Front Burner - Nuclear power in an unstable world

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

In two parts of the world, the future of nuclear power plants and their remains are causing alarm for very different reasons. In Ukraine, Europe’s largest nuclear plant has become a battleground in the war. Further east, Japan is one step closer to releasing 1.32 million tonnes of radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear meltdown into the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, for many, nuclear power is one of the tools we have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. Today, Jim Smith, a Professor of Environmental Science at Portsmouth University joins us to discuss whether nuclear power in an unstable world is a net positive, or a terrifying liability. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Tamara Kendacker. So when it comes to solutions in the fight against climate change, one of the most polarizing is nuclear power. And this debate is back in the news because right now, in two different corners of the world, the future of nuclear power plants and their remains are causing alarm. In Ukraine, Europe's largest nuclear plant has become a battleground in the war. Ukraine's president is accusing Russia of planting explosives at the

Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Moscow, in turn, has said Kyiv is planning to attack the facility. Further east, Japan is one step closer to going through with a controversial plan to release 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean, the fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster just over a decade ago. China has been the most vocal, calling Japan's plan irresponsible, unpopular and unilateral. In neighboring South Korea, shoppers have been bulk buying sea salt due to fears of contamination. Despite the outrage, the government has pointed out there is simply no more room at the site in the huge tanks that hold wastewater. Meanwhile, in calmer waters, Canada is pushing ahead, betting on nuclear power to help reduce emissions.

Last week, Ontario Energy Minister Todd Smith announced plans to build three small modular nuclear reactors at the Darlington power plant. Once these SMRs are deployed, it'll produce another 1,200 megawatts of electricity. That's enough to power about 1.2 million homes. That means more clean, reliable, and affordable power for the next major international investment that comes here. The province also wants to expand Bruce Power with a brand new plant on the shores of Lake Huron,

making one of the world's largest nuclear facilities even larger. So today, we're going to talk about nuclear power in an unstable world. Is it a net positive or a terrifying liability? Jim Smith is on the show today. He's a professor of environmental science at Portsmouth University and the lead author of the book Chernobyl, Catastrophe and Consequences. Hi, Jim, it's great to talk to you. Hi, Tamara.

So, Jim, I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this. But first, I was wondering if you could take us back to 2011, the tsunami that happened in Japan, which was triggered by an earthquake. What happened at the Fukushima power plant? When the earthquake happened, the nuclear site at Fukushima, the reactor shut down automatically. But 40 minutes later, a giant tsunami arrived and that overwhelmed the sea defences at Fukushima and flooded the reactor buildings. And that caused the diesel generators to be flooded and stop working. And it shut down the cooling system.

So basically, the reactors no longer had cooling. They'd shut down, but they were still very hot and they overheated. And that led to a meltdown and release of radioactivity. And so the really dramatic thing that we saw at Fukushima was three of the reactor buildings exploding from an explosion of hydrogen gas. It's becoming difficult for crews to try to prevent a meltdown at the site. Since the weekend, there have been explosions in reactors one, two, and three, and temperatures are also rising at two other reactors nearby. And so the meltdown and explosion released radioactivity into the atmosphere, which then

deposited on the land and the sea, as well as direct discharges of radioactivity into the Pacific Ocean. So this water that Japan wants to get rid of now, where is that coming from? So initially, radioactive water was from the plants that were trying to cool the reactors, and so water was going into the ocean, but the Japanese started pumping that out and storing it. the ocean but the japanese started pumping that out and storing it and this this is still going on because this the reactors still need water for the cooling operations and there's also radioactive water in the water around the plant underneath the plant and so that has to be pumped out so since about 2012 the japanese have been collecting that water and storing it in over a thousand giant tanks. So they've now got about 1.3 million cubic metres of radioactive,

I wouldn't say not highly radioactive, but significantly radioactive water stored in tanks. Treated radioactive water at the plant is stored in about a thousand tanks that are nearing their 1.37 million ton capacity. It must be removed to prevent accidental leaks and to make room for the plant's decommissioning. You said that it's not that radioactive, and the Japanese government says that it's been treated and its plan to dump it into the ocean through this tube is safe.

