No

by Gregory Cochran

Created on: March 17, 2011

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced the temporary shutdown of 7 of Germany’s 17 nuclear power plants in the coming weeks for more thorough safety inspections.  Switzerland has already suspended some approvals for building nuclear facilities.  Others—including Senator Joe Lieberman—are calling on a moratorium of nuclear power usage.  Thailand is giving free potassium iodide pills to citizens traveling in Japan in the hopes that the pills will slow down the effects of radiation on the thyroid glands. 

It might be unfair to say that leaders are in a panic about nuclear energy following the 9.0 earthquake and its concomitant tsunami in Japan.  Maybe leaders aren’t exactly panicking, but it is not an overstatement to say that such leaders are overreacting.  The fires at three nuclear facilities in Japan following the devastating tsunami certainly have folks on edge about the use of nuclear power. Echoes of Chernobyl have been reverberating in the media airwaves almost since the tsunami alarms first sounded.  Yet, such echoes have the ring of media-induced hysteria.   

In light of the incomparable magnitude of human loss, this conversation over the safety of nuclear energy is unfortunate at best.  At worst, it represents a political opportunism unconcerned for the loss of human life.  On the one hand, it is undeniable that questions are now being raised over the safety of nuclear energy because of what has happened in Japan.  Yet, on the other hand, the questions appear to be motivated by prejudice against nuclear power more than by the facts from the nuclear facilities.

The death toll in Japan is in the thousands and still rising.  The death toll from these nuclear facilities stands at exactly one.  One worker has died from the fires so far.  Granted, even one death is tragic; yet, viewers have seen buses, homes, businesses, and loaded trucks whisked away as though they were mere sand castles on the beach.  After seeing trainloads of people washed away in an instant, the loss of one worker from a fire in the nuclear facilities is hardly newsworthy, and it certainly is not evidence that the world ought to be shutting down her nuclear reactors.  Holman Jenkins, writing in the Wall Street Journal, points out that even with the failures at these three nuclear power plants, there will still be more deaths this year from coal mining than from nuclear energy production.  Why not rather run stories on the fear of failure in coal mining systems?

Indeed, every industry in the affected areas of Japan has suffered loss. What systems have been foolproof?  Transportation? Utilities? Sewage? Railway systems?  All systems in Japan have failed because Japan is suffering through a devastating natural disaster, the likes of which have never occurred there before.  The scope of the disaster explains the problems in the nuclear facilities—not some inherent defect in nuclear production.  Nuclear energy production is as safe as any other—maybe safer.  The story in Japan is not nuclear energy; it is human suffering.    

In all likelihood, this nuclear panic will prove in the end to have been hysteria and a diversion from the real damage that the earthquake and the tsunami have already done to countless lives in Japan.  Nuclear energy today—especially in a place like Japan—is not the nuclear energy of Cold War Russia.  Even if it were, it would probably not warrant the media attention it is getting at the moment.  At Chernobyl, about 60 people died.  Anytime 60 people die in an accident, it is a tragedy.  Yet, Chernobyl represents the worst nuclear tragedy ever.  There are no real indications that Japan’s nuclear facilities will come anywhere near the Chernobyl mark. 

Of course, there was great hysteria during the Chernobyl incident, too.  Projections were that there would be massive numbers of folks who would develop Leukemia or other cancers as a result of the meltdown.  However, there was never a documented increase in cancer victims at Chernobyl because of radiation exposure to the thyroid glands.  Leukemia was supposed to skyrocket after Chernobyl, but—twenty-five years later—such cancer increases have still never developed.  Chances are, twenty-five years from now folks will still remember the loved ones lost in the tsunami but forget there were ever any fires at Fukushima.

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