The Deadly Sins
Third Meditation on Nuclear Power
A third article, to close this series on the public opposition to civil nuclear. Accidents, radiations, waste and terrorism: perception versus facts.
Accidents, waste, terrorism: these are the spectres that seem to trouble the dreams of those who sincerely fear civil nuclear power. (I already discussed the knowledge heritage from early military projects as another possible trigger of anti-nuclear attitude in the first article of this trilogy).
As for those who do not fear nuclear, yet oppose it based on some political or lobbyist convenience, no reasoning would ever draw their egoistic attention towards the common interest. Hence, no further effort shall I spend here in such an attempt. (Instead, I addressed honest economic and financial concerns in the second article of this trilogy).
Invocation to virtue: adopting a scientific mind
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, wrote Francisco Goya on a famous aquatint of his. The Antiquity’s magical thinking is long over; technology and medical treatments have been progressively freeing our lives from the vagaries of fate; knowledge opens new windows every day. Should we not, then, allow science to stand at the helm? Unless we want to live trapped forever in a gothic novel.
Not mere boiling alembics, microscopes, telescopes, complex formulas and hadron colliders: the most delusional among alchemists could find a way to play with such toys. What is science most of all, if not a method to filter illusion out of reality? Rigour of action and open disposition; a guide to the galaxy for we otherwise lost hitchhikers; a good habit in everyday’s life not less than in a lab or on a spaceship.
Ultimately, provided that “moral virtue comes about as a result of habit” (Aristoteles — Nicomachean Ethics; book 2, chapter 1), let us adopt a scientific mind and be virtuous, then.
Pan or fire dilemma: risk and its perception
“Hundreds of thousands of miles per year by plane? You really don’t fear death!”, said my neighbour throwing the beer can in the bin just before sitting in its car to sprint — no seat belt fastened and texting on his smartphone — towards the tobacco shop.
While it is an easy job for catastrophes to gain our attention, more creeping drips of deaths pass unperceived, despite the often higher bills they bring. Terrified by possibly dying in a plane crash, we comfortably engage our (thousands of times more dangerous) road commutes. Scared by being perhaps killed in a terrorist attack, we ignore the more common scenario of suicide. Worried by food preservatives, we indulge in hypercaloric diets, alcoholic beverages and tobacco smoke, all of which dramatically increase our chances of dying prematurely of heart disease or cancer. Rightfully shocked by Chernobyl disaster, the worst of the civil nuclear history with its up to four thousand premature deaths, we forget that every year four million people die of pulmonary diseases due to outdoor air pollution. Four million deaths per year (nearly three Chernobyl disasters per day), because we burn fossil fuels, wood and biomass for energy production and transportation!
It is not for ineptitude at evaluating facts rationally, a skill that, on the contrary, we have been learning pretty well since we climbed down the trees. Still, emotions interfere in the way we judge potential threats and opportunities; especially when we must react quickly, like an Australopithecus Afarensis deciding, 3.2 million years ago, if that rustle in the high grass was a bird nesting or a predator preparing to attack. And we are called to react quickly very often: not to fight-or-fly, maybe; but to accept some app’s terms and conditions while rushing to catch our train, or opting for our telephone provider’s offer over the phone, if not — as ministers — signing an energy policy on the run between a diplomatic meeting and the plenum for the financial law approbation.
If too much optimism can kill us quickly, certainly an excess of pessimism has the power to starve us slowly to death. To bring balance to our decision-making, let us avoid emotion-driven attitudes, and look, instead, at data.
Further to paying attention to the real extent of risk face its perception, I suggest one more step in the direction of a scientific approach (also in energy choices). We assume risks at every step we make, but we do it to pursue objectives. Often unconscious, such a risk/benefit evaluation has always been our guide; probably, since before we evolved into humans. “Is it better to fight or to fly?” quickly processes a brain (or processed a primordial ganglion) before a danger. Indeed there is something worst than both: not flying nor fighting, i.e. passively accepting death. Is it better (or worst) to burn fossil fuels possibly inducing pulmonary diseases, to opt for wind turbines with unpredictable blackouts for lulls, or to invest in nuclear and have to deal with radioactive waste? For fierce such debate is, who would opt for doing nothing and face the lack of energy? If you think it is an option, imagine no light after dark, no heating in winter, no efficient transportation, no hospitals.