Last week, the UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Association, signed off on this plan. The plan, as it has been proposed and devised, is in conformity with the agreed international standards and its application, if the government decides to proceed with it, would have negligible impact on the environment.

So what is it about the water that people are worried about? So the water has been treated. So there's a wide range of radioactive elements. Things like if we cast our minds back to the Fukushima accident, people were worried about radioactive cesium. And that's been the main contamination of both the marine and terrestrial environment around Fukushima. in their water treatment processing system. What's left is a thing called tritiated water. So tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen. So instead of H2O, it's what we call HTO. Instead of two hydrogens and an oxygen, it's got a hydrogen, an oxygen and a tritium, the radioactive form of hydrogen. So chemically, it behaves in an identical manner to ordinary water. And at that sort of scale, it makes it pretty much impossible to

separate it from the 1.3 million cubic meters of ordinary water. I see. And so these concerns about the tritium, I just want to dive into this a little bit. What kind of danger does tritium pose to humans and marine life? So at high levels, the tritium can pose a danger both to human and marine life by damaging DNA, danger both to human and marine life by damaging DNA essentially. So DNA damage is going on all the time in our bodies, not only from radiation, but from other things, from all sorts of chemical reactions that are going on in our cells. The cell can usually repair it, but there's occasional moments where the cell can't repair it and that can lead to cancer. So those are the sort of concerns, but we're not talking about those sort of levels of tritium. Right. The Japanese government says the final level of

tritium that would be deposited into the water is safer than the level required by regulators for nuclear waste discharge or by the WHO. Can you just sort of put the numbers when it comes to the level of tritium into context for us? So the Japanese plan is that after this dilution 100 times, the sum of all the other radionuclides in the release will be less than 1% of the Japanese guideline limit for discharge. will be less than 1% of the Japanese guideline limit for discharge. The tritium will be about 40 times lower than the Japanese guideline level. And that makes a value.

We measure radioactivity in becquerels, and the tritium will be about 1,500 becquerels per liter in the discharge water. Now, to put that in context, the World Health Organization guideline limit for tritium in drinking water is 10,000 becquerels per liter, so seven times higher. So in theory, from the radioactivity perspective, you could drink the water that's going to be released to the Pacific. So there seems to be agreement among a lot of scientists that this plan is safe, but I feel like it's worth noting that there isn't total consensus on this plan in the scientific community,

even inside the IAEA. There are also some who say there needs to be more studies on how this would impact the ocean bed and marine wildlife, and that Japan and TEPCO have cut corners, that this has all been a bit hasty. And what do you think of that? I think that's totally inaccurate. It's not that this is unprecedented. We know that this has been going on for decades. And I just think that there's no scientific basis for claims that this is a big risk or that it hasn't been considered properly. I think it has. We know from previous experience what tritium does in the environment, the proviso is that the Japanese do what they say they're going to do, which is really important. But if they do what they say they're going to do, then I don't see any grounds for considering this a significant risk.

But there has also been some opposition to this plan from the Japanese public. So surveys show that people are pretty evenly divided and 45% of respondents support the plan, 40% of people are against it. But fishing communities in Fukushima have been especially hard to convince. And on Friday, a petition with 33,000 signatures was delivered by fishing cooperatives

expressing their opposition to the plan. If the majority of scientists say the water is safe, why are fishers so opposed to this? I mean, they have a very good reason to be opposed to this because they know what perceptional damage it will do to their products. We know that food is a very sensitive issue for people and even the perception of risk is certainly going to damage their ability to sell their catches on the market. We know that rice from the Fukushima prefecture after the accident,

even though it had been tested and it was radioactively below the safe limit, it achieved prices less than other rice from other parts of Japan. And the fishermen know very well that this is going to damage their industry. And I have a lot of sympathy with that. It's interesting, though, it's not just people inside Japan who are divided. There's also been some regional opposition to this as well. China is really against this plan. And in South Korea, the South Korean government, which is trying to improve relations with Japan right now, has said it respects the plan, but the South Korean public really isn't happy about it. There have been some surveys that show 80 to 85% of people are against it. It's even caused panic buying in the country. Some shoppers are bulk buying salt as well as seafood to store at home and retailers are stockpiling in fear of a supply shortage. South Korea's fisheries authorities have vowed to ramp up efforts to monitor natural salt farms

