Nuclear power — making it clear (1986)

From the August 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has been drawn to our attention that the statement in the June Socialist Standard that "nuclear power could be safe” needs qualifying.

Nuclear fission (splitting the atom) which is the process used in all existing nuclear power stations can never be made safe, not even in socialism, since this is a question of physics not economics It can only be made less dangerous.

What we had in mind was the possibility of being able, within a generation, to construct power stations based on the principle of nuclear fusion. This is a quite different nuclear process in which there would be no danger of a melt-down, nor of any accidental release of radioactivity into the atmosphere. nor any radioactive waste products, the only problem in this respect would be that the equipment used to contain the process would acquire a relatively short-lived radioactivity

Editors.

Nuclear questions (1982)

From the November 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is now three years since the nuclear “accident" at Three Mile Island. The full effects on the health of people working or living in the area will perhaps never be known. The release of radiation was not effectively monitored and in any case most of the resulting sickness and deaths will take up to 20 years to occur. This lack of information has enabled speculation by both the supporters and opponents of nuclear energy to obscure the real lessons of the accident.

Three years on we are still learning the extent of the disaster. In July the first examination of the fuel rods in the core of the reactor was made possible using special cameras lowered through a screw hole in the container vessel. This revealed that the uranium oxide fuel had in fact melted, which means that the nuclear reactor core was far closer to a "meltdown” than had earlier been presumed. The massive heat necessary for the melting of the fuel, over 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, was all but sufficient to have also melted the container vessel which encased the radioactive core. Had this happened the highly radioactive molten mass would have been totally exposed, with consequences so disastrous that it is extremely unlikely that they could have been dealt with.

Not surprisingly, there is now a lot of concern at the Central Electricity Generating Board's proposals to build a Pressure Water Reactor (PWR) at Sizewell in Suffolk. Three Mile Island was also a PWR and Sizewell will be the first of this type to be built in this country. The enquiry into these proposals begins in January and as many as two thousand individuals and groups have lodged objections. But the enquiry will not deal with the real problems of nuclear energy. It will look into the scientific, technological or engineering issues, and perhaps consider the architectural or even the employment effects. It will not look at the question of how a society based on class monopoly of the production of wealth can handle such potentially dangerous technology while serving the interests of a small minority of the population.

There are three areas that have to be looked at: radioactivity anti its effects; the design and construction of nuclear plant; and nuclear waste.

Radioactivity

All radiation is dangerous to human health. There is no accepted safe level, whether it be the “natural" radiation from the environment or whether it is the result of human labour. Although there are disagreements over the effects of low levels of radiation, the International Commission for Radiological Protection (ICRP) accepts that all levels of radiation are liable to cause damage to health. The guidelines laid down by the ICRP are accepted by the nuclear industry. Consequently, when governments or other institutions fix a "safe" level of radiation they are really saying that so many deaths or so much sickness is acceptable.

At present this "safe" limit is fixed for the average person at 0.5 rem per year — three times the radiation emitted from the normal background conditions. This figure is partly arbitrary, based on how many increased deaths or illnesses are acceptable for running capitalism; the "safe" level is derived more from the estimates of what is necessary for operating a profitable nuclear industry than from the estimates of what is desirable in terms of human health. Nuclear power stations, even when working under normal conditions, need to emit a certain level of radiation into the environment only because the cost of overcoming the problems would affect profits.

The main difference between the working conditions of nuclear reactors and the conditions on, say, a building site are that the effects of radiation can take many years before becoming apparent. Radiation induced cancer may cut a worker’s life by 30 years, but the death may not occur until 20 years after contamination. On the other hand, the effects of an accident on a building site or in a factory are usually immediately noticeable. But even when the effects are known, the question is what level of human sacrifice is acceptable when priority must be given to profitable production? Even when governments introduce legislation to restrict the use of potentially dangerous materials or practices, the incentive for employers to cut corners means that constant surveillance is necessary. Nuclear power stations have been under tighter inspection than most industries, and yet Three Mile Island and other, less disastrous nuclear accidents have shown that safety problems remain.

Design and construction

The Marshall Study Group Report on the Integrity of Pressurised Water Reactor Pressure Vessels was published in April by a group which openly supports the nuclear programme. (Dr. Walter Marshall was at the time of the report the Chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and is now the head of the Central Electricity Generating Board.) It shows the close association between concerns about the safety of the container vessels housing the radioactive core of a reactor and the problems of profitability.

In the PWRs there is no real means of preventing a large release of radiation if the vessel is badly fractured. As far back as 1969 an IEEE report stated that a container vessel fracture was "the most fearful of nuclear accidents that can occur in any plant with a highly pressurised primary system” and that no solution was possible “short of putting the plant underground or inside a mountain". This last proposal has in fact been recommended in the past but has been rejected as being economically unsound since the whole purpose of building PWRs is to reduce the cost of producing energy. Any concern for the safety of human beings is secondary. The CEGB statement, outlining its case for the new Sizewell B PWR, makes this clear: “economy, in that it is estimated to give lifetime operational savings that more than offset its original capital cost in a wide range of futures, and to have a superior economic return to investment in an AGR (Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor) or coal fired station”.

But that still leaves such problems as having to avoid fractures of the container vessel. The Marshall Report recognises the need for high standards of materials and welding, for detailed procedures in quality control, and wider measures for inspection during the manufacture of components. In the USA manufacturers on a number of nuclear sites were taking short cuts; standards were not being met and, because of the complexities involved in building a nuclear power station, the inspection process was to say the least inadequate.

The forces operating against safety are not just the employers’ prime incentive to make profits. There is also the question of the workers’ attitude. It is no coincidence that the Three Mile Island catastrophe arose through a succession of faults and mistakes which ended with a decision to turn off the water coolant. The prime reason for a worker seeking employment is to get the money in order to live. The workers’ product, whether it be a piece of equipment for a nuclear power station or an inspection job in the everyday running of that plant, is not the main purpose for working; it is a means to an end rather than a first concern. The alienation of the worker from the production process means that the incentive to create a quality product needs to be constantly enforced by external means.

To try to overcome this problem of the productive relations being in conflict with the desired technology, the Marshall Study Group recommended vast improvements in the inspection of equipment and procedures at all stages of manufacture and operation. But the problem remains.