The distorting mirrors
Media and social networks, which play a crucial role in social awareness, remarkably influence public perception of risks versus their actual extent and related benefits. Seldom, alas, this goes in the direction of encouraging a rational approach to reality, as the coverage of various events often diverges from their respective implication. No need to bring into play conspiracy theories on government censorship or pressure exerted by lobby groups (even though they exist and operate). Newspapers seek to impulse circulation, and any media wants to gain audience share. In such a quest, they all benefit from sensationalism. A similar attitude, multiplied by the billions of egos eager of some visibility, storms social networks. Mix it with some lack of specific knowledge of those who write (inevitable, as nobody can be an expert of everything) and the misinformation is served. Consequently, we still hear that eighteen thousand people remained killed by Fukushima’s nuclear disaster (while they died in the earthquake and the tsunami).
Especially now that it is surfing the giant waves of social networks, public opinion is also subject to the equally distorting phenomenon of allineation to the dominant (not for that reason necessarily right) idea. Such conformism could be just legacy of the atavic fear of being banned from the clan (and therefore die of cold and hanger in solitude). However, it should not be underestimated, due to its potential of disrupting the schemes of democracy. Did similar attitudes not bring to the rise of regimes even in societies whose members did not support dictatorship but in a limited minority?
Incidents and Accidents
Like any other industry, civil nuclear undergoes incidents and underwent accidents. These both seem inevitable whenever humans undertake something, especially if it is new.
An incident is an occurrence that escapes the normally expected flow of events; if severe, it is called an accident. A flat tyre is an incident; if it makes the driver lose control of the vehicle, it is an accident. Incidents happen daily, in the form of a ripped shoelace, a delayed flight, or a blown-out fuse. They are part of that routine we work to keep smooth for our comfort and profit. Accidents are rarer — essentially because we make them so in proportion to how harmful they can be. Potential killers, environment damagers, assets destructors: they will be our focus.
As something that escapes our prevision & prevention capability, accidents include human error. Much further: in my opinion, there is no such thing as a pure accident, but there are only human errors. Even the massive extermination of our species by an asteroid impacting Earth would be, nowadays, a human error. To substantiate such affirmation stands the fact that we have the means to detect incoming asteroids, and if we cannot shoot one out of our trajectory, it means we have wasted too much time and resources shooting each other up to now.
Like any other problem, accidents have a solution: a dynamic work of prevention, mitigation of the effects, restoration of damages and constant learning.
Despite our efforts, more accidents will happen in the future — in nuclear as in any other industry. They will bring casualties, environmental impact and material damage. Should we withdraw from nuclear? Before answering in the rush of emotion, let us ask ourselves: if we did so in the past, would we have effective spaceships, safe aeroplanes, life-saving surgery and anything else that contributes to our present style of life? I bet Pleistocene humans were scared by fire as much or even more than we fear new technologies. The same industrial revolution emerged among exploding boilers, firedamp deflagrations in coal mines and poisonous smokes everywhere. Thanks to our bravery and ingenuity, we arose from the humid caves, stopped fearing predators, built machines to our benefit, retarded death and improved life quality. Step by step, we learnt to deal with fire, pressurised steam, flying machines and nuclear energy. And it is not nuclear, but those old buddies — fire and coal — that still kill us: perhaps, we got accustomed to their temperament to the point of underestimating them or passively accepting their vexations.
