The long grave dug?

Every time there is any kind of nuclear incident, the media does a hit job on nuclear power. People who support nuclear power and try to put things in the right context become “pro-nuclear partisans”. The New York Times’s reporting during the aftermath of the tsunami has been appalling. Not all the reporting was bad, but coverage of the tens of thousands of deaths from the tsunami and earthquake was relegated to the side-lines while alarmist headlines about the nuclear accident were splashed on the front page every day. Plus the paper did a masterful job of pitching contradictory facts. For a long time it stuck with the line that the accident was comparable to Chernobyl. It certainly was serious, but there was absolutely no evidence for the comparison, nor was there any discussion of the fundamentally flawed design of the Chernobyl reactor in comparison to the Fukushima reactor which stood up admirably to a 8.9 magnitude earthquake followed by a gigantic tsunami.

Then two days back, The Times blithely flashed the confusing headline that the Japanese have “upgraded” the level of the accident to Three Mile Island levels. This made it sound like the disaster was now considered worse than before, which was in complete contravention of the facts and a masterful piece of obfuscation. The fact that the Japanese considered the accident to be milder than TMI before makes the Times’s constant comparison to Chernobyl absurd and shamefully alarmist. While The Times is no longer trotting out the line about Chernobyl, it has not made any sustained effort to educate the public about the completely benign nature of TMI in terms of the consequences. In addition the paper had another confusing headline yesterday titled “Radiation Plume Reaches U.S., but Is Said to Pose No Risk”. As Rosie Redfield notes on her blog, the studied ambiguity in the statement (someone says the plume poses no risk, but we won’t say that explicitly) does nothing to put the risk in the right context.

The New Yorker is no less biased. In the most recent issue there are two pieces on nuclear energy. One is a moderate critique by the environmentalist Elizabeth Kolbert while the other is a rather extreme and emotional critique by Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe. While Kolbert does not go overboard, she casually throws around some opinions about how nuclear reactors are not protected against terrorist attacks. This is in spite of the fact that American nuclear power plants are well-secured, terrorists would have a very hard time stealing nuclear material from a power plant even if they overwhelm security, they would have a hard time getting away unnoticed, and the stolen nuclear material would be extremely dangerous to handle andcapricious in its behavior in a weapon. Of course all this just ignores the fact that terrorists are so much more likely to smuggle in a weapon from abroad than they are to foolishly attack a US nuclear reactor for making one. Kolbert also has biased critiques of lack of evacuation plans for people around a nuclear reactor (ignoring accident probability, radius of evacuation and the amount of radiation released) and spent fuel storage (no discussion of reprocessing, quotes from the Union of Concerned Scientists which has long-since vigorously opposed nuclear power).

Oe is worse; adopting one of the oldest tricks in the anti-nuclear playbook, he makes no attempts to separate nuclear weapons from nuclear power and constantly conflates the two (“Lessons of Hiroshima”). Basically there is no balancing pro-nuclear perspective. The New Yorker should be ashamed of itself for this one-sided reporting.

All this is keeping in line with physicist Bernard Cohen’s extensive writings. Cohen has been a tireless and rational promoter of nuclear power for more than three decades and his articles and books are thoroughly readable. If you don’t have time for his books, you should definitely at least read his essay in a recent collection of essays expounding on the relationship between science and politics (Politicizing Science, 2003). Cohen analyzed various accidents and their coverage in the New York Times in the 70s (even before TMI). He found that while there was a clear correlation between the number of deaths and the subsequent coverage for all other kinds of accidents (low number of deaths corresponding with low coverage), when it came to nuclear accidents the Times went ballistic. The coverage was all out of proportion with the number of deaths- zero. That’s exactly what’s happening right now. In addition Cohen recounts routinely being ignored and even reprimanded when he wrote letters to journalists whose coverage of nuclear power contained numerous factual (not literary) mistakes. Even trying to correct thescience brought forth responses like “I don’t tell you how to do research so you don’t tell me how to do journalism”. As Cohen sums it up:

“To attack the nuclear power industry, activists needed ammunition, and it was readily found. They only had to go through the nuclear power risk analysis literature and pick out some of the imagined accident scenarios with the number of deaths expected from them. Of course, they ignored the very tiny probabilities of occurrence attached to these scenarios, and they never considered the fact that alternate technologies were causing far more deaths. Quoting from the published scientific analyses gave the environmentalists credibility and even made them seem like technical experts.”

