Steven Harrell

The Chernobyl Option

Apr 1, 2011 Updates

Four Fridays ago, at around 3:44 local time, a 9.0 level earthquake struck on the sea floor east of  Sandai, Japan.  The earthquake was high up near the ocean floor, and it caused a huge tsunami to sweep over the coastline nearby.  Entire cities and towns and fields and countryside were swept up in this terrible tsunami.  The disaster killed over 10,500 people, and over 12,000 persons are missing, and are presumed dead.  Many victims were swept out into the sea.

Over 400,000 Japanese persons are now homeless.  To compound this disaster, the tsunami cut electrical power at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station nearby.  Backup generators were rendered inoperative as well, and the controllers at the power station lost the ability to pump and retain water on uranium fuel rods inside the reactors, and at the spent fuel ponds nearby.

Here is a summary of the damage done at this power station: There are no less than six reactors at the plant.  The shielding or buffering material that protects the reactor cores and cools the cores is thousands of gallons of fresh water.  When the earthquake hit, the plant lost all electrical power, which prevented the water pumps from pumping fresh water onto the cores.  The diesel backup generators also failed, which meant that the fuel rods were in a position to overheat, if the level of water shielding the uranium fuel rods would fall below certain levels.   Reactors 4, 3, 2, and 1 sustained damage to the reactor building.  Reactors 3, 2, and 1 experienced a partial meltdown of the fuel rods.  There was also an increase in the temperature of the spent fuel rods in all six of the nuclear reactors.  When fuel rods began to overheat and burn, they produce caesium -137.   This radioactive substance disburses into the atmosphere, and ends up polluting the ground, air, and water around the plant.  This substance also causes thyroid cancer in infants and children, if the children are exposed to sufficient quantities of the material.

Once the fuel rods overheat to a temperature well above the boiling point of water, the water vapor becomes hot enough inside the reactors to create hydrogen gas.  The hydrogen gas inside some of the units exploded, causing damage to several of the reactor buildings.  Officials believe that a partial meltdown has occurred in some of the reactors already.  This explains the great release of vapor, heat, and radiation from some of the reactor buildings.

For days, plant officials, and later Japanese firefighters have been dropping water, and later spraying sea water onto the reactors, in an effort to cool down the fuel rods.  Their efforts have only been partially successful, as smoke and radiation have spewed from reactor unit number 3 for days.  This radiation has contaminated the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean, and has contaminated spinach crops and milk in surrounding areas.  The water in Tokyo is so radioactive, it is no longer safe for infants to drink.  Japanese residents are making runs into stores for bottled water.

The Japanese Government has evacuated 200,000 residents from a 20 kilometer radius around the stricken nuclear plant.

The Tokyo Power Company has successfully run electrical power cables back into each of the reactor units at the plant, and the workers there are in the process of inspecting the motors and water pumps inside each plant in order to determine if the freshwater pumps on the cooling systems can be engaged.  Reactor unit 3 remains a problem, though, as material there continues to burn and smoke, and radiation continues to spew out into the sky.  A private utility is calling the shots here, and their decision making is infected with the for profit motivations of a private company.  At some point, the Japanese Government should grab the bull by the horns, and make the hard decisions needed to deal with this crippled reactor.

In 1986, when the graphite based reactor at Chernobyl in the then Soviet Union blew up, President Gorbachev made a tough but necessary decision.  He ordered tons of sand, boride, and cement to be dumped on the reactor from helicopters.  This essentially entombed the reactor, and it stopped the spread of radioactive material into the surrounding countryside.  If Japanese officials fail to stop the spread of radioactive material from this plant, their indecision will end of costing Japanese children and young people for years to come, as they develop thyroid and other cancers from the radioactive contamination that is going unchecked up into the atmosphere from reactor unit number three.

Steven Harrell has practiced law in Perry, Georgia since 1989.

He is the author of The Unionist,  A Novel of the Civil War and The Rifle Captain, A Novel of World War I. You may view his weekly column at stevenharrell.com.  You may email him at sharrell@comsouth.net.