Nuclear power no panacea, critics say

An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 jolted a wide area on the west coast of Honshu Island on July 16, killing nine people, and injuring more than 900 others. The quake caused the world's largest nuclear power plant to leak radioactive water into the sea, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency and company and emergency officials. The nuclear mishap caused by the July 16 earthquake has unleashed another wave of environmental concerns about the use of nuclear technology to meet the world's energy needs. "Nuclear power is hardly the safe panacea its supporters claim it to be," said Norman Dean of Friends of the Earth (FoE), a network of hundreds of environmental groups around the world. Raising similar concerns, the environmental group Greenpeace International's Jan Beranek described the Kashiwazaki nuclear site incident as another "reminder" that nuclear power "is not safe". Both Dean and Beranek warned of "far more serious nuclear accidents" and "real risks" posed by earthquakes and industrial disasters, as well as possible terrorist attacks in the future. Damage worse than initial announcement Japan's energy officials have acknowledged that the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant leaked hundreds of gallons of water that was contaminated with radioactive waste. Four of the seven reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station were operating or set to begin operation when the earthquake struck. They automatically shut down when the earth began to shake, but an electric transformer outside one of the reactors caught fire and burned for about two hours. The No.3, No.4 and No.7 power generation units at the plant, located near the centre of the quake some 155 miles northwest of Tokyo, shut down automatically. The No.3 unit alone has a capacity of 1.1 million kilowatts. The blaze was reported quelled by early afternoon, and the power company announced there was no damage to the reactor and no release of radioactivity. But in the evening, the company released a statement revealing the leak of radioactive water, saying it had taken all day to confirm details of the accident. The nuclear power plant was ordered closed indefinitely on July 18 amid growing anger over revelations that damage was much worse than initially announced and mounting international concern about Japan's nuclear stewardship. The utility shocked the nation by releasing a list of dozens of problems triggered by the quake, after earlier reporting only the transformer fire and a small leak of radioactive water. The new list of problems included the transformer fire, broken pipes, water leaks and spills of radioactive waste. It also said the leak of radioactive water into the Sea of Japan was 50 percent bigger than announced on July 16. Greenpeace accused Japanese officials of "lying" in their initial assessment of the impact of the fire"in which they said there was no danger of radioactive leakage"adding that the Japanese and global nuclear industries have been marred by a series of accidents and cover-ups. According to environmentalists, there are many similarities between what happened in Japan and an incident at Germany's Krummel power plant last month, in which a fire broke out in the transformers building and damaged the reactor. "In Germany, the industry first claimed that the fire had no impact on reactor safety," said Beranek, "[but] in realty the fire led to serious malfunctions that directly threatened the safety of the reactor." Critics point out that this was not the first time the Japanese nuclear industry has tried to cover up a nuclear accident. According to Beranek, for example, the Hokuriku utility did not inform the public or nuclear inspectors about a serious incident that took place at the Shika nuclear power plant, where a mechanical failure in 1999 led to an uncontrolled chain reaction. In April 2006, there was a radioactive spill of 40 liters of liquid containing plutonium in the brand new reprocessing plant in Rokkasho-Mura, the group said, adding that in August 2004, a pipe was ruptured in the Mihama plant, which resulted in the death of five workers. A new batch of safety lapses revealed this year has forced power companies to shut for additional checks this spring, dragging down utilization rates -- excluding Japan Atomic Power Co. -- to their lowest in over two and a half years in May. Nuclear power 'no longer necessary' The most famous, nuclear meltdowns occurred at Three Mile Island in the US state of Pennsylvania in 1979 and in 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the former Soviet Union. A recent Greenpeace report estimated that 270,000 cancers and 93,000 fatal cancers were caused by the latter. Greenpeace and many other environmental groups have repeatedly called for the United Nations, United States and other powerful nations to stop promoting nuclear technology as an alternative to fossil fuels. In April 2006, some leading European politicians raised serious questions about the U.N.'s role in encouraging countries to acquire nuclear energy for non-military purposes. Former environment ministers from European countries, including Russia, sent a letter to the former U.N. chief Kofi Annan urging him to reform the mandate of the International Atomic Energy Agency. "Nuclear power is no longer necessary," they said in the letter. "We have now numerous renewable technologies available to guarantee the right to safe, clean, and cheap energy." Greenpeace's Beranek echoed the same message on July 16. "Nuclear power undermines real solutions to climate change, by diverting resources away from the massive development of clean energy sources the world urgently needs," he said. "What's more," he added, "climate change will increase natural disasters, in turn posing a greater risk to nuclear power plants, and to our safety." But this line of reasoning has failed to win over many of the world's most powerful nations. In July last year, when leaders of the world's most industrialized countries, known as the Group of Eight, gathered in St. Petersburg, Russia, they signed a joint statement saying that nuclear energy is one way to address climate change. Many environmentalists see nuclear reactors as dangerous because in addition to natural disasters they are also vulnerable to unintentional human error. "Energy conservation and wind and solar power are cleaner and safer than nuclear power," said Dean. "They are a better way to fight global warming."