The situation seems to be no better right now. Needless to say this distortion of the truth is not just appalling but it could be a certain recipe for disaster even as nuclear power needs to be a healthy component of the mix for combating climate change. Liberals always like to complain about how the conservative media distorts and cherry-picks the science on global warming. The litmus test of the liberal media’s scientific integrity would be its coverage of nuclear power. Sadly it seems to have already failed this test multiple times.

A hundred years from now when we are possibly writing the epitaph for the human race, I wonder if one of the turning points on the road to perdition would be seen to be our inability to rationally balance the benefits and risks of the greatest source of energy that mankind has discovered.

Perspective…again

No one advocated halting the manufacture of methyl isocyanate or shutting down the chemical industry after the Bhopal tragedy of 1984 which killed thousands more than any nuclear accident. The Gulf oil spill also did not provoke howls to terminate oil production. And of course, you don’t hear calls for permanent evacuation of coastal communities because of the occasional tsunami that can wipe out these cities in a catastrophe much worse than a nuclear engineer’s worst nightmare.

I cannot add much to what’s being already said and I join millions in wishing the unfortunate citizens of Japan the very best. But even a serious accident like the one currently unfolding at the Japanese nuclear plant should not blind us to the bigger picture. Predictably, there have already been calls from alarmists to stop all nuclear building in the US. In keeping with the media’s appetite for sensationalism, the Washington Post put an adequately fear-invoking and alarmist photo on their cover page. As others have noted, we don’t regularly hear calls to halt oil and natural gas production after accidents that are much more damaging in terms of environmental destruction and human life compared to the one or two serious nuclear accidents we have witnessed. The only response after a crisis such as the present one should be to put together a review of reactor safety in other parts of the world and how it could possibly be improved to withstand such freak scenarios as the ones we are witnessing. But when presented with an unfortunate, unlikely case, human nature is to throw out the baby with the bath water.

Already people are comparing the current crisis to Chernobyl. This is a ridiculous comparison, partly because the current reactor and the contingency response have been much better than the ones during Chernobyl and partly because if you really want to cite the worst case scenario, you might as well hold up the Hindenberg as an argument against air travel. In case of Chernobyl the accident was of course the result of a combination of several factors, including a fundamentally flawed design and human inertia engendered by communist ideology that prevented rapid response. The number of deaths from Chernobyl cannot be known with certainty, but it’s certainly less than deaths from any number of other industry-related accidents. One can be almost sure that the effects of the present accident are going to be far less severe because of more open communication and prompt response. In fact it’s heartening that these reactors with 50-year old designs did relatively well in spite of being struck by one of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history. With modern designs where passive systems can cool the core in spite of loss of electrical power, one can be much more confident about containment of radiation (as an aside, I wonder why the seawater that was pumped into the Japanese reactor did not contain cadmium chloride for neutron absorption).

Here’s one of the things the US should do. Just like they did after Chernobyl, top scientists in this country should put together a committee after the facts of the Japanese disaster become known. They should undertake a review of all the nuclear reactors in the US and write a reportdetailing their safety features as well as possible measures that can be included in the unlikely case of natural disasters like the one in Japan. There should be two versions of this objective, apolitical report. One version should be more technical and comprehensive and can serve as a blueprint for future action. The other version should explain the committee’s conclusions in simple terms that can be understood by the public and by members of Congress. Finally, and this is key, this version should be publicized as widely as possible in an effort to educate the public about the true risks and benefits.

Ultimately the life and death of a technology is not decided by how harmful or beneficial its effects are but by simple economic tradeoffs. Automobiles and fossil fuels have killed hundreds of thousands, but nobody advocates their extinction simply because their benefits are perceived to greatly exceed their costs. A similar argument can be made for knives and guns. On the other hand, nuclear power which boasts an impeccable safety record compared to the chemical and fossil fuel industry still sets off alarm bells and brings forth calls for its demise. This is partly because of the irrational psychological gut reaction that people still associate with the words “radiation”, “nuclear” and “meltdown” (an unfortunate consequence of the fact that the world’s first exposure to nuclear energy was by way of nuclear weapons) but more importantly because of the simple fact that nuclear is not seen as an indispensable energy option even now.

