Japan crisis challenges nuclear around the world

Even as the world tensely monitors Japan's nuclear crisis, it's clear that nuclear power will face harsher public scrutiny and a re-evaluation of nuclear's expansion.

Last week's powerful earthquake and tsunami shut down the Fukushima Daiichi power plant and crippled the cooling systems at three reactors. According to reports, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company said that one of the cores, No. 2, has been temporarily exposed to air, risking a meltdown of the nuclear fuel or metal cladding around the fuel rods.

A close-up of a nuclear fuel assembly being placed into a nuclear reactor core at a U.S. power plant. Click for a slideshow of the inside of a nuclear power plant.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

As Japanese officials deal with multiple crises from one of the five largest earthquakes in recorded history, the ripple effects from the nuclear power emergency are being felt around the world, shaping public opinion and raising the bar for safety.

"In terms of being a social catalyst, this could change the requirements for using the technology and it could have a big effect," said Michael Golay, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "To a large extent, it depends on how competent a job the media does."

In the U.S., it's likely that there will be a review of the vulnerability of nuclear power plants to earthquakes, particularly in active zones such as California, experts said. Six reactors in the U.S. use the same design as Fukushima Daiichi, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, and most of the U.S.'s 104 plants were built in the 1970s and 1980s. In addition to a review of current plants, Congressman Edward Markey yesterday called for a moratorium on new plants in seismically active zones, saying that a quake the size of that in Japan would endanger existing U.S. plants.

Amid public demonstrations, German officials today put in place a three-month moratorium on the extension of operating lives for existing nuclear plants in order to review safety standards. Swiss officials suspended approvals for three new plants to reconsider safety levels and study what happened in Japan. Similarly, India said it will review all nuclear reactors.

At Fukushima Daiichi, engineers are using the improvised technique of pumping seawater into the reactor core to keep temperatures under control. Even though the nuclear plant stopped operating after the quake, residual radioactive material is still generating heat and needs to be cooled for what is called a "cold shutdown."

To lower the pressure from steam in the containment building, engineers are venting steam which contains radioactive versions of cesium and iodine. Japanese officials have created a 12-mile (20-kilometer) exclusion zone so people are not exposed to the low-radiation steam. The release of this radioactivity gas is higher than the normal amounts people are exposed to from the environment but poses "minimal health risks," a World Health representative told AFP.

There have been two explosions at the plant caused by the build-up of hydrogen from the cooling operation, with one occurring today, according to the Japanese government. Neither blast is believed to have damaged the metal shield of the containment dome, which is crucial in keeping radioactive gases and the core contained.

Although it's still an unfolding situation, experts say that the crisis will not result in the same level of damage that occurred in 1986 at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union which was a different design and didn't have a containment dome. The International Atomic Energy Agency said the Chernobyl accident was classified at the highest rating of seven, while the Fukushima Daiichi event, as of Sunday, was classified as Level 4, an "Accident With Local Consequences," lower than the Level 5 rating given to the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.

Last-ditch cooling efforts
Using the Three Mile Island accident as a guide, cooling the core with seawater at Japan's Fukushima plant reactors could take several days, said Andrew Kadak, the director of nuclear services at consulting company Exponent and researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Venting of steam to relieve pressure could continue on for months, The New York Times reported yesterday.

Four of the Fukushima Daiichi plant's six reactors are shown in this satellite photo from Geoeye via Google Earth. The reactors are the four tall buildings inland of the four longer buildings; the Pacific Ocean to the east is on the bottom of this photo. Reactors four, five, and six had been shut down before the earthquake and tsunami, but plant operators are struggling to cool down units one and three and it's believed there has been a partial meltdown in unit two.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

The fuel in a nuclear reactor, which is often uranium oxide, is shaped in long thin rods made of individual pellets. To stop the atom splitting that generates heat in a nuclear chain reaction, metal tubes called cladding fit over fuel rods to make what is called an assembly. Dozens of assemblies, each generating heat to make steam to turn an electricity-generating turbine, are placed under water in a core.