As nor a nuclear reaction, nor the exposition to its spent fuel are things the human body can stand, it is clear that significantly effective countermeasures are in force in nuclear plants. The basic rules are the same as always: chose a safe location, prepare to extinguish the fire before starting it, do not let the fire unattended, keep distance and protect yourself; and do not allow children or fools to play with it. We know what disrespecting such protocols can cause: fool bureaucrats messed with Chernobil unit Nr.4 in 1986; emergency core cooling pumps were forgotten closed in Three Mile Island unit Nr. 2; a mix of exposed location selection, insufficient defensive measures and late response actuation allowed the Fukushima Daichi disaster happening after the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in 2011. (All these events and other minor nuclear accidents are well documented over the Internet for those who feel the urge of deepening the topic).
The lesson learnt from such accidents brought remarkable improvements to the already strict nuclear safety. Not only we can now state that nuclear power is of the safest among human activities: overzeal imposing excess measures would probably be of more damage than benefit. Any intervention costs and efforts invested in an area are subtracted from another, as resources are limited. So, an eye on the two graphs above, would it make sense to insist on imposing stricter and stricter requirements to the already mostly harmless nuclear power, while other technologies are in more urgent need of regulation? All we would reach along such a path is higher price and construction delays in nuclear, limiting access to safe and clean energy in favour of more dangerous and polluting alternatives.
If what the anti-nuclear prophets scream were minimally correct, no life form should remain on Earth after disasters as those mentioned above. The overall toll of nuclear and radioactive accidents along history is five thousand people. How many get killed every year in road accidents? How many would have died if we had replaced nuclear with only fossil fuels?
Radiations and Nuclear Waste
I worked with fast neutrons at the University. I have been in and out of nuclear plants all my life, which included taking part in LWR’s refuelling outage activities, stepping in bulk radioactive waste repositories and surveying Chernobyl-like RBMK reactors, either operating or undergoing dismantling. I also underwent countless X-Ray scans for my inclination to exceed in sports practice. Where did I receive the most of my radiation dose? During long-distance flights as a salesman; if we do not count Potassium-40 irradiation for eating bananas (by the way, both long-distance flights and bananas are perfectly safe: the received radiation dose is minimal).
Humans and any other organism of this planet evolved in a field of ionising radiation reaching Earth from the Cosmos and produced by radioactive isotopes naturally present in the planet’s crust. With some relevant local fluctuation and few exceptions, such radiation levels are generally low enough not to constitute a health risk. Their effects are counterbalanced by cell repair capabilities, a product of natural selection in Earth’s radioactive environment. (Organisms less capable of standing radiation, having less opportunity to transmit their genetic information to new generations and producing equally disadvantaged younglings if any, got their genetic line extinct).
The above-described adaptation to low radiation levels creates incertitude and even controversy on what risk we should attribute to radiation doses comparable to the natural background. (Regulators usually adopt the linear no-threshold model that proportionally attributes to low doses the effects measured for higher ones). Higher ionising radiation levels constitute a different kettle of fish; a pretty one, if they are very high. Therefore, the nuclear industry keeps its contribution to the public’s radiation dose below the natural threshold. (Nuclear industry’s professionals’ doses, less restrictive, are still well below the threshold of health effects).
Proper shields separate the fission reaction from the outer world. After use, once discharged from the reactor core, the highly radioactive spent fuel bars cool down below several meters of water. They remain in thick dry casks until future final disposal in deep stable geological formations. Thanks to such attentive measures and strict protocols, civil nuclear radwaste has never caused casualties, despite its high potential harmfulness. Moreover, the fourth generation of fission reactors, which will start populating power plants in one or two decades, will feed on such waste; hence minimising its amount, activity and persistence.
