relocation of people living near the reactor. The stress of moving probably led to a number of elderly individuals perishing earlier than they would otherwise have done. Had anything of a comparable magnitude happened in a country with an administration as inefficient as India’s, the casualty rate would undoubtedly have been considerably higher. Besides, the leak is estimated to have increased by about 1% the chances of certain cancers occurring among those exposed to excess radiation, and that will mean some future deaths.
Nevertheless, the central fact remains that when Japan was hit by the most powerful quake recorded in its history, and its coastline was engulfed by a wave that rose over a hundred feet high in places, a level 7 crisis in a flooded nuclear installation built on 50-year-old technology and maintained with inadequate safeguards caused no immediate casualties whatsoever. I can’t think of a better exemplar of the safety of nuclear installations.
Global protests
But that is not the way the Fukushima meltdown was received. It inspired a series of protests against planned nuclear plants at Koodankulam and Jaitapur in India, and led countries across the globe to reconsider investments in nuclear energy. Chancellor Angela Merkel initiated a complete phase-out of Germany’s nuclear programme by shutting down eight of the nation’s oldest reactors, at a time when she was launching an incredibly ambitious shift in Germany’s energy mix, in the direction of decentralised, renewable power sources, and away from large, traditional utilities.
Germany generates about half its power from burning coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels. Though solar and wind energy capacities are increasing rapidly, they are not doing so at a rate fast enough to offset the drop in nuclear power generation since the phase out began. The only viable substitute is coal. As a result, German carbon emissions have actually gone up in each of the years since Merkel showed nuclear power a red card. The shut-off has also left Germany more dependent on Russian natural gas, and therefore less willing to enforce tough sanctions on that nation. The European response to Russian aggression in Ukraine has been remarkably feeble, despite rebels in Eastern Ukraine using a missile system provided by Russia to shoot down a civilian airliner carrying 211 Europeans.
Merkel, an engineer by training, might now be wondering if it was wise to close down reactors over safety concerns consequent to the Fukushima accident, especially since Germany has never faced a tsunami, and the country’s last fatal earthquake killed four people back in 1756.
The fear of nuclear installations is a bit like the fear of genetically modified crops, which I wrote about last week. It isn’t something that can be successfully countered by facts. It is visceral, like the fear of sharks. Sharks kill an average of five people every year globally. Hippopotami kill over a hundred times that many, estimates varying from 500 to 3,000 annual kills. Hippos are aggressively territorial, deceptively fast, and extremely powerful. Yet, few humans fear them more than they do sharks. In our minds, hippos will always be tubby, cute, grass-munchers. Steven Spielberg would never have launched a career as the most commercially successful director in history on the back of a movie about a killer hippopotamus.
Long-term effects
If nuclear power is the shark of electricity generation, coal-fired plants are the hippos. Nuclear radiation, like tampering with genes, is new and fearsome. The soot from coal plants, on the other hand, though unpleasant, is essentially something we’ve been dealing with ever since we tamed fire, possibly back in our Homo Erectus days. That’s why the new Ultra Mega Power Projects launched in the last decade in India have not faced anything close to the level of opposition encountered by the Jaitapur and Koodankoolam nuclear plants. Coal-fired plants don’t need accidents to kill people: they do it as a matter of course, by causing respiratory ailments, heart attacks, strokes and cancers.
According to a paper by two NASA scientists, Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen, nuclear power prevents 80,000 deaths annually, and has saved about 1.84 million lives since 1971, while causing 4,900 deaths. The scientists assumed that the power produced by nuclear plants would have been supplied by a mix of coal and natural gas had the nuclear option not been available. Even if we grant that Kharecha and Hansen overestimated deaths caused by coal pollution, and underestimated those related to events like the Chernobyl disaster, it remains believable that the ratio of coal deaths to nuclear deaths is more or less that of hippo kills to shark kills.
The historical safety record and level of emissions aren’t the only factors to consider when forming a final opinion on the desirability of nuclear power. Nevertheless, given that the only viable medium-term option is coal, I have always been surprised by the virulence of environmentalist opinion against nuclear energy. At least Germany responded to a meltdown in a near-obsolete plant by closing down its own near-obsolete plants. In India, the Greens responded to Fukushima by objecting strenuously to newly-built reactors, which makes no sense at all.