Radioactive waste

Perhaps the most emotive issue in the field of nuclear energy in recent years has been the creation and disposal of radioactive waste. The secrecy that has surrounded the transporting and disposing of the waste has added to speculations about the dangers involved. Because the nuclear energy industry is closely associated with the nuclear weapons industry, the transportation of nuclear waste between power stations and reprocessing plants or to disposal sites has to be clouded with secrecy partly because of fears that terrorist groups may take advantage of the situation.

Nevertheless, the problems of nuclear waste are not merely of secrecy. There are three classifications for radioactive waste material, each presenting different problems. The first classification, low level waste, consists of a variety of materials that are mildly radioactive — old laboratory clothing, chemical sludges, but not of used fuel elements or materials from them. This is the type of waste that is packaged in large drums and dumped at sea. The International Atomic Energy Agency sets limits to the amount that can be disposed of in this way but, as all radiation is potentially dangerous, these levels are related more to the demands of a profitable nuclear energy programme than to any concern about human health. Dumping at sea is a cheap means of disposal and reflects the general aim of maximising profits rather than the technical problem of a particular industry.

Less publicised, but of greater concern as regards PWRs, is the intermediate level waste. This is radioactive material which even under the criteria laid down by the ICRP is too dangerous to be released into the environment and yet the quantity produced by the nuclear industry is too great to keep in store. The PWRs produce about five times the quantity of this type of waste as do the AGRs. This means that disposal and its costs are crucial issues with the PWRs. The latest report of the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee (RWMAC) recommends that the go-ahead should be given to dumping the expected 70,000 cubic metres of this material in some deep cavity or old mine shaft. The Sizewell Enquiry into the proposed PWR will certainly have to deal with the issue of whether damage to the environment and human health is a necessary sacrifice in the interests of production for profit, it is unlikely that the increased production of dangerous radioactive waste by this type of reactor will be a determining factor.

The third type of radioactive waste, high level, has received some publicity mainly because of the deep rock drilling programmes carried out recently on a number of sites in different parts of the country. High level waste consists of the remains of old fuel elements after recyclable materials such as plutonium and uranium have been removed. Compared to low level and intermediate waste this forms a small quantity, but because it is highly radioactive is requires constant attention for 50 or 100 years. At present this waste is kept in acid in stainless steel tanks but it is proposed to transform this liquid into solid glass blocks.

Scientists, even from the UKAEA, have emphasised the desirability of being able to monitor this waste material and have looked to some form of storage. The Royal Commission, on the other hand, was concerned about the possibilities of war or terrorism and their effects on such a store; it objected to the idea of long term storage and advocated disposal in some form or other. This is what the rock drilling in various parts of the country has been about. Last December the government decided to abandon the rock drilling surveys for prospective disposal sites because they realised that the heat problems from high level waste are such that it cannot be dumped for at least 50 years. As a result, no effective programme for dealing with high level waste exists. So workers in the plants where the waste is now kept are being exposed (and are likely to be for some time) to greater risks from radiation. Concern over this has been expressed in the latest RWMAC report. The differing approaches by scientists and politicians has already led to one resignation from the RWMAC. that of Dr. Stanley Bowie. The latest report also warns of the possibility of radioactive waste management getting seriously out of hand in the absence of an effective decision about its future.

Human beings are exposed to constant risk as statistical compromises are made in the trail of devastation left in the drive for profits. One effect of the industrial revolution was the destruction of human life in the new factory system. Capitalism's use and abuse of nuclear energy reflects the way 20th century technology is handled by a society which serves only a minority of the population. Behind the white coats and white walls that are everywhere in the clinical nuclear establishments, the anarchy of production that drives millions into poverty, unemployment, sickness and war rolls on.

Will a socialist society have a place for nuclear energy? Such decisions will be made by the majority of people, in contrast to the minority who at present own and control the means of producing wealth. It will not be a question of which energy source is the most profitable, but of what is in the interest of the whole community. If nuclear energy is developed in a socialist society it will not be driven along by market forces but will develop under conscious social control, to ensure that it serves human beings instead of the market system. And lastly, in a socialist society all work will be voluntary. Consequently the motive for work will not be because it is necessary in order to get a pay packet, but the satisfaction that can be gained from it.

MD

Voice From The Back: Is This The Way In Amarillo? (2007)

The Voice From The Back Column from the February 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is This The Way In Amarillo?

“In March, 2005 a nuclear warhead almost exploded in Texas. The near miss accident occurred in Amarillo, when workers at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant bungled the dismantling of a W-56 warhead, a weapon 100 times stronger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War 2. Details of the averted catastrophe have been kept under wraps until last month, when the Department of Energy (DOE) fined the company that operates the plant, BWX Technologies, $110,000 for safety violations. In a letter obtained by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), technicians at the plant blamed the accident on severe working conditions, including mandatory 72 to 84 hour work weeks. One nuclear scientist told POGO that he “would not work on his car engine if he were fatigued from a 72- hour work week, and sure as hell would not work on a nuclear weapon.” (The Nation, 18 December) $110,000 fine is hardly reassuring but what is worse is the news that the plant has set its 2007 production aims for a 50 percent increase.

Viva Las Vegas?

The city of Las Vegas likes to promote itself as a tourist paradise of fun and entertainment, but there is another side to it. “This is a boomtown, but it is also scattered with signs of bust – namely homeless people. And the city is taking a hard line against them. With mixed success in the courts and on the streets, Las Vegas has tried sweeping away their encampments, closing a park where they hang out, making it a crime to feed them, even passing a ban on sleeping within 500 feet of faeces.” (Associated Press, 18 December) The mayor has even proposed moving the homeless to an abandoned prison 30 miles outside the city. The area has a population of 1.8 million but has 14,500 homeless. The mayor may seem heartless, but capitalism is a heartless society.

Post Xmas Blues

At a time when many workers are reeling from credit card demands and other reminders of our debts it is heartening to know that this is not the fate of everyone. “Sales of high priced items such as designer shoes and celebrity jewellery are breaking records, while John Lewis’s director of retail operations, Gareth Thomas confirmed that the department store group is poised to record its best ever performance. … Sales have been buoyed up by shoppers buying flat-screen televisions for second and third rooms… Mark Henderson, chief executive of tailor Gieves and Hawkes, said: `There is a definite return to formality and a flurry of sales of traditional dinner jackets starting at £1,200`” (Observer, 24 December) Fellow workers, as you sit watching your third flat-screen television in your traditional £1,200 dinner jacket you must often reflect that capitalism isn’t such a bad system after all.