for any rise in radioactive substances and maintain a ban on seafood from waters near Fukushima. What do you make of the international reaction to this? Well, I mean, there's some politics in it, and there's been some propaganda coming from China in particular, which is not supported by any scientific evidence. I think that people don't like radiation, and it's something, even though somehow we feel like, because we associate radiation with terrible events,

like the Fukushima accident, like the Chernobyl accident, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings, radiation kind of ticks all the boxes of what makes people frightened. So it's invisible. It's to do with technological things that most people don't understand. And it causes dread consequences. It causes cancer. I think environmental pressure groups and anti-nuclear pressure groups and some scientists have to take a bit of responsibility for this because I don't think everybody is always

trying to give people the full information about radiation risk or to put that risk in context. There's quite a lot of hype around radiation and of course the media understandably report the hype as well as the science. connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income?

That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cups. Let's pivot to Ukraine. While this conversation about Fukushima's water is happening in Japan, just down the road from Chernobyl, there has been a lot of worry since the start of the Ukraine war about the Zaporizhzhia power plant. It's in Ukraine, but it's occupied by the Russians. And Ukraine's been saying that

Russia wants to bomb it and make it look like Ukraine did it. And last week, those warnings escalated. And I should say, on Friday, the IAEA experts said that they hadn't seen any signs of visible mines or explosives. But how bad could this be if it actually happened? That's a complicated question. So there are six reactors at the Zaporizhia site. At least five of them are in what's called cold shutdown. So we remember this thing that happened when Fukushima, the three reactors that blew up were all in full operation when the earthquake happened and so they still had lots of this decay heat in the reactor cores which could boil off the water and cause a build up of heat within the reactor core if a if a reactor is in cold shutdown then that doesn't

happen and you only need minimal amounts of water to keep it cooled if something would would happen so if if some explosives were set off at zaparizhia then there could be some local effects but in its current state you couldn't get a meltdown like happened like what happened at chernobyl and fukushima because the reactors still aren't hot enough it would take a deliberate act by the russians to start the first thing if they really wanted to blow up the the reactors then the first thing we would see was that they would all start getting into a high power mode again so they would start ramping the reactors up and letting them run for a while to build up all these decay elements and then they would sabotage the cooling system and we would get

meltdowns like we saw at Fukushima or possibly even an explosion like we saw at Chernobyl. And so there is, if the Russians really want to, then they could cause a major nuclear incident, a level seven, the top level nuclear incident at Zaborizhia. We're not seeing signs of that at the moment, fortunately. But in the same way as Russia could drop a nuclear bomb on Ukraine, or on any of us, then they could set off the nuclear reactors to melt down. Certainly, if a major accident happened at Zaporizhia, it would be the Russians' deliberate act. You would have to get rid of the IAEA inspectors and force the operators of the site at gunpoint to start changing how the reactors are working and shut off cooling systems and so on.

So essentially what we're seeing right now, even if something doesn't happen, it is a nuclear power plant being weaponized in the context of a war. it is a nuclear power plant being weaponized in the context of a war. And opponents to nuclear power would say that that's a pretty powerful argument against them. What do you think of that? It is. It is a powerful argument against them. We have to really think about what our options are for power and what the risks are. In a hot war, nuclear power stations can be considered a vulnerable target. But at the same time, we have to remember that if Russian soldiers are in your nuclear power station, you've got bigger problems than a nuclear accident. So Ukraine right now has much bigger problems than a nuclear accident. So Ukraine right now has much bigger problems than a nuclear accident. You mentioned earlier that there is a lot of fear around radiation and maybe some of that is

overblown. And just as someone who studied the Chernobyl disaster for so long, can you kind of explain what we know at this point about the kind of environmental impact we've seen from that disaster? What's interesting is that we know that nuclear potentially can damage human societies, not necessarily, even in the case of a serious accident, not necessarily in terms of big risks to people, but in terms of the social and economic impacts that the accident does. But what we've seen at Chernobyl and at Fukushima is that the actual environment, so if we take humans out of the equation for the moment, the environment has ironically benefited from the Chernobyl accident. So we've studied lakes

around the Chernobyl site, including the cooling reservoir at the site, and we find a thriving aquatic ecosystem. So we see healthy fish populations, we see healthy fish, we see aquatic invertebrate populations. So the insects that are grubbing about in the contaminated sediments of these lakes, they're every bit as diverse and abundant as insect populations in other lakes in the area. Similarly, we've seen high populations of large mammals. And what we've seen after the accident is that the animals associated with human presence, things like rats, pigeons, sparrows, have declined in numbers because the people have been evacuated. And wild animals, wild boar, roe deer, wolves, various species of eagle have increased in numbers.