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To be fair, the zero casualties figure does not tell the whole story. Japan had to undertake a massive, prolonged, and expensive evacuation and relocation of people living near the reactor. The stress of moving probably led to a number of elderly individuals perishing earlier than they would otherwise have done. Had anything of a comparable magnitude happened in a country with an administration as inefficient as India’s, the casualty rate would undoubtedly have been considerably higher. Besides, the leak is estimated to have increased by about 1% the chances of certain cancers occurring among those exposed to excess radiation, and that will mean some future deaths.
Nevertheless, the central fact remains that when Japan was hit by the most powerful quake recorded in its history, and its coastline was engulfed by a wave that rose over a hundred feet high in places, a level 7 crisis in a flooded nuclear installation built on 50-year-old technology and maintained with inadequate safeguards caused no immediate casualties whatsoever. I can’t think of a better exemplar of the safety of nuclear installations.
Global protests
But that is not the way the Fukushima meltdown was received. It inspired a series of protests against planned nuclear plants at Koodankulam and Jaitapur in India, and led countries across the globe to reconsider investments in nuclear energy. Chancellor Angela Merkel initiated a complete phase-out of Germany’s nuclear programme by shutting down eight of the nation’s oldest reactors, at a time when she was launching an incredibly ambitious shift in Germany’s energy mix, in the direction of decentralised, renewable power sources, and away from large, traditional utilities.
Germany generates about half its power from burning coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels. Though solar and wind energy capacities are increasing rapidly, they are not doing so at a rate fast enough to offset the drop in nuclear power generation since the phase out began. The only viable substitute is coal. As a result, German carbon emissions have actually gone up in each of the years since Merkel showed nuclear power a red card. The shut-off has also left Germany more dependent on Russian natural gas, and therefore less willing to enforce tough sanctions on that nation. The European response to Russian aggression in Ukraine has been remarkably feeble, despite rebels in Eastern Ukraine using a missile system provided by Russia to shoot down a civilian airliner carrying 211 Europeans.
Merkel, an engineer by training, might now be wondering if it was wise to close down reactors over safety concerns consequent to the Fukushima accident, especially since Germany has never faced a tsunami, and the country’s last fatal earthquake killed four people back in 1756.
The fear of nuclear installations is a bit like the fear of genetically modified crops, which I wrote about last week. It isn’t something that can be successfully countered by facts. It is visceral, like the fear of sharks. Sharks kill an average of five people every year globally. Hippopotami kill over a hundred times that many, estimates varying from 500 to 3,000 annual kills. Hippos are aggressively territorial, deceptively fast, and extremely powerful. Yet, few humans fear them more than they do sharks. In our minds, hippos will always be tubby, cute, grass-munchers. Steven Spielberg would never have launched a career as the most commercially successful director in history on the back of a movie about a killer hippopotamus.
Long-term effects
If nuclear power is the shark of electricity generation, coal-fired plants are the hippos. Nuclear radiation, like tampering with genes, is new and fearsome. The soot from coal plants, on the other hand, though unpleasant, is essentially something we’ve been dealing with ever since we tamed fire, possibly back in our Homo Erectus days. That’s why the new Ultra Mega Power Projects launched in the last decade in India have not faced anything close to the level of opposition encountered by the Jaitapur and Koodankoolam nuclear plants. Coal-fired plants don’t need accidents to kill people: they do it as a matter of course, by causing respiratory ailments, heart attacks, strokes and cancers.
According to a paper by two NASA scientists, Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen, nuclear power prevents 80,000 deaths annually, and has saved about 1.84 million lives since 1971, while causing 4,900 deaths. The scientists assumed that the power produced by nuclear plants would have been supplied by a mix of coal and natural gas had the nuclear option not been available. Even if we grant that Kharecha and Hansen overestimated deaths caused by coal pollution, and underestimated those related to events like the Chernobyl disaster, it remains believable that the ratio of coal deaths to nuclear deaths is more or less that of hippo kills to shark kills.
The historical safety record and level of emissions aren’t the only factors to consider when forming a final opinion on the desirability of nuclear power. Nevertheless, given that the only viable medium-term option is coal, I have always been surprised by the virulence of environmentalist opinion against nuclear energy. At least Germany responded to a meltdown in a near-obsolete plant by closing down its own near-obsolete plants. In India, the Greens responded to Fukushima by objecting strenuously to newly-built reactors, which makes no sense at all.