Protecting nuclear plants from nature? What!

That particular headline or viewpoint – Protecting nuclear plants from nature… somehow struck me with a huge pang of astound. Here we have an article which might just show how advanced human devolution has become, at least in the arena of intelligence.

On the one hand we have nature… the very essence and giver of life versus insane potentially lethal technology.

Surely, protecting nature from nuclear plants is what that should read.

That needs to be thought about for a nano-second.

Einstein may have said it aptly, “Nuclear reaction is a silly way to boil water.” Me… being me… would probably have said, “Nuclear reaction to boil water is insane.”

So the gist of the article is about how nature is the threat to humanity because… humanity has seeded its own habitat with what amounts to an array of poorly designed, poorly located, ill-advised, wanton and reckless proliferation of deadly machinery capable of undoing all of natures handiwork, we may even have set up the demise of life on our own planet as a result.

Yet nature is cast as the villain?

The article alludes to several noteworthy points…

To assess the vulnerability of nuclear power plants globally, we collected information on plant height, sea wall height and emergency-power-generator locations for 89 nuclear power plants that lie next to water. We compared this to historical information on high waves triggered by sources such as earthquakes, landslides and hurricanes.

Our findings were striking. Several nuclear plants in Japan had inadequate protection — the average height of a historical tsunami exceeded the height of the sea wall, the plant itself and on-site emergency generators. Fukushima Dai-ichi was not even the most vulnerable plant in Japan. We found that plants operated by the largest power companies —Tokyo Electric, Kansai Electric and Chubu Electric — were particularly unsafe.

Equally striking, our data also suggest several U.S. nuclear power plants are unprepared for high waves. The U.S. came in second, behind Japan, as the country with the largest number of inadequately protected nuclear power plants.

The 1938 New England hurricane triggered a storm surge up to 30 feet, higher than waves this week from Sandy. A wave that tall would overtake many East Coast nuclear power plants, which on average lie about 20 feet above sea level, with minimal sea wall protection.
According to our data, the U.S. nuclear power plants most vulnerable to inundation are the Salem and Hope Creek plants on the New Jersey/Delaware border; the Millstone plant in Connecticut; and the Seabrook plant in New Hampshire.

All of these are close to large cities: The Salem and Hope Creek plants are about 90 miles from Washington and about 35 miles from Philadelphia. The Millstone plant is about 40 miles from Hartford, Conn., and 100 miles from New York City. The Seabrook plant is about 35 miles from Boston. As points of reference, consider that the U.S. government recommended a 50-mile evacuation radius in the Fukushima disaster, and Tokyo is about 140 miles away from the Fukushima Dai-ichi site.

This and more alarming revelation is intended to lead up to a conclusion, not the obvious conclusion such as who or what allowed the situation to become so dire, but rather what in retrospect we can do to make our dirty little mistakes “nature proof.”

The presumption being general citizens at large will respond to a vile form of ransom and cough up the desired “protection money” to apply the remedy.

In other words, attempt to protect the man-applied insanity, rather than applying a sane solution – such as…

Shut them all down!

The solution is so obvious one should cringe at any attempt to justify otherwise.

Evacuation planning should not be the prime consideration when implementing technology solutions to problems. If the problem to be solved was large, the solution to the problem should not be larger–should it?

Now we have the original problem compounded exponentially with the so called “solution”, which often carries far graver ramification than the original problem. If there is sense in that somewhere I have yet to discern it.

Like the learned author states… ”The threat posed by extreme weather is not hypothetical.” He goes on to illustrate many “real-life” examples of how reality is… well real!

Eventually we get to the punchline…

But there are other reasons to question the safety of U.S. nuclear power plants. Our research found that the risk to U.S. plants is probably understated. Historical data regarding tsunamis are available going back about 2,000 years for East Asia and only about 350 years for the U.S.

This uncertainty means we should do much more to protect U.S. nuclear power plants against potential threats. Many nuclear plants on the East Coast are perilously close to major population centers.

More sea walls should be constructed, and existing walls should be raised to minimize the danger of inundation. All backup power generators should be located well above sea level and within watertight structures.

We should not wait for a major disaster to take reasonable precautions.

While taking precautions against such deadly annihilation of our environment smacks of a modicum of common sense, the solution proffered does not.

If you think building walls will nullify the scoundrel natures threats, then think again, nature has a well defined set of characteristics only one of which is extreme movement of water.

In the olden days nature was described as the elements of fire, earth, water and air, all of which in small doses allow us to tick, when amplified to extreme applications they encourage renewal.

The old sciences included a moral component, unfortunately modern science does not.

Here the question is… What does nuclear energy cost?

Of course the fiscal answer is academic, the real answer well may be “Everything!”

Stay tuned…