And that's not because the radiation is helping the animals, but because the human occupation was much worse for the animal population. So when people were there and doing farming, fishing, chopping down trees, all the things that people do when we inhabit an area, that was much worse for the natural environment than the relatively low level radiation that exists in the long term after the accident. So, Jim, just to sum up what we've talked about, we've already seen a couple of disasters at nuclear power plants, one caused by natural disaster, another one caused by human error. And now in Ukraine, there's this threat of a meltdown caused by natural disaster, another one caused by human error. And now in Ukraine, there's this threat of a meltdown caused by war. And these are the things that opponents of nuclear

power as a solution to climate change might point to. But for people who support it, nuclear also holds a lot of promise. And we've heard some of the biggest voices on climate change. People like Bill Gates come out in favor of atomic energy. Having a non-weather dependent, completely green, reliable form of energy generation that can be cheap enough means that there will really have to be some nuclear in that equation. Greta Thunberg joined the protest against Germany's decision to phase out nuclear. If we have them already running, I feel that it's a mistake to close them down in order to focus on coal. And I just wanted to talk about how countries are divided on their approach to nuclear. We've seen Japan do a complete 180 on its plans to move away from atomic power. Last year, France announced a plan to build 14

new reactors. And just last week, Canada announced that new plan in Ontario. I mentioned this in the intro. What makes nuclear appealing to governments as an energy source? So nuclear provides a baseload energy. So in the UK, well, up until recently, it provided about 20% to 25% of our baseload electricity. In France, that was about, and still is, about 70% to 80%. And nuclear is one of the few reliable non-carbon emitting or very low carbon emitting energy generation technologies. And so what the struggle with transferring to an electricity system powered by renewables

is that as you get a higher percentage of your electricity being generated by solar and wind, you need more and more backup in the form of batteries or pump storage where water's pumped from one reservoir to another to store energy. So you need more energy storage, the more intermittent renewables you have in your grid. So nuclear is very useful for the electricity grid because it 24-7 pretty much throughout the year.

So what we call the capacity factors, the amount of time that the energy is being generated is about 90%. And very often this question is framed in, should we go for nuclear or should we go for renewables? My view is that we need both. And we need to be building both as quickly as possible. There are other countries that are standing firm on moving away from nuclear. So Germany, for example, within three months of the meltdown in Japan announced that it was going to phase out nuclear power, standing firm on that. Countries like Spain and Switzerland are also winding down. Why has there been so

little consensus around this internationally? I mean, I think particularly in Germany, there's been an incredibly effective anti-nuclear movement. And nuclear, you could say it was sort of on the brink of being closed down. And then when the Fukushima accident happened, that was kind of the last straw really for defenders of nuclear in Germany. And it was promised. It the electricity generation has gone down it's now still burning coal and so what what's happened is that the germany really had a choice was it coal or nuclear and they chose to shut down nuclear but that's meant that they're still and particularly in this energy crisis they're're still burning coal. And we know that does damage. There's been a study of the impacts of the phase-out of German nuclear power. And that study says that it's led to about a thousand more deaths a year

from air pollution because coal plants pollute the air. And it's caused about 36 million extra tons of CO2 each year being emitted into the atmosphere. So we don't have any easy energy choices. And it's not a simple question, do we build solar panels or do we build nuclear? It's do we build nuclear or do we keep using fossil fuels? Okay, Jim, thank you so much for explaining both sides of this debate. I really appreciate it. And I feel a lot more clear in my mind about all of this. Thank you. Bye. All right, that's it for today. I'm Tamara Kendacker. Thank you for listening.