Some final waste will inevitably remain, stabilised in glass lattice or concrete, then sealed in steel barrels. Is it really ok to dispose of it in deep and stable salt domes or granitic formations? What if there is a leakage? Rightful question: let our planet answer it. In 1972 the Tricastin uranium enrichment facility discovered anomalies in the Uranium proceeding from the Oklo mine in Gabon. The U-235 fissile isotope content was much lower than the standard 0.72% naturally found on Earth nowadays, and some long-lived fission products were present. The additional investigations confirmed that nuclear fission reactions naturally produced and self-sustained in Oklo along hundreds of thousands of years around 1.5 billion years ago. Oklo reactor waste remained inside its natural reactor made of rock layers. Uncasketed, unvitrified, exposed to groundwater, there it stayed and there we found it. Are we still that concerned about leakages?
Nuclear is the only energy technology that takes full care of its waste. Where do most combustion products go, if not into the atmosphere? So, why do we fear the lone wolf in the cage instead of the free pack?
Terrorism
Terrorists have struck our communities many times, spreading panic, inducing a sensation of constant danger and depriving society of its normality up to some temporary paralysis of everyday life. Let us look at the major terrorist attacks of the last twenty years.
The first thing we notice is the cowardy of assailing people in their comfort zone: daily commuting, cult places, shopping malls, tourist attractions, sports events, school, seaside promenades. The perpetrators seemed conscious of their almost certain death in the action, so why selecting victims not only defenceless but also unaware? Why “stabbing at the shoulders”? Because fear feasts on the enemy’s invisibility and the unpredictability of its moves. And fear is what terrorists want to generate.
The second peculiarity is the easy accessibility of targeted areas by media. Attaining proper coverage on the news seems essential for terrorists, who appear to aim more at sensationalism than actual damage. Of course, there have been victims, and many, too many (one single victim, even if just scratched or shocked, would be unacceptable; at least, to me). However, much less than one would expect looking at the terrorists’ strategic apparatus, worldwide propaganda machine and direct personal sacrifice. An act of terrorism is an extreme struggle for attention expressed with the four-year-old tantrum’s violence and carried on using adults’ deadly means; if no visibility is possible, no attention can be claimed.
This being said, what could terrorists be looking for in a nuclear power plant, and what would they find? I do not provide details in the following section, under the assumption that some bad guys may read this article.
The plant could be the target:
- To force decisions to close that or other plants, either directly or through influence on the public opinion (extreme anti-nuclear activism).
- To debilitate the image of the state or company operating that or other plants (extreme political activism).
- To show offence capabilities to leverage prisoners’ release, withdrawal from military occupations or similar actions (international terrorism).
The plant could be just a place where harvesting material to be employed in other attacks:
- Fissile to make a bomb or a subcritical system (to irradiate victims with neutrons);
- Spent fuel to make a dirty bomb (a weapon aimed at spreading radioactive material) or irradiate victims.
Apart from the problematic access to the facility (a topic treated in later paragraphs), if the aim of the terrorists is collecting fissile, a nuclear power plant is not the best place to go shoplifting. First of all, the fuel enrichment in fissile is too low (typically 3.5%) for weaponry (that requires 90% minimum). Moreover, fuel is in the form of Uranium dioxide pellets, not suitable for undergoing further enrichment, either by diffusion through membranes or ultracentrifuges, without proper chemical transformation (and without membranes or centrifuges facilities, that are absurdly expensive). Then, Uranium pellets are not there on the first desk at your right: they are inside a metal rod, and such rods are firmly assembled into a fuel element. Fuel elements are part of a core structure placed inside a thick steel vessel. The vessel operates at high temperature and pressure, is pervaded by intense neutron flux and is all-one with a reinforced concrete building of very thick walls and roof. It takes weeks to shut everything down and remove the fuel. Then, if you take it out of the ten meters deep pool’s water, you get instantly cooked to death by gamma radiation. Let us suppose you manage through all this; you still have to transport the subtracted fuel out of the plant with heavy trucks, smiling at the Army snipers that had all the time to spread along your path to glory. Similar obstacles interpose if the aim of the terrorist is stealing spent fuel to make a dirty bomb. I am convinced that terrorists would love to possess any nuclear weapon. However, they will more likely try through the illegal market of dismissed, stolen and lost military warheads deriving from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. (If anything has escaped Megatons to Megawatts Program, Nunn-Lugar Program, Project Sapphire and the attention of Secret Services).