What will it take for the situation to change? Perhaps when war in the Middle East decimates dependence on fossil fuels or when extreme climate change exacerbates our lifestyles to an unacceptable extent, we will finally accept nuclear energy as an energy-intensive, climate change-friendly power source whose risks must be evaluated and managed just like those of others. The only question is whether it would be too late then.

EXPELLED! NO NUANCE ALLOWED

I was reminded of the title of Ben Stein’s ludicrous new movie on creationism when I came across BBC’s recalling the Three Mile Island which took place on this day in 1979. The reporting makes it clear how reporters sweetly shy away from any subtleties or scientific nuance, which unfortunately turn out to be details that matter. I do understand that almost everyone was more ignorant or fearful of anything in nuclear in 1979 and to be fair the BBC does note later that nobody died from the accident, but what strikes me is how they used the blanket-word “radiation” so many times in the article without in any way qualifying what it means. This is quite similar to the irrational gut reaction many people have when they hear the word. To recapitulate:

1. “Radiation” bathes us from head to toe throughout our life. Background radiation is hundreds of times more than any radiation accrued from living near a nuclear reaction. It’s even more than radiation possibly escaped from a nuclear reaction in an accident if the reactor has a containment structure.

2. There is no proof that low-level “radiation” causes cancer; in fact there is proof that it may be generally good for life. Plus, almost everybody who reports such studies fails to consider the relative risks from “radiation” compared to other causes. As the well-known scientist James Lovelock notes in his The Revenge of Gaia (2006), it is misleading to say that 40,000 extra people will die earlier because of some radiation. The question is, how much earlier? As he says, if people are going to die on an average a week earlier because of some radiation, compare that to hundreds of thousands that would die instantaneously if the giant dam they live next to bursts open? How many people die years earlier because of heart disease? How many lives are prematurely cut short because of road accidents? Yet we pristinely accept these risks in daily life. People have no problem living near dams on the Yangtze when the risk they pose is much higher than that from “radiation”.

3. And of course, the simple scientific error of not noting what the radiation consists of is commonplace. Every college kid knows that radiation can consist of many different particles- alphas, betas, gammas, neutrons- that each have a vastly different effect on living tissue. Plus, the isotope that emits the radiation is crucial; uranium is vastly preferable to strontium. But strontium has a smaller half life….and so on.

In case of TMI, it was immensely bad timing since the accident was preceded by the scare-mongering movie The China Syndrome starring Jane Fonda, a well-known irrational anti-nuclear spokesman. In it, the reactor core is feared to be melting away through the earth to China, a preposterous scenario even by fictional Hollywood standards. (although some of the Amazon reviewers don’t seem to get this) The point is, it is pure fear-mongering to kick around words like “radiation” and “radioactive steam”. Sadly, the scenario has not changed too much, and I doubt if most people will do a much more responsible job of reporting such an accident if it happens today. I feel miffed in thinking that a similar accident today will essentially impact the public’s perception of nuclear energy almost the same as TMI. I do hope I am wrong. But then, the media has a proven track record of not caring about subtlety and nuance when reporting on science (or many other things for that matter). Unfortunately, they are the “respectable” sources who reach the most people and who most people rely on for their daily dose of “reality”.

ANOTHER NEED FOR NUCLEAR ENERGY

This is what happens when there is inertia towards construction of reactors for peaceful purposes:

“Hospitals across North America have been forced to cancel tests for cancer and heart disease because the unexpected closure of a Canadian nuclear reactor has led to a sudden shortage of medical isotopes.

The 50-year-old National Research Universal (NRU) reactor located in Chalk River, Ontario, was shut down on 18 November for scheduled maintenance and was due back online by mid-December. But Atomic Energy Canada, which owns and operates the facility, extended the outage to install safety-related equipment, including upgrades to the reactor cooling pumps. The reactor supplies about 60% of the molybdenum isotopes used in medical applications globally, including molybdenum-99, which decays into technetium-99m and is used in about 16 million nuclear medicine procedures annually in the United States…The shortage has reignited a discussion over securing the US supply of medical isotopes by building a reactor in the United States.”

Again, there’s no sense if the debate about nuclear weapons and terrorist attacks is regularly conflated with peaceful and necessary uses of nuclear energy.