New York, New York

“Food or rent? That is the daily choice faced by about 1.2 million of New York’s 8.2 million people. Faced with that choice, mostly they pay rent and rely on emergency or charity food to survive, poverty activists say. … Hunger is not unique to New York. More than 12 million households – or 35 million Americans – struggled with hunger in 2005, according to the US government. … About 3,800 people were living on the streets in 2006, according to New York City statistics.” (Reuters, 26 December) When Sinatra sang about “The City that never sleeps”, he was telling the truth – it must be hard to sleep on the street with all that traffic.

The Insecure Society

In Dundee after the Second World War the NCR company in Dundee employed over 7,000 workers, but over the years this has fallen to less than 1,500. So when Bill Nuti, the company’s chief executive announced 14 months ago that he was “one million per cent committed to the Dundee operation” the remaining workers felt relieved, but capitalism doesn’t work that way. “A total of 650 factory workers in Dundee were dismissed via transatlantic videolink by their American employer yesterday after being told that production was to be switched to cheaper plants overseas. Employees at NCR, which makes  automatic teller machines, were summoned to a meeting at midday yesterday where amidst angry scenes, the job loses were announced by videolink by Bill Nuti, the company’s chief executive.” (Times, 12 January)

Priorities

Two items appearing in the same newspaper on the same day illustrate the priorities of British capitalism. “Patients face much tougher rationing of treatments and restricted access to breakthrough drugs if the Government does not rethink its plans for health spending, the NHS’s treatment regulator has told the Times. Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, the head of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), cited treatments ranging from new life-saving drugs to free food for the elderly in nursing homes as examples of care that could suffer if ministers slowed the rate of spending, as expected.” And … “Tony Blair defended his policy of intervention and said that more money would have to be spent on the Armed Forces to improve conditions and equipment, enable Britain to stay a warfighting power and face the threat of terrorism.” (Times, 13 January)

Pathfinders: Nuclear Con-Fusion (2005)

The Pathfinders Column from the December 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Few situations demonstrate the reactive nature of central government better than the energy question. Faced with a popular tide of opposition to new nuclear build on the one hand, and the utter impossibility of meeting the 40% energy shortfall expected in the next two decades with renewables, it’s easy to see why Blair’s government is desperate to keep treading the fine wire of non-commitment. When in doubt, do and say nothing, and maybe tomorrow the situation will change. 

It wasn’t always so. Nuclear fission energy was once the Philosopher’s Stone of science that was to herald a brave new world of clean and efficient energy for all time. But the optimism didn’t last long, and in the wake of Windscale 1957, the Silkwood affair, and later Three Mile Island and, catastrophically, Chernobyl, the public infatuation with this futuristic technology was well and truly over. Nowadays the questions they should have asked back in the 50’s come easily to the lips of the general public – who says it’s safe, who says it’s cheap, and what about the waste?

But western capitalism is in a bit of a fix, because, quite apart from any fluffy consideration of fossil fuel emissions and the ozone layer, the real issue is that the remaining deposits of oil, coal and gas are largely under the control of Russia and China. Solar, wind and wave energy contribute only a tiny fraction of the national grid and never look likely to manage more than 20 per cent even in the government’s wildest fantasies.

Some excitement has been generated recently over the decision to start building the ITER nuclear fusion reactor at Caderache in Southern France, something of a coup for the EU and one in the eye for Japan, who has been arm-wrestling for the right to host this plant for years. Fusion, it ought to be pointed out, has made some progress in recent years. Gone are the days when  it consumed vastly more energy than it produced – the new larger reactors have seen to that. And it’s remarkably clean and efficient. Instead of burning fossil fuels and releasing their stored electromagnetic energy, you fuse heavy hydrogen isotopes together and in the process unleash the vastly more powerful force that holds protons and neutrons together – about 10 million times more powerful. Best of all, the main waste product is helium, which is useful for balloons, airships and at staff Xmas parties for giving the managers squeaky voices, but is otherwise a non-toxic, inert element.

So what’s the catch? The ITER plant is not even a prototype reactor, it is a pre-prototype, designed to test whether the materials and construction can stand up to the sun-like 100 million degrees centigrade necessary for nuclear fusion to occur. Nobody knows if the material can take it, and until they do, nobody would dare build a real reactor. So we could still be looking at fifty years before fusion is contributing anything to the national grid. So, in the meantime, it could be back to good old filthy fission.

What is, for a socialist, strange to the point of comical in all this, is that in all the energetic debate about the pending energy crisis, when all the ageing reactors are closed down and there’s nothing to replace them with, nobody, not one politician, or media pundit, or social commentator, ever suggests that we just take a forty per cent drop in energy consumption and live with it. How can we continue to live the nightmare life of the motorway commuter without petrol? Oh no, we can’t possibly give that up, we’ll have to use hydrogen. How do we continue to have all our cities’ department stores lit up every night like Christmas trees so people can window-shop at 4 am? Dread thought that consumers should have their nocturnal browsing habits constrained, we need to develop fusion technology. How do we keep selling the public more and more energy? Simple, we persuade them to live in ‘smart’ houses where even the tin-opener discusses Kant.

Capitalism is not, of course, really interested in saving energy. Energy companies could offer customer discounts to those who were frugal, but in fact that’s not the way to make money. Some years ago a group called CORE (Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment) demonstrated that it was possible to provide cavity-wall and loft insulation for every house in England and Wales for less than the cost of one nuclear power station, and at a net energy saving greater than that produced by the same nuclear power station. So saving energy is not the point, using as much as possible in as profligate a way as possible is where the money is at, which fact demonstrates, as few situations can do better, the reactive nature of capitalism and the inability of common sense to prevail where the cash incentive is concerned.

Paddy Shannon

Profitable pollution (1979)

From the July 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The main factor involved in accidents to oil tankers and in creating oil pollution at sea is the profit motive. “Pollution is an economic phenomenon . . . Deliberate discharges of oil, and the main causes of accidents to ships and offshore installations can both be explained by economic considerations”, writes Dr Viktor Sebek (New Scientist, 1.3.79).

An “inexplicable tragedy”
                   - Premier Lynch.

The Betelgueuze exploded at midnight while unloading at Bantry Bay. Forty-three crew and seven terminal workers were killed, and sixty-one families fled in small boats from Whiddy Island to the mainland. This ‘accident' was avoidable. From 1968 to 1977 tanker explosions killed 291 people, besides representing enormous financial losses to their owners. An inert gas safety system is now fitted to new oil tankers, but four-fifths of the 3,500 tankers now operating still do not have this system, nearly ten years after the danger of explosive gases became known. “Because of its age the Betelgueuze was not fitted with the inert gas safety system.” That would have cut into profits.