If the target is the plant itself, what should we expect? Direct aggression (by terrestrial commando; aeroplane crash; bombing, cannoning or missile strike; staff infiltration), external sabotage (supply chain disruption; electric lines or water supply cut-out; plant personnel targeting like kidnapping, assassination, infection or blackmailing), or virtual offence (computer hacking, discrediting fake news). Thick concrete walls and roof, multiple fencing and armed patrols defend the site and the reactor. Alternative supplies systems protect the plant against loss of external power and cooling water. Control system is isolated from external access, and the personnel is monitored and protected against personal menaces. Moreover, pre-strike surveys are made difficult by intense area surveillance and flight zone control.
Summing up, the limited perspective of causing consistent damage, together with the plants’ remoteness, which slows down media coverage, must be discouraging for terrorists if attacks towards nuclear plants have been that rare! Nine terrorist attacks (assaults, bombing and rocketing) have targeted nuclear plants in France, Argentina and Spain. They did not touch the core nor the spent fuel and did not cause any radioactivity release; just minor material damage. Tragically, terrorist directly assassinated one guard and other five workers and blessed two police officers. Analogous attacks to any civil infrastructure would have had similar outcomes.
The only ones who repeatedly forced their entrance into nuclear power plants have been anti-nuclear activists with banners, paint buckets or fireworks; and fancy gas masks. They must have always been quickly recognised as demonstrators, as they have never been shot down. Silli enough, they then regularly manipulated the fact of having been spared as evidence of safeguards’ supposed ineffectiveness. Instead, I suggest they missed sensationalism precisely because they were not shot down. A few activists covered in blood would have made their way to the headlines, but guards did not shot, activists did not die and, therefore, the mediatic attempt failed. Activists, think about it! What are you for your organisations but cannon-fodder? Moreover, your actions may inspire far more dangerous terrorists: do you accept such a responsibility?
Redemption
More and more environment activists shift their position to accepting or even advocating and promoting nuclear power. Turned from apocalypse prophets to nuclear wizards, have they lost their love for planet Earth? Or have they doubled it and have done some math?
Nevertheless, vast is still the rank of those who, praising future nuclear, do not pay attention to, or even discredit, the existing one. Such embrace of next nuclear plants’ promise while denying the present one’s effectiveness seems the latest lambskin fashion for the all-time anti-nuclear wolves. The risk is energy starvation (or use of contaminant sources) while waiting for the “perfect” solution. A path, this, that leads nowhere, as nothing will ever be good enough, safe enough, cheap enough for whatever-the-cost deniers.
Let us all face reality: what is the most significant risk of nuclear power, but not using it? Redemption is now: it starts with the existing nuclear technology, which is excellent and will safely ferry us along decades towards that paradise island of advanced fission reactors and nuclear fusion machines.
End of the trilogy: a paradise cake recipe
There is a lot at stake; too much, to waste time and efforts in small talk and empty partisan controversies. Climate worsening, exhaustion of resources, environmental contamination, health prejudice, social inequality and many more challenges: they all urge abundance of energy and profusion of goodwill. The debate is and must be welcome to help discover weaknesses in our strategy and bring more effectiveness to it. First, anyhow, we need a roadmap. For this reason, I will draft in the following table my bird’s eye view on Energy Land, hoping for comments and corrections, additional records and visionary ideas for the very-long-term.
Urge to a new way of regarding nuclear, life and everything
Go and inform yourselves: read articles and books, listen to podcasts, debate with educated people. Question everything, starting from these three articles, and make some maths: be science-driven.
We love poetry and fiction because they lose our mind and nourish our spirit. Some of us can find profound poetry in science, of course; but no science is necessarily present in poetry or fiction. Consequently, while we can decide how to delight ourselves — with poetry or science — we should probably avoid basing vital decisions on poetry alone; and chose science instead.
