NEI Nuclear Notes

In light of today’s quarter-century anniversary of the accident, below is a fascinating nine minute video by the French consortium Novarka showing how the “ new safe confinement ” will entomb Chernobyl unit 4 so it can “accommodate future dismantling of the object shelter.” For further discussions of the accident this anniversary, stop by to check out a few of the pro-nuclear pieces below. ANS Nuclear Cafe – Chernobyl: 25 Years Later by Joe Colvin (President of ANS and former president of NEI) Atomic Insights - “Chernobyl” – 25 years as a profitable brand by Rod Adams To add from NEI’s website, see our vintage 1997 source book on Soviet-designed nuclear plant operations. It’s a fat document but pretty interesting stuff.

About a week ago, the Japanese government rated the event at Fukushima Daiichi at level 7, the highest such level on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. This put it on par with the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986 (then in the Soviet Union, now Ukraine.) For some commentators, that meant that Fukushima Daiichi is as serious as Chernobyl . For others, it qualified as a head scratcher , as the two events seem to have many points of departure. One quick way to find out which view is closer to the truth is to consult the scale itself. It was created and is maintained by the International Atomic Energy Agency. A brochure explaining it can be found here . From the introduction: The INES Scale is a worldwide tool for communicating to the public in a consistent way the safety significance of nuclear and radiological events. Just like information on earthquakes or temperature would be difficult to understand without the Richter or Celsius scales,...

The Japan government has classified the Fukushima Daiichi accident as a level 7 accident, using an international scale for such incidents. This struck me as puzzling – Fukushima, without at all denying its impact, still seemed less consequential than Chernobyl, also a level 7 accident – until I realized that there is no level 8. Thus, anything between Fukushima and Chernobyl would be classified as level 7 simply because there is nothing higher. A flaw in the classification system? Maybe – but it’s what there is. NPR has a try at sorting out the differences between Chernobyl and Fukushima: Though Fukushima and Chernobyl are both level 7 nuclear accidents, the health consequences in Japan to date are much less severe. In part, that's because far more radiation was released at Chernobyl. So far, Fukushima Daiichi has released about one-tenth of the amount of radioactive material that escaped Chernobyl, according to an official from the International Atomic Energy Agency. ...

Wasserman asks: Who Will Pay for America's Chernobyl? Answer: No one – Because it can’t happen here. The premise of Wasserman's article is erroneous. It is physically impossible for any U.S. nuclear power plant to explode like the Chernobyl reactor did. They are a completely different design that cannot run out of control and explode. And (unlike Chernobyl) all U.S. nuclear plants have heavily fortified containment buildings that are designed to withstand the worst case accident, nor can our reactors catch on fire. The fact is, Chernobyl can't happen here. The worst thing you can do to a U.S. light water reactor - overheat the fuel and cause it to melt - is what happened at Three Mile Island 30 years ago. But the TMI accident had no impact on the health of the people or the environment around the facility because of all of the safety systems built into the plant. With all of the changes and additional safety measures made because of the lessons learned from TMI, it is v...

It's been 21 years since the accident at Chernobyl. For a variety of information sources on what happened that day, click here for a document NEI compiled a year ago. Most importantly, you should read the fact sheet about the incident in order to understand exactly what happened on that terrible day, and what the global nuclear industry learned from it.