What Japanese engineers are furiously trying to avoid is a meltdown where the assemblies in the core are exposed to air for a long time and cannot be cooled. In the case of a full meltdown, the assemblies melt, turning the solid fuel into a lava-like or wax-like fluid.

Japanese officials today said that even in a worst-case scenario, the melted fuel will not cause the type of dangerous radiation exposure that happened at Chernobyl, according to reports. If the containment building remains intact, then radioactive material from the fuel will not leak into environment.

It's possible that the melted fuel would melt through the floor in the containment building, The New York Times reported today. Kadak, however, said that is highly unlikely because there is water in the containment building outside the nuclear reactor core. That means the molten fuel will be able to turn solid and remain there, Kadak said. As in Three Mile Island, the core would be left to decay for several months and then cleaned up, Kadak said.

Weighing risks
Because the situation has not yet stabilized and many details on precisely what went wrong when are still not known, it's not clear what lessons nuclear plant operators and regulators can apply from the Fukushima accident, experts said. But the events will certainly inform the public dialogue around nuclear power, said Neil Wilmshurst, the chief nuclear officer at the Electric Power Research Institute, a utility-funded industry research group.

"You have to make an assumption of the maximum earthquake, the maximum tsunami, every external event. Around the world, there's a constant review and update of those designs," he said. "This will be one of those events that will be studied in tremendous detail and will influence decisions going forward."

Opponents to nuclear power were quick draw attention to the health risks of nuclear in disasters. Dave Lochbaum, the Nuclear Safety Project director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the incidents underscore the inadequacy of safety in U.S. plants, many of which are designed to cope with power outages for only four hours. Dozens of plants in the U.S. don't comply with fire safety regulations, which could compromise back-up systems. At Fukushima, back-up generators to power the cooling pumps were apparently knocked out by the tsunami that followed the earthquake and back-up batteries also failed to work, according to reports.

"Reactor emergency plans in the U.S. rely on the assumption that a reactor accident would be the only demand on emergency response resources. The accident in Japan is just the most recent reminder of the need to revisit emergency plans to ensure that people get the help they need even when disasters overlap," he wrote.

Supporters of nuclear power say that the crisis in Japan is being blown out of proportion in relation to the larger emergency in dealing with the aftereffects of the earthquake, where as many as 10,000 people could be killed and the economy severely hurt. Whether nuclear power plants should spend the money to enact more stringent safety requirements, such as impact from earthquakes the size of Japan's, is a question that society has to answer, said MIT's Golay.

"We have a pot of resources for public protection and we have to decide how to use them. We're talking about very expensive remedies and it's a social choice," he said. "If we do that, we're not going to protect ourselves against other things or we could spend the resources elsewhere like better schools, for instance."

Support for nuclear power appeared to have been building among the public in the U.S. over the past few years because nuclear plants offer emissions-free electricity generation at large scale. Some new plant designs use so-called passive systems, such as gravity, to power cooling systems, avoiding the problem of power failures.

"New plants are on an order of magnitude--ten times--safer than the existing fleet and they did this by improved designs," said Kadak. "If people worry about global climate change, then they cannot take nuclear off the table."

The Department of Energy has promoted the development of modular, relatively small-scale reactors as a way to more quickly bring nuclear power online and as a technology U.S. companies could sell abroad. In a press briefing yesterday, the White House press secretary said President Obama continues to support nuclear power plants and that U.S. plants had been built to withstand strong storms and earthquakes, The Hill reported. Federal government loan guarantees to build multibillion nuclear power plants is considered a key piece to any future energy legislation.

Whether and how much the so-called nuclear renaissance will be slowed by the events in Japan remains to be seen, said MIT's Golay. "What we have seen in the past is when shocks occur, there's (stalling) for five years and if everything goes well, society becomes more tolerant," he said.

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China's Hu Arrives to Look Around

China's Hu Arrives to Look Around

By Danny Schechter
January 18, 2011

Editor’s Note: The arrival of Chinese President Hu in Washington had the feel of a banker showing up at a struggling business where the owners pray for more financial help but fear the banker might notice how desperate things look and pull the loan.