Jetty firefighting equipment checked in December was faulty and not subsequently repaired. Life rafts — the only means of escape from the jetty — had never been tested. Gulf Oil’s first five years’ profits at Whiddy were about £40 million. “We had a terrible tragedy. But we have to face one fact of life — business is business”, said a Gulf executive, explaining why Gulf is now sueing Total Navigation over the £30 million compensation.

Accidental Pollution
The ‘accident’ at the Sullom Voe terminal, when the Esso Bernicia collided in harbour, spilling fuel oil and causing the deaths of sheep and otters as well as thousands of rare sea-birds, was foreseeable and need not have happened.

Delay in using equipment, inadequate maintenance of emergency equipment, inadequate supply of available equipment, the lack of a fourth tug on standby when the tanker berthed — all combined to produce a predictable ecological catastrophe. “The possibility of an oil spillage always exists because of failure or malfunction of mechanical equipment or as a result of human failure . . .” a report predicted in 1976.

Deliberate Pollution
‘Operational’ pollution occurs when a tanker captain illegally dumps ballast water at sea, knowing that the terminal he is approaching has no ballast water treatment plant. When Sullom Voe opened in November 1978, its ballast water treatment plant was not expected to be ready until May 1979: during those months, ballast water dumping created a serious ecological problem. Yet the Load On Top system used by many tankers and the segregated or clean ballast systems fitted into new tankers prevent such pollution.

With the ballast water treatment plant at Sullom Voe not yet in operation, there was, according to a director of BP Tanker Co., “a financial incentive for a tanker skipper on a voyage charter to dump ballast when approaching Shetland and thereby take on more oil” Captain Lucas of the Mercantile Marine Service Association alleged that “very few of the world’s ports are equipped to handle the waste products from any ships, let alone tankers.”

Accurate pollution-measuring techniques have been developed and are in use. But enforcing pollution control presents problems: “The economic implications of these pollution control regulations to the major shipping companies are large, and intense international maritime political lobbying is now under way.”

Cutting Corners
Navigational errors, such as caused the Christos Bitas disaster off Pembrokeshire, are common. Near Sullom Voe there have been “repeated reports of tankers cutting corners”. In January, February and March large tankers have been observed within one to one-and-a- half kilometres of the coast, which is at all times difficult but especially hazardous in winter.

To Shetlanders, a tanker is “a floating disaster waiting for somewhere to happen”. Scientist Ritchie Calder declared that Whitehall’s policy is “government by catastrophe”. “All measures to control pollution inevitably reduce profit margins” comments Dr. V. Sebek.

Nuclear Power—Very Hush-Hush

Nuclear technology risks are aggravated by political factors. Government-imposed secrecy shrouds everything nuclear: in the early fifties the Official Secrets Act silenced press reports of “gross negligence during construction work at Windscale”. All Windscale (British Nuclear Fuels Ltd.) and Dounreay (Atomic Energy Authority) staff are ‘positively vetted’ by security; such installations are cloaked by the Official Secrets Act. Though Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights lays down the ‘right’ to publish information and ideas, this is always subject to “the interest of national security”. The same principle governs public disclosure of accidents, risks and the like in the Soviet Union, where people live next to nuclear installations “without any protest or without any knowledge of them”.

Fears of terrorism — sabotage of installations or theft of plutonium — increase the secrecy surrounding all nuclear installations. The ability to cover up negligence and to conceal even serious ‘incidents’ presents a risk to the whole community.

Energy production is a dirty business. But accidents in coal mines and oilfields do not put at risk the health of the human species for generations to come. Under capitalism, the social — political, economic and military — hazards compound the risk inherent in nuclear technology. “When you build a plant, you look to see whether there are any earthquakes. But you don’t know about social earthquakes.” (Dr. Jungk).

Aldermaston

Staff at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment were last year found to be exposed to dangerous levels of plutonium contamination. Outdated monitoring methods were in use, the number of safety staff was inadequate, only a hundred personal air samplers were in use, with 250 still on order — although these were recommended in 1972. Levels of plutonium in the air were found to be over the International Commission for Radiological Protection limit in every building, sometimes four times the 1CRP maximum. The Ministry of Defence delayed introducing chest monitoring until ten years after this was in routine use elsewhere.

A 1976 Health and Safety Executive inspector raised only one minor safety point. But if the HSE had demanded improvements the AWRE enjoys Crown Immunity from prosecution. Unfortunately, workers do not have ‘Crown Immunity’ from lung cancer.

Livermore, USA

Livermore, like Aldermaston a nuclear weapons development centre, is sited near San Francisco, right on top of an active earthquake fault. Although a large earthquake is believed imminent in California, evacuation plans are “inadequate and unrehearsed”, claime Friends of the Earth. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission closed down a nearby reactor but cannot control Livermore.

Karen Silkwood

vs. Kerr McGee Corp, Oklahoma

The case of Karen Silkwood exposed the sloppy and dangerous practices at Kerr McGee in producing plutonium fuel rods for nuclear reactors. She provided evidence that faulty rods were habitually approved, and told how dirt was simply “swept up with a broom”.

Windscale’s Wastes

Windscale, where BNFL reprocess spent fuel rods from power stations, is constipated. Many fuel rods are corroding under water. Reprocessing machinery keeps breaking down. One hundred gallons a day of radioactive sludge has been leaking from silos since 1976. The site is “nasty". No sound method has yet been found of dealing safely with nuclear wastes.

Harrisburg: “Nuclear accident raises dividend fears” (Financial Times)

Human error causes scores of incidents at American nuclear power stations. At Harrisburg a valve was left open accidentally. It later emerged that there was not one operating engineer on the site.

Repercussions were widespread. A complete population health check has started. Plants in Canada, Japan, Belgium and the UK (Dungeness) have been reported closed for checks. In the USA, all ten Babcock and Wilcox reactors have been shut down.

Many questions remain unanswered. How much radiation was released? What is the risk? How safe is ‘safe’ — the ICRP and many scientists now think zero is the only ‘safe’ level of radiation exposure. Who is telling the truth?

The near-meltdown at Harrisburg was closely described in the film The China Syndrome: Newsweek dismissed this contemptuously as based “on fantasy rather than fact”. The cover-up industry has been hard at work persuading the media to ‘cool it’. The choice for American capitalism is between growing dependence on the hazards of nuclear power with growing costs and increasing public hostility, or a return to ever-costlier dependence on Arabian oil.

