Terrible Earthquake And Tsunami In Japan Must Lead To A Different Approach To Energy Supply And Use
The terrible tragedy Japan has suffered in recent days has been beamed across the word by the TV networks. The massive earthquake followed by an equally massive tsunami has shocked us all and demonstrated the enormous power of nature. As if this were not bad enough we have been horrified to see the battle taking place to prevent a nuclear catastrophe occurring with several nuclear power plants suffering severe damage and the potentially disastrous consequences of nuclear materials being released into the atmosphere.
The staff at those plants are acting herocially and they are risking their own lives in their attempts to get control of the nuclear reactions and contain the nuclear materials in a safe manner inside the containment vessels. We should all be appreciative that people are prepared to put their lives on the line in order to protect the people living in the areas that could otherwise be affected.
If things go well and the nuclear tragedy is averted we can be sure that proponents of Nuclear power will be saying that this has demonstrated how safe nuclear energy is because the crisis was controlled and no significant release of nuclear materials took place.
We should ll be impressed at the strength of the engineering and design of these plants which enabled them to withstand a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and to survive a huge tsunami. However, it also raises the question that we can never be sure that every risk is covered. There is no such thing as a totally safe nuclear power plant. Nature is all powerful and anything could happen at any time. We simply don’t know what it might be.
We all make choices based on risks verses rewards and nuclear energy is a tempting opportunity to get clean energy but there are questions about the true financial costs and we can only prepare for the obvious risks involved.
Events in Japan following the earthquake have shown that it is one thing to survive a natural disaster but another thing altogether to survive the consequences of that event. It appears that the earthquake itself caused relatively little serious damage but the tsunami that followed wiped towns and villages completely off the map. Nobody knows how many lives were lost but it must surely be tens of thousands.
The damage to the nuclear power plants appears to have been cause not by the earthquake, which they were designed to cope with, but rather the tsunami which seems to have damaged the cooling systems and auxiliary plant around the reactors.
Whatever the result of the heroic actions of the staff at these plants we must question the logic of having a nuclear power station anywhere near towns and cities, if we have them at all. The potential for disaster is huge and the risk of some natural disaster, or a man made one through war or terrorism, that has a consequential action of the release of nuclear materials into the environment is just too horrific to contemplate.
Solar energy may be initially more expensive, electricity produced by windmills may spoil the view but nuclear energy has the potential to wipe out significant numbers of people. Any government that considers that risk to be one worth taking needs to seriously consider what exactly they believe governments are for. Most of us would say that their priority task is to protect their people from potential harm.
Nuclear energy puts people at risk of harm and no matter how much care is taken in the design and manufacture of nuclear power stations nobody can ever be entirely sure that they are safe for the surrounding population because nobody knows what might happen in the future. Never believe anybody who says otherwise.