With China now one of America’s top creditors, Hu’s hosts hope he will decide to keep buying Treasury bills and to give a boost to the U.S. economy -- rather than go away thinking the American economic/political model is in rapid decline, a concern that Danny Schechter addresses in this guest essay:

On the eve of the Chinese President’s visit to the United States, and the intense speculation about his intentions — and ours — I found myself in a dark room at the Anthology Film Archive in the East Village watching a spectacular documentary by Chinese filmmaker Zhao Liang called “Petition.”

It's about the tens of thousands of people with grievances who seek redress in China at offices ostensibly set up to resolve their problems.

The right to petition is guaranteed by the Chinese Constitution — yes, China has a Constitution, but it is unevenly enforced like our own. Falun Gong first tried, but failed, to bring its human rights claims to a Petition office like the bureaucratic centers shown in the film as do a small army of individuals who every day, bravely — sometimes fanatically --- insist it is their human right to be heard.

(In Falun Gong's case, they were outlawed and systematically repressed for more than a decade with a large cost of lives.)

Listen to the description of “Petition”: “Since 1996, Zhao has documented the ‘petitioners’ who come from all over China to make complaints in Beijing about abuses committed by their local authorities. Gathered near the complaint offices, living in most cases in makeshift shelters, the complainants wait for months or years to obtain justice.

“Peasants thrown off their land, workers from factories which have gone into liquidation, small homeowners who have seen their houses demolished but received no compensation, they pursue justice with unceasing stubbornness, facing the most brutal intimidation and most often finding that their hopes are in vain.”

Before you put this down just to the authoritarianism and insensitivity in China, remember the song “before you ‘cuse me, take a look at yourself.”

Think of all the Americans who get nowhere fighting their City Halls or battling denials of claims by health insurance companies or foreclosures by banks. Think of the vast growth in poverty and the persistence of high unemployment. Think of the millions of Americans behind bars. 

We don’t even have a petition office, which I’m sure must resolve some issues even if the film didn't show that!

Our systems may be different but some of the top-down ways our rulers operate are the same. Now, our two governments are about to sit down with each other to discuss common problems and stubborn differences.

“The U.S.-China summit this week could rank among the most pivotal in history,” writes Leslie Gelb who went from the New York Times to the Council on Foreign Relations to the appropriately named Daily Beast.

“Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao can either find fresh ways to work out increasing differences, or they can settle for friendly gasbag rhetoric that will bow to their mutual and mounting hawkish pressures. But failure to compromise on tough economic and security issues will have dangerous consequences for both leaders.”

Elite journalists tend to worry more about the tenure of elites then the well-being of the people. Yet, when you think about U.S.-China relations, it’s not just governments that are wrestling over policy.

For example, whenever Washington summons up the courage to criticize China’s dismal and repressive human rights record, Beijing fires back with the scorecard of U.S. police abuses and mass incarceration. They report regularly on Obama’s backpedaling on human rights here.

(And know well that the summit is being carefully stage-managed by lower-level officials on both sides who have already come up with some compromises that each side can use to show how flexible and responsive they are. Each side must save face after all.

In case you haven’t noticed, the world has changed with China’s economy growing faster and doing better — at least for now — than ours.

Money represents real power in this world, and ours seems to be declining while theirs is in the ascendancy.

China’s President Hu Jintao is sending contradictory signals. In one conciliatory statement, he called for the U.S. and China to work out their mutual problems. He sounded reasonable and friendly.

"There is no denying that there are some differences and sensitive issues between us," Hu told American newspapers, "We both stand to gain from a sound China-U.S. relationship, and lose from confrontation.''

At the same time, the Chinese are freaking out Wall Street and its cadre of henchmen in Washington by questioning the future of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Even as China’s investments in America’s bonds and other financial instruments have become essential for our well-being and perhaps China’s as well, there are many in Beijing who don’t like the dependence on an American system that has lost them money and independence of action.