The USA’s soaring trade deficit leaves little choice. Nuclear generating costs are half those of oil, less than two-thirds those of coal-fired plant. In the balance-sheet. costs weigh against profits. People do not appear on boardroom balance-sheets. The board is answerable to shareholders, not to the community. A shareholder’s concern is his dividend, not the health of humanity.

We do not claim that there could be such a thing as zero-risk technology. But technical problems are small compared with political and economic factors. Capitalism’s disaster record is no accident.

Charmian Skelton

Postscript

Our first article discussed some air crashes. “The only thing that forces a Federal Aviation Authority ruling is when enough people get killed.” The FAA has now grounded all USA DC 10s. We also pointed to the appalling fire risks of polymeric materials used in furnishings. The Woolworths fire in Manchester gives us a reminder of how lethal these cheap materials are: ten people died.

References

Oil pollution — New Scientist. 1.3.79. (Dr. Sebek is secretary to the Advisory Committee on Oil Pollution of the Sea.)
‘Betelgueuze’ The Guardian, 9.1.79; The Observer. 14.1.79; New Statesman. 1.6.79.
‘Esso Bernicia - Sullom Voe Environmental Impact Assessment Report, June 1976, cf. New Scientist.

19.4.79 and 26.4.79.
Deliberate pollution — New Scientist. 29.3.79 and 19.4.79.
Cutting Corners — New Scientist. 1.3.79 and 26.4.79.
Nuclear power — Franks Report, 1972, quoted in Nuclear Prospects by Flood and Grove-White (FoE), 1976; Zhores Medvedev in New Scientist, 17.5.79; Jungk in New Scientist, 5.4.79. Aldermaston — New Scientist, 7.12.78.
Livermore — New Scientist, 26.4.79.
Karen Silkwood Panorama, BBC1. 5.3.79.
Windscale — The Listener (from Horizon), 26.4.79 and The Listener, 7.6.79.
Harrisburg — The Nugget File 1950-1976, cf. New Scientist, 1.2.79; John Lyons, general secretary. Electrical Power Engineers — The World This Weekend, BBC Radio 4, 27.5.79; The Economist. 5.5.79; Herald Tribune, 31.5.79; Newsweek, 19.2.79 and 2.4.79; New Scientist, from 5.4.79 to 31.5.79.

Nuclear near-miss (1986)

From the June 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is difficult to decide whether ignorance, complacency or callous cynicism best characterises the nuclear power industry. Since the accident at the Chernobyl power station in the Ukraine, most countries with a nuclear power programme have proclaimed that there is nothing to worry about, that their power stations are absolutely safe. In America the authorities claim that nothing similar could happen in the United States since western safety standards and reactor design are superior to those used in Russia. In West Germany official government statements have said that such an accident could not occur there because its nuclear reactors as "absolutely safe". Japan, because it has almost no fossil fuel deposits of its own, is committed to increasing nuclear power generation. Energy authorities there have rejected calls even to review their nuclear programme, let alone halt operations at its 32 nuclear plants as is demanded by trade unionists and environmentalists. A Japanese official said there would be no change in plans to increase nuclear power output from 26 per cent of total energy supply to 35 per cent by 1995. Ignorance, complacency or cynicism?

And what about these comments made before the accident by various "experts" in the field?

• In June 1983, B. A. Semenov. Russian Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy and Safety at the International Atomic Energy Authority said of Chernobyl: "A serious loss-of-coolant accident is practically impossible".
• In 1975 a study by the American Atomic Energy Commission concluded that an accident serious enough to kill 70 people would only happen once in a million years of a reactor's operation.
• The US edition of Soviet Life earlier this year published a feature on Chernobyl under the headline "Total Safety" which described the idea of a core melt-down as "incredible".

Such statements cannot be the product of ignorance of the risks involved in nuclear reactors. In Russia, apart from the Chernobyl accident, there has also been a core accident at an experimental fast reactor; in America there has been the accident at Three Mile Island and a fast reactor core melt-down at the Fermi reactor; and in the UK the Windscale plant suffered a serious accident in 1957. One international study has calculated that nuclear power plants in 14 countries have experienced 151 "significant nuclear-safety incidents" since 1971.

So if nuclear accidents can and do happen, why do governments world-wide seem intent on ignoring, or down playing, the risks? The example of Russia is instructive. Russia has considerable oil and gas resources and is, in fact, an oil-exporting nation. But both oil and gas fields are in Siberia in the east of the country, whereas the main industrial centres are in the west and the area of most rapidly expanding population in the south. European Russia consumes 60 per cent of the country's total electricity and yet produces less than 20 per cent. Much of that power must therefore be brought thousands of miles and it has been estimated that the cost of power doubles for every 1.000 miles that it has to be transported. Thus, nuclear power stations which can be built where they are needed represent a solution to the problem of providing cheap energy. So the Ukraine, far from the oil and gas fields of Siberia, gets 40 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power stations, the biggest of these being at Chernobyl.

At present nuclear power provides 10 per cent of electricity used in Russia and there are plans to increase output by 400-600 per cent over the next 15 years. If, as a result of the Chernobyl accident, the nuclear programme is slowed down Russia will have to continue to pay the much higher price for bringing power from Siberia and suffer the consequent loss in exports as oil and gas are diverted for domestic consumption. Nuclear power is, therefore, important to maintaining profits in Russia: cheap energy means lower unit costs and higher profit. And this is the motivation behind nuclear power in other countries too — a motivation that is sufficiently powerful to make it worthwhile to conceal or play down the considerable, often unknown, risks involved.

The ruling class in the western capitalist countries have been swift to try to make political capital out of the Chernobyl accident, alleging the inferior quality of Russian reactors and lamenting the lack of openness on the part of the Russian government. But on both issues their hypocrisy is breath-taking. The British reaction was typical. It was argued that a similar accident could not happen in Britain because the Chernobyl reactor was of a unique Russian design which is not found in this country and had no form of secondary containment (a strong, enclosing structure around the entire reactor and heat exchanger that would contain the radioactivity should there be any leak) and so would not meet British safety standards. It was further claimed that Russian reactors were built dangerously close to densely populated areas and. to reinforce the message. Peter Walker, the Energy Secretary, said that there had never been in the UK any "emergencies involving significant radiological hazards to the public at any civil nuclear installation".

