I read recently that the Japanese nuclear crisis at Fukushima continues. Amazingly, if you read newspapers in Australia on a daily basis (as I do) you probably wouldn’t know it.

Thankfully, The Guardian has a report on the latest on crisis - and the scary news that authorities may have tried to hide the fact that there was a nuclear meltdown shortly after the earthquake and tsunamni.

Rubble near Fukushima Daiichi plant's No 3 reactor building. The sign reads: 'Attention high radiation dosage. Stay away from this area due to high dosage rubbles 1000mSv/h found'. Photograph: Ho/Reuters.

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant said fuel rods in two more reactors were likely to have suffered a meltdown soon after they were crippled by the 11 March earthquake and tsunami in north-east Japan.

Confirmation by Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) that fuel in the cores of reactors 2 and 3 had melted came days after new data confirmed a similar meltdown in reactor 1 about 16 hours after the disaster.

The utility, which last week suffered the biggest annual loss by any Japanese firm outside the financial sector, said most of the melted fuel in all three reactors was covered in water and did not threaten to compound the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

…

Tepco said it had been unable to confirm the meltdowns until it had finished analysing data, but Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University, suggested the revelation was timed to minimise its impact on the public.

“In the early stages of the crisis Tepco may have wanted to avoid panic,” he told Reuters. “Now people are used to the situation … nothing is resolved, but normal business has resumed in places like Tokyo.”

Tepco’s handling of the crisis will come under closer scrutiny with the arrival in Tokyo of a delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency. The United Nations nuclear inspectors will visit the Fukushima plant and present their findings at a meeting of ministers from IAEA member-states on 20 June.

The crisis in Japan continues. Over 21 workers at Fukushima have suffered radiation sickness and experts estimate that more than 4000 people (or many times more) will die from cancer caused by the radiation from the nuclear disaster.

It is clear that nuclear energy is not the answer.

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1. Japanese nuclear emergency now catastrophic
2. The nuclear energy spectre
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I’ve written about why nuclear energy is not appropriate for Australia.

Nuclear energy is unsafe. It turns already dangerous, stressful disasters into atomic catastrophes.

U.S. Calls Radiation ‘Extremely High;’ Sees Japan Nuclear Crisis Worsening. http://nyti.ms/eacJdA (Via http://twitpic.com/4a9g6f)

We are now learning just how catastrophic.

Food exports could be halted from areas near the Fukishima nuclear plant if tests find further contamination. The tainted milk was found 30km from the plant.

It now transpires that the nuclear plant and nearby property will not be insured.

The reinsurance giant noted that the coverage for nuclear facilities in Japan excludes earthquake shock, fire following earthquake and tsunami, both in terms of physical damage and liability. Coverage for property policies excludes nuclear contamination.

Insurance companies insure almost anything. But not nuclear power plants or nuclear accidents.

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1. Hiding the meltdowns in Fukushima
2. The nuclear energy spectre
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A topic of conversation that has recently come up in my social circle is nuclear energy, a debate largely inspired by the attempts by ghost of the Howard Government Nuclear energy lobby (led by Ziggy Switkowski).

A fear expressed to me was that the climate change committee that Labor and the Greens Party will set up will be pressured to suggest nuclear energy as “solution” to climate change.

I do not support nuclear energy as a “sustainable” energy source or an alternative to fossil fuels. It is as bad, if not worse, than fossil fuel. I also strongly support a “No New Mines” policy – and think Australia should not export uranium to countries that have not signed the Non-proliferation Treaty.

I have many reasons for opposing nuclear energy. Most of them boil down to pointing out that both coal/gas and nuclear energy are bad for the environment. Using an environmental argument for nuclear energy does not, in my opinion, stand up to scrutiny. The answer to our energy crisis (in terms of the environment) is not nuclear energy, but sustainable energy, such as solar, wind, hydro, etc.