All countries have their own interests although the United States likes to pretend that everything we want is in the world’s interest. Washington’s PR may be better but the U.S. global image is severely tarnished by wars and the WikiLeaks disclosures.

The U.S. has been pressing the Chinese to revalue its currency for years. The Chinese often sound as if they will — but, in the end, they haven’t because to do so would hurt their economy and spark more unemployment.

Now Congress is getting into the act to add pressure on Beijing. AP reports, "Three U.S. senators announced plans Monday to renew their effort  to penalize China for what they term currency ‘manipulation,’ on the eve of  a state visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao.

"Our message to President Hu is, 'Welcome to America, but we want to make
sure we have a fair trading system,'" said Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow,
who joined fellow Democrats Charles Schumer and Bob Casey in the
announcement.

“The bill to be introduced in the new Congress would ‘vigorously address
currency misalignments that unfairly and negatively impact US trade,’ the
three said in a joint statement."

China will not be moved by this pressure move. They don’t like being bullied and have their own grievances with Ameican economic policies including U.S. cases filed against China at the World Trade Organization that they view as invalid and protectionist, as sops used for domestic political considerations.

The fact is that all of these get-China maneuvers will not achieve what most Americans want: more jobs.

Writes Harvard Law Professor Mark Wu, it “is unlikely that a stronger renminbi would bring many jobs back home. Instead, companies would most likely shift labor-intensive production to Vietnam, Indonesia and other low-wage countries.

“And in any case many high-skilled jobs will continue to flow overseas, as long as cheaper talent can be found in India and elsewhere. Only in a few industries, like biomedical devices, would a stronger Chinese currency combined with quality issues tempt American companies to keep more manufacturing at home.”

Meanwhile, China is well aware of how to "win friends" in the U.S., as Reuters reports. Deals do it.

"The Chinese government kicked off a four-day U.S. trade  mission on Monday by signing six deals in Houston with undisclosed U.S. companies worth $600 million, according to Chinese state media reports.

“The deals came a day before Chinese President Hu Jintao arrives in the  United States for a visit being billed as the most important U.S.-China  summit since Deng Xiaoping's visit to Washington 30 years ago."

The future of our relations is not just dependent on what the leaders say or agree on at summits. China is wary of U.S. military power encircling them. They are being forced to spend more money than they want to on naval ships and stealth planes. 

This is a country that grew up with Mao’s dictum that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

As the Telegraph noted recently, “on virtually all the main issues that separate the two nations, (China) seems intransigent and uncompromising. The sense of threat is heightened by the fact that, while America is gripped by economic, social and political self-doubt, the Chinese have never been more certain of their ascendancy.”

It may be that both countries are shakier than we think. There may be no economic recovery in the United States for five years while some Hedge Funds fear, “China is a bubble close to bursting.” 

Reports another article in the Telegraph, “The world is looking to China as a springboard out of recession - but some hedge funds are betting the country's credit and growth levels cannot be sustained.”

So far, neither Washington nor Beijing has realized the apocalyptic projections of their many critics. Both states still pay lip service to their ideal, but both can be unraveling.

A fancy State Dinner will not bridge the gaps that separate the two countries and “paths of development,” as the Chinese say.

The U.S. says it wants more democracy in China but officials like Tim Geithner are upset by the debates taking place there, and pine for the days when they could deal with a dictator like Mao or Deng who, as the New York Times explained, “commanded basically unquestioned authority.”

Our leaders prefer dealing with that type of authority – and wish they had it here.

Back in Beijing, in the shabby Petition Villages where Chinese citizens soldier on in their fight for justice, or in this country where our citizens are frustrated and angry with an economic crisis that appears to have no end, no one will expect much from this summit in faraway Washington where diplomatic dances produce kabuki plays filled with smiles but no real changes.

News Dissector Danny Schechter blogs on Mediachannel.org. His latest film, “Plunder The Crime of Our Time,” treats the financial crisis as a crime story. Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

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