These statements are a mixture of misinformation. half-truths and lies. Although it is true that the Chernobyl reactor was one of a unique Russian design (a graphite moderated boiling water system) it is also true that it is a "hybrid" comprising features commonly found in reactors throughout the world, including Britain. In fact the most serious nuclear accident so far in this country that at Windscale in 1957 — involved a graphite-uranium core which caught fire releasing large amounts of radioactive iodine over a wide area. Graphite moderators were also used in the early British and French Magnox reactors. Many of Britain's older nuclear power stations, including the Magnox reactors and the advanced gas-cooled reactors, do not have secondary containment. In the early years of the nuclear power programme it was boldly argued that reactors would not be built unless they were totally safe and so secondary containment was both unnecessary and would undermine public confidence since they implied the possibility of a leak. (Of course, secondary containment also increased the cost of the power station).

Britain is far more densely populated than Russia. A nuclear accident here is likely therefore to have far worse effects than a similar accident in Russia. At the time of the Windscale accident the Atomic Energy Authority said that the release of radioactivity presented no "hazard to the public". Nevertheless the sale of milk was banned within a radius of 200 square miles of the reactor. In fact the full extent of the Windscale accident was not made known until 1983. In that year the National Radiation Protection Board said that the accident may have caused up to 260 cases of thyroid cancer, 13 of which had proved fatal. So much for British freedom of information.

But why is it that the Russian authorities did not provide information which might help the Russian people avoid the effects of radiation? Like the West, the Russians have constantly told people that nuclear power stations are completely safe. Despite this there has been considerable opposition to the building of new reactors, especially in the Balkan republics — opposition which the Russians. given their commitment to nuclear power for economic reasons, would be unhappy to encourage by giving out information about a serious nuclear accident. The accident is, anyway, likely to have adverse economic effects on trade with East European countries, which the Russians will be anxious to minimise. As the Guardian (30 April 1986) reported:

  The whole thrust of the latest Comecon joint nuclear plans is that there should be more and bigger plants to save fuel and to facilitate the building of bigger and better manufacturing centres If these plans are now delayed, as seems highly likely, a whole series of capital investment projects will also have been thrown into disarray.

Many East European reactors are built along similar lines to the one at Chernobyl using Russian-built components. That market for Russian goods will be under threat unless the Russians can minimise the seriousness of the accident.

Most people don’t understand very much about nuclear power so when they read about the release into the atmosphere of radioactive substances like iodine and caesium (already detected in countries far away from the site of the Chernobyl accident), or about the possible release of strontium. ruthenium and plutonium-241, it really doesn’t mean very much to them. They have to rely on experts, who claim to have information and knowledge, to translate this into things that they do understand. And they do understand when Friends of the Earth in Sweden say that the total number of cancers from the radioactive cloud, if it travels over highly-populated areas, may exceed 10,000 over the next 20 years; that it is estimated that in order to de contaminate the affected area around the site of the Chernobyl reactor it will be necessary to remove at least four inches of top soil. They do under stand that in addition to the two people killed (according to the Russian figures) and the many more who were undoubtedly hurt as a direct result of the accident, numerous others face long-term health risks, and Russian workers — scientists and engineers — had to risk their lives by entering the highly radioactive Chernobyl site in order to make the three other reactors safe. (There are four reactors on the same site because this reduces costs although it compounds the risk). And they also understand that those people who are responsible for making decisions about whether to build nuclear reactors, and about safety standards, are not coming clean about the risks that are posed to ordinary workers throughout the world. People like Lord Marshall, Chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board, with a vested interest in expanding the nuclear power programme, who said, in the week of the Chernobyl accident, that the radiation inside the exclusion zone was "no worse than smoking a couple of cigarettes a year" (Observer, 4 May 1986). Do you trust a man with such a complacent attitude to human health and safety to be making decisions about nuclear power on your behalf? Do you trust the social system which needs people like that to spread verbal smokescreens over situations of such peril to the human race?

Janie Percy-Smith

The State and Chernobyl (1990)

From the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is now four years since the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor on April 26, 1986. Information about its consequences is now becoming available in spite of attempts by the Russian government to prevent knowledge leaking out into the public domain. Glasnost may be Gorbachev’s policy in most things but not where Chernobyl was concerned. The scale of the disaster is far greater than has been supposed till now.

A significant feature of this disaster is that it was partly caused, and to a large extent made worse, by state secrecy. For instance, it was the state’s obsessional secrecy on all matters nuclear which meant that the reactor’s operators were not allowed to know that withdrawal of all the control rods could cause an explosion. All they were told was that this was “forbidden” (New Scientist, 11 November 1989).

Similarly, it was a military secret that a previous graphite fire had occurred, in 1958, at Kyshtym in the Urals. Not only did the Chernobyl management and engineers know nothing of this (except what had leaked back to them from the West), but again according to the New Scientist “those who had dealt with it were not called to Chernobyl until three weeks after the accident”. During those weeks a lot of harm was done. Fruitless attempts to dowse the fire were unsuccessful, only resulting in contamination of the watertable. Meanwhile radioactive material continued to escape into the atmosphere.

Political considerations led Gorbachev, in his TV statement about Chernobyl 18 days after the accident, to allege that the western media had lied and exaggerated the scale and nature of the disaster with their claims that there would be “thousands of casualties” (quoted in Frederick Polil’s novel, Chernobyl, 1987). This was part of the cover-up agreed to by the politbureau and recently exposed by Gorbachev’s opponent, Boris Yeltsin.

This cover-up involved misleading the people at risk so that many of these within Russia believed themselves to be safe. Chernobyl is in the north of the Ukraine, very close to the southern border of Byelorussia and not far from the border, to the east, with Russia proper. The plume of radioactive particles drifted north and east, and seriously contaminated a large part of Byelorussia and adjacent provinces of Russia.

“They were not told. They had to guess…”

The original disaster was bad enough. What made it worse was misinformation, the attempt to pretend that the only areas at risk were within a neat, circular, 18 mile (30 km) “exclusion zone”. The result of this official policy was that people have still not been evacuated from many seriously contaminated areas. In the week after the disaster, official policy decreed that “communities were left to rot in ignorance…”. Over the border, in Russia proper, people “were very frightened. They were not told. They had to guess …. Nobody knew what was happening. Burly peasants were collapsing in the fields” (Sunday Times, 29 April 1990).