• Mining of uranium is enormously environmentally damaging, not only in terms of digging it up, but in processing it into a usable form.
• Construction of, and maintenance of nuclear energy stations is grossly expensive, and would require enormous government subsidies to run at all. After 50 years of subsidies in Europe, America and Britain, the nuclear energy industry is still not profitable. The costs of constructions and then decomission of nuclear energy stations is also massive (many times higher than for coal, gas, solar or hydro power stations). No private firms have ever invested in nuclear without being underwritten by a Government.
• Mining of uranium is extremely dangerous. The number of dangerous contamination leaks has dramatically increased since the 1980s when Australia’s mines were first opened, and have become increasingly dangerous, particularly to local indigenous communities, and to the workers at the mines.
• Nuclear energy stations need to be located near populated areas and large water sources, as it needs a large number of specialist technicians (who probably wouldn’t want to live in the desert), support services, etc. It needs a lot of water (obviously), which then needs to be safely disposed of. It also produces dangerous greenhouse gasses (albeit fewer gasses than coal or other non-renewable energy sources).
• Australia currently cannot safely dispose of its low-level radioactive waste (mainly from medical and research sources). Although we are a very geologically stable continent, we currently have no facilities to safely dispose of high level nuclear or radioactive waste. After 50 years of the nuclear energy industry, there is no global solution to radioactive waste – nuclear waste has a half-life of tens of thousands of years – tens of times longer than the longest continuous human society has survived (the oldest human institution in the world – the Papacy – is only 2000 years old). This raises the question of what will happen to the waste in 200 or 500 years time.
• The nuclear energy industry is an integral part of the military industrial complex – its byproducts are required for the production of nuclear weapons. The decomissioning of large numbers of nuclear power stations in America and Europe means that the nuclear weapons industry is experiencing a resurgence, particularly to find fuel for their missiles.
• Nuclear waste, if not safely disposed of, could fall into the hands of extremists or “rogue nations” or groups. Even if the material itself (in Australia) did not fall into the wrong hands, nuclear waste storage facilities could become targets for extremist groups. Al Gore is on record saying that almost every national security threat during his term as Vice President involved a nuclear facility.

All of this said, Australia (and the world) needs to find genuinly sustainable energy sources, as well as reduce our overall consumption.

Rather than pump money into an industry that is poisonous, dangerous and unsustainable, the Federal Government should invest in sustainable energy such as solar, wind, hydro, or any number of other sustainable energy technologies. Furthermore, there should be greater investment in energy efficient technologies – most of our industries and power consumption is hugely inefficient – both cost savings and energy/environmental saving could be made.

If nuclear energy is going to be pushed, then there are alternatives to uranium, most notably thorium, which is safer, more environmentally friendly (although still radioactive) and could not be used for the weapons industry.

Related posts:

1. Alternative energy funded funneled to dangerous nuclear
2. Japanese nuclear emergency now catastrophic
3. 100% renewable energy in Australia by 2020

Another report from the New York Times tells how in the US, most government subsidies for energy research goes to polluting fossil fuels and unsafe nuclear energy:

Despite a lot of promises, no one so far has wanted to pay the extra costs to make wind and solar more than a trivial energy source. Research is uncertain and expensive, and the benefits seem far away.

So while all kinds of domestic energy technologies are being advanced in the name of energy independence, most of the money and attention are still focused on the dirty but cheaper standbys: offshore oil, oil sands and coal, in all its various incarnations, from straight out of the pit to black-coal liquid.

“You have fossil fuels competing with renewable fuels,” said Benjamin Kroposki, a senior scientist at the Renewable Energy Laboratory. “Renewables lose every time.”

One example is the shotgun approach to tax incentives, loan guarantees and other spending in the 2005 energy act, the first major energy legislation enacted by Congress in a decade: $13.1 billion for oil, gas and coal, $12 billion for nuclear energy and $7.7 billion divided up among a wide assortment of renewables like ethanol, hydroelectric, wind and solar.

Now that they are in control of Congress, Democrats have promised to increase the amount going to renewable energy sources, taking the money from tax breaks for oil companies.

But even additional money for renewable energy will be going up against government tax policies that encourage more energy consumption. Companies can still deduct purchases of sport utility vehicles and utility bills, for example, while consumers get a break to build bigger homes with deductions for interest payments on mortgages, even on second homes, that far outweigh their energy saving credits.

Meanwhile, fuel efficiency standards for automobiles have changed only slightly over the decades, and the federal government still does not have a building code to encourage energy efficiency.

The graphic (from NYT) shows that fossil fuels are projected to rise significantly, while renewables remain well below the levels the world (and the US) need to reach by 2020 and 2030.

(Via Sean Kidney.)

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The New York Times reports that money is being funneled to dangerous nuclear energy over safe, clean and unlimited solar and wind energy projects:

Scientists are hoping to expand the range of sunlight’s wavelengths that can be absorbed, and to cut the amount of energy the cells lose to heat. One goal is to make materials to force photons to ricochet around inside the silicon to give up more of their energy.

For decades, conventional nuclear power and nuclear fusion received dominant shares of government energy-research money. While venture capitalists often support the commercialization of new technologies, basic research money comes almost entirely from the federal government.

These days, a growing amount of government money is headed to the farm-state favorite, biofuels, and to research on burning coal while capturing the resulting carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping smokestack gas.

(Via Sean Kidney.)

Related posts:

1. The nuclear energy spectre
2. Most subsidies still go to dirty, polluting fossil fuels
3. Japanese nuclear emergency now catastrophic