Nukes, Floods, Fires and Alternatives

If the recent and frequent occurrence of the largest earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, tornados and wildfires has taught us anything, one important lesson is that nuclear power is more of a liability than an asset in times of natural disaster and national emergency.

The latest worries from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan focus on internal radioactive contamination in the urine of children tested. The radioactive contamination is still spreading in food, weather, groundwater and the ocean currents. The deleterious impacts and consequences can only be measured and realized over time.  Just how far reaching is as much guess work as it is science. But one report by a Japanese nuclear oversight agency predicts that the radioactive cesium plume released into the ocean will reach the West Coast of the United States in 3 to 5 years.

Here in the US, flooding on the Missouri River is now at the walls of the nuclear reactor at Fort Calhoun just north of Omaha, Nebraska after a makeshift rubber “Aqua-Berm” collapsed causing the reactor site to go to emergency diesel power for 12 hours to cool the reactor fuel. The safety risk is moderated by the reactor being shut down for refueling and maintenance in April and since kept shut down due to the threat of rising flood water.  The attention stays focused on more rain in the forecast and rising water behind the six aging dams on the Missouri River above Fort Calhoun and the Cooper nuclear power station below Omaha, Nebraska.  Building nuclear power plants on flood plains flaunts danger and hundreds of tons nuclear waste in casks sits on an island amid still rising water.   

Further scrutiny will need to focus on underground safety-related electrical cables now completely submerged beneath these reactors that were never qualified to stay wet and may not be accessible for inspection.

Elsewhere, Las Conchas wildfire has burned over 90,000 acres and surrounded New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the nation’s oldest nuclear weapons facilities. Early air monitoring tests have not found radiation in the tons of smoke being lofted into the atmosphere and spot fires inside the DOE facility’s perimeter were being extinguished.  Moreover, 30,000 radioactive waste barrels are still sitting at the facility stand as a reminder of the vulnerability from the timeless legacy of nuclear power and weapons technology.  

We need an energy transformation beyond nuclear like the tremendous resource available in abundance in Nebraska.  According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory not only is there an abundance of wind but thousands of Cornhusker jobs in safe, renewable and durable to climate change energy.