The cover-up meant that the May Day parades were ordered to proceed, in Kiev and Minsk, as though everything was normal. Thousands of schoolchildren were thus exposed to radioactive open air. It also meant a delay even in evacuating Pripyat, the nearest town to Chernobyl. It is now thought that 4 million people are living with radiation, including 34,000 in areas very seriously contaminated. Yury Cherbak, a Ukrainian Green politician, claims that 85 villages in Byelorussia, 19 in the Ukraine and 14 in Russia should be urgently evacuated (The Independent on Sunday, 22 April 1990). In these unevacuated areas, where people are still growing food crops, not only are they eating the contaminated food they grow but, according to the Sunday Times again, “Soviet trade officials collected it and distributed it in Moscow, Kazakhstan and elsewhere”.

Now, four years later, the consequences of Chernobyl are becoming apparent. Children are suffering from leukaemia or cancer of the thyroid. There are a number of babies born with serious congenital abnormalities, a disaster similar to but worse than that caused by thalidomide in Britain or Agent Orange in Vietnam. In Byelorussia, over 2 million people are at risk, one-fifth of the population. Yet in the capital city, Minsk, there are no ultrasonic scanners (essential for diagnosis and treatment of leukaemia) or intensive care units. Medicines, even for pain relief, are in short supply. The authorities have decreed, harshly, that no treatment at all, not even for pain relief, be given to terminal cases. In the West, leukaemia cases have an 85 percent chance of survival. There, they only have a 15 percent chance.

Acute food shortages mean that children are not getting a proper diet. They die of quite common illnesses, with their immune system weakened by radiation. Experts claim that “it is not ‘Chernobyl Aids’ that kills them, it is the lack of proper food” (Sunday Times).

The state showed its “concern” in February 1988 by decreeing the sort of information which should be made available to the media. The increased incidence of anaemia, hypertension and hyperplasia of the thyroid was hushed up as a result of “official policy”, and there was to be no mention of any “loss of physical capacity for work or professional skills” (New Scientist, 28 October 1989). Who was the state trying to protect?

Delay and Disinformation

The role of the state in this disaster has been to make things worse: the delay in issuing warnings, the misinformation as to which areas were at risk, the suppression of information on the deaths and diseases related to or caused by Chernobyl, the refusal to allow scientists to do research, the publication of underestimates of the amount of radiation released, the refusal to arrange for evacuation from areas known to be contaminated, the despatch of contaminated foodstuff from these regions to uncontaminated regions, the lack of provision of decent medical facilities, the secrecy surrounding the lessons learnt earlier at Kyshtym – the state and its officials bear a heavy load of responsibility for this massive catastrophe and its (too-often avoidable) tragic consequences.

Probably this is the worst environmental disaster the world has yet seen. Large areas of land are uninhabitable yet in many of these people are still living – living a nightmare. In one village, in a single year, 30 babies were born with serious deformities.

The danger to humanity, and to the planet, of continuing to allow capitalist priorities – production of cheap, rather than safe, energy – and capitalist political structures – such as rule by a Party hierarchy, determined to control the information released to the population under its rule – this is the lesson of Chernobyl. The land is poisoned with pollution, the forest trees produce abnormal mutated growths, and the watertable is polluted. On the farms cows give birth to deformed calves, in the villages young women dread giving birth to monsters. Children are not allowed out of doors except to go to and from school.

Genetic mutation is a high price to pay for the government’s mistakes, for cheap electricity for export to Poland and Rumania, and for plutonium for the military, a by-product of the Chernobyl reactor. It is a price being paid partly because the world has trusted technical experts too much. There were experts in the Ukraine who claimed that Chernobyl’s four reactors were totally safe. After the accident Britain’s best-known expert on nuclear power, Lord Marshall, asserted that the risk from radiation inside the exclusion zone (less than 20 miles away from Chernobyl itself) was “no worse than smoking a couple of cigarettes a year” (Observer, 4 May 1986).

The likes of Lord Marshall have been making reassuring noises in the Soviet Union and doing their best to prevent doctors and scientists revealing the truth about Chernobyl’s legacy, Gorbachev’s glasnost did not apply in this special case. So long as society’s class divisions mean the necessity for the continued existence of states and national governments, and so long as production is for profit not for use, the danger of continuing to use such extremely risky technology will be too great – the victims are already too many.

Charmian Skelton

Whitewash at the Maltings (1983)

From the June 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Sizewell Public Inquiry which opened at Snape, Suffolk, on 11 January, and is expected to last well into the Autumn, is considering the proposed siting of the first Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) nuclear power station in Britain. The energy problem needs to be seen in the context of the workings of the capitalist system as a whole. Under capitalism, it makes no difference whether power stations are privately owned or state run, as is the case with most power stations around the world. The interests of most capitalists obviously lie in obtaining electricity as cheaply as possible. Most Industry today is electric-powered and the proposed PWR at Sizewell Site B will, of course, supply electricity. Obviously the minority of capitalists with a stake in the actual production of electricity, such as the contractors who supply materials and labour towards the building of power stations, don't see things like that; they naturally want as high a price as possible for their “services”. It is the job of governments, in this case through the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB), to see that the best deal is obtained for the ruling class as a whole. This is by no means as easy as it sounds, particularly in these days of large multinational companies and the ever increasing diversity of their interests.

At the moment, leaving aside hydro-electricity which is of somewhat limited value outside certain geographically favoured areas, there are three main methods of generating electricity. All are based on raising steam to drive turbines: burning coal, burning oil (or natural gas) and nuclear fission, the splitting of heavy elements. For the workers in these industries, all three mean unpleasant and dangerous working conditions with a high risk of premature death. All three are unsatisfactory from the ecological point of view. Sulphur dioxide is produced when oil and coal are burned, and a more rational use for these fuels would be as raw materials for plastics. However, the dangers to health and the environment from continued use of nuclear fission are all pervading. Despite this, ecological considerations have so far entered only marginally into the decisions and only a really serious environmental disaster would alter this.

Many interesting alternative power sources are available which are either ecologically benign or present in abundance, or both. These will be mentioned on numerous occasions during the Sizewell Inquiry but none will be sufficiently developed in time for British capitalism to consider them as options. And so the prime considerations remain cheapness, competition and profit. The Inquiry thus appears to have only three options to consider, as it is reasonable to assume that some kind of power station will be built on the Sizewell site. These are: a power station using coal or oil; a different type of nuclear installation; or building a PWR as at present proposed.

