nuclear future can be viable, page-2

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IT took British humourist Jeremy Clarkson to inject a bit of sanity into the nuclear power debate this week. In his column in Britain's mass-circulation Sun newspaper he said: "And yes, before you ask, I would be happy to have a nuclear power station in my back garden. For all I care, you could build one in my underpants. They're safe. They're clean. And they are the answer to all our prayers."

As bizarre as it sounds, scientists have been lining up to agree with Clarkson.

Nuclear watcher David Spiegelhalter, the Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge, didn't go so far as advocating atomic briefs. But he said he wouldn't mind a nuke plant in his backyard.



At the same time the editorial board of New Scientist, the authoritative science journal, came out in favour of atomic energy, arguing we have much more to fear from climate change than nuclear power.

"Nuclear power will remain an essential ingredient of efforts to curb carbon emissions," it said in an editorial.

However New Scientist also issued a warning: The majority of the world's nuclear reactors evolved from early military designs and are more than 20 years old and a new generation of conventional reactors offers more comprehensive safety features.

The earthquake and tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant on Japan's east coast has brought nuclear plant safety into sharper focus. In Australia, the Greens and the usual suspects on the Left rushed to emphasise the dangers of nuclear reactors, forgetting to mention that the damage to the plant was caused by the fourth-biggest earthquake yet recorded, which sent massive shockwaves through the nuclear power station. Then came a gigantic tidal wave that knocked out both the electricity supply and the diesel generators needed to keep the fuel rods cool.

A build-up of hydrogen meant that some reactors actually exploded.

Now scientists are drawing back from earlier gloomy forecasts, saying the amount of radiation found in the area is really "very low".

As Clarkson said: "This means, therefore, that a nuclear power station can be shaken, drowned and blown up. And still the health effects to people living right next door are negligible."

And remember, the Fukushima Daiichi reactors are 40 years old. Alexis Marincic, the chief of French nuclear power provider Areva, said he believed the radiation leaks in Japan "probably would not have happened" with new models. The new generation of reactors have more safety features and back-ups and are cheaper.

And if you want to count bodies, you will quickly find that nuclear power is safer.

The truth is that nuclear power generation has killed fewer people than other sources of power.

Figures from the International Atomic Energy Commission showed hydroelectric power generation, coal and gas were far more deadly than nuclear power. Hydro figures were blurred somewhat when 230,000 people died in China in 1975 after a series of dam failures in floods.

The death toll from coal is extraordinary. Fine particles from coal power plants kill 13,200 people a year in the US, according to the Boston-based Clean Air Taskforce.

The death toll in China is put at 10 times that and rising thanks, in part, to coal from Queensland.

Australian nuclear power advocate Ziggy Switkowski says nuclear energy opponents sidestep the loss of life and damage caused by exploding oil tanks, burst gas mains and electrical fires.

With demand for electricity expected to double in the next 20 years, coal pollution will worsen.

There is hope on the horizon in the form of thorium, a silvery, naturally occurring radioactive chemical element found in abundance in Australia. Thorium, named after Thor, the Norse god of thunder, promises abundant, safe and clean energy - and a way to burn up old radioactive waste.

Kirk Sorensen, a nuclear engineer from the University of Tennessee in the US, says thorium nuclear reactors offer "compelling safety advantages" - there is no possibility of a meltdown; they are inexpensive; they cannot produce weapons-grade by-products; and they will burn up existing high-level waste as well as nuclear weapon stockpiles.

It's still early days but researchers in China, Europe the US and India are suggesting that thorium could render uranium redundant.

China's Academy of Sciences said it had chosen a "thorium-based molten salt reactor system". Chinese scientists claim hazardous waste will be a thousand times less than with uranium. Meanwhile a Russian expert who worked on the clean-up of Chernobyl told the Wall Street Journal the Japanese at Fukushima did the right thing by releasing radioactive water into the ocean.

Vladimir Uiba, head of Russia's Federal Medical-Biological Agency, compared the Japanese seawater contamination with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and said the spill had caused a far more serious impact on the environment than the Fukushima accident.