It does appear from the available evidence that the government has, through the CEGB, already made up its mind that it wants the PWR, so that the Inquiry appears to have only a rubber-stamping role. The New Statesman reports (7 January 1983) that the pressure vessel has already been ordered from the French company Creusot Loire, and cancellation now would invoke penalty clauses. As early as April 1980 the CEGB issued a letter of intent to the National Nuclear Corporation (NNC) which, in effect, placed a manufacturing order for the nuclear core. Site clearance for the PWR commenced last summer, while Sir Frank Layfield, chairman of the Sizewell Inquiry, was holding preliminary hearings a few miles away. Sir Frank said he had no power to stop it! Further evidence in the same issue of the New Statesman confirms that the government wants a biased, white-washing “investigation” in the hope that its supporters will be appeased and the various objecting groups become dispirited. The journal quotes from leaked minutes of the critical 1979 Cabinet meeting at which the decision to hold an inquiry was taken. Apparently the government saw “a danger that a broad-ranging inquiry would arouse prolonged technical debate between different representatives of scientific opinion”. After reading this prize piece of cynicism we are left wondering why they bothered to hold an inquiry at all, thereby giving at least some opportunity for the expression of informed opposing opinions. After all, without any debate the go ahead has been given for two new advanced gas cooled reactors (AGR) at Heysham in Lancashire and Torness in Scotland. The Windscale inquiry chaired by Lord Justice Parker in 1977 neither increased confidence in judicial impartiality in these matters, nor led to any lowering of the protesting voices. A similar predetermined effort on Sizewell seems likely only to intensify the effect.

The deliberate bias built into this Inquiry shows itself in a very large imbalance of resources between the applicants and the objectors. The CEGB has produced a massive amount of documentation which will require about eight weeks to read into the records. At the time of writing the proceedings have gone “underground" while this task is performed. The boredom induced by this monumental effort of social irrelevance will assist in putting the objectors off their stroke. “Without sufficient funds to employ lawyers and specialist scientists, the objectors will find it hard to sustain an effective presence”, comments the New Statesman (ibid). Since then the chairman has ruled that the applicants can both initiate and wind up discussions on a particular issue, but that the objectors can only do one or the other.

We can now briefly examine the credentials of the two sides. For the applicants, the CEGB lead the way. British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL) is responsible for the supply and removal of enriched uranium fuel rods. The Nuclear Installation Inspectorate (NII) will issue a site and operating licence. The National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) will give “evidence'’ on the hazards of accidental radioactive release (no facts please, must be their motto.). It is planned that the National Nuclear Corporation (NNC) will construct the reactor. The Department of Energy will be supporting the CEGB, even though Sir Frank Layficld will be presenting his final report to the Energy Secretary, Nigel Lawson. Other government departments will be chipping in with supporting views. Also listed among the applicants but not actually present, are two USA nuclear corporations, Westinghouse and Bechtel, who have designed respectively the steam raising core and the associated power plant of the PWR. It will be noted that these applicants, despite their number, are a pretty united bunch. All will be playing their part in trying to convince the British ruling class that they are doing their job.

How convincing is the applicants' case? The CEGB’s main claim throughout has been that nuclear power would be cheaper. In pursuance of this aim the AGR, which is considered to be somewhat “safer" has been abandoned in favour of the allegedly cheaper PWR. However on 14 February last the Electricity Consumers Council, which might have been expected to give its support, published a critical report which, according to The Guardian of that date, said that the economic benefit case had not yet been fully made and suggested a closer look at other methods. Then, on 1 March, the CEGB itself published a pamphlet, reported in The Guardian the same day, admitting that the PWR is not, after all, the cheapest available prospect but still arguing that it represents the best overall prospect. While a blow, this could still be considered acceptable as nuclear power is strategically more secure than oil. However, the cornerstone of the nuclear power strategy has been the plan to move eventually to a series of “fast breeder" reactors (FBR) but this has now been shelved, apparently indefinitely. The USA had earlier held back from further FBR development. The FBR throws off as a radioactive waste product Plutonium 239, one of the deadliest substances known, with a half life of 22,400 years. Undoubtedly the American decision to halt has been taken because the environmental hazards of the FBR are unacceptable. even by capitalist criteria. The Sizewell applicants clearly have their work cut out to justify themselves and would appear to need all the coddling that the Inquiry seems certain to provide for them.

In contrast to the applicants, the objectors are a motley lot, presenting a variety of viewpoints, which by no means complement each other. This disunity will make it easier for the court to brush the opposition aside. One common factor will be that all will be propounding alternative capitalist strategies. Working class interests are not considered in such arguments. Bodies like the Suffolk Preservation Society would probably be satisfied by a decision to site the PWR elsewhere. Arguments that nuclear fission is environmentally unacceptable even to capitalism highlight the criminal social irresponsibility of the capitalist class in suppressing this evidence over a period of nearly 40 years. The Greater London Council will present interesting evidence on the risk to Londoners from the transport of nuclear waste through the metropolis, while pressing the case for falsely labelled ‘employment creating alternatives' such as conservation or combined heat and power stations. The Friends of the Earth, the National Union of Mineworkers and the Anti-Nuclear Campaign will argue against the PWR, trying to present evidence that the government does not wish to have a fair hearing.

A body calling itself Ecoropa recently published a leaflet entitled Nuclear Power, The Facts They Don't Want You to Know. This leaflet has sufficiently worried the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) for them to publish a counterblast pamphlet entitled Nuclear Power, the Real Facts. In a preamble to their leaflet Ecoropa make clear their concern for capitalism’s welfare, so they cannot be accused of anti-capitalist bias in presenting their arguments. This they do in question and answer form. The UKAEA reply repeats these questions and answers and then gives a reply of their own. Ecoropa embarrass the nuclear lobby by drawing attention to the way nuclear power has failed to live up to its early promise and recall the days when we were told that electricity from this source would be “too cheap to meter”.

The track history of the PWR is not a good one. We need only recall the emergency of Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania where, on 28 March 1979, the cooling system of the No.2 reactor malfunctioned, and a catastrophic melt-down of the reactor core was only narrowly avoided. A partial evacuation of the area's pregnant women and pre-school children, lasting eight days, was ordered by the State Governor. Since then the same type of valve failed in another PWR at Crystal River. Florida. The British nuclear industry categorically refuses to publish its safety statistics. Ecoropa point out that since 1977 only one nuclear reactor has been ordered in the United States. In their reply UKAEA acknowledge this but say that “this is due to economic conditions" in the hope of blaming the slump for this inconvenient fact. Yet the same economic necessity is being advanced in this and other countries as a reason for pressing ahead with the self-same design. The real reason for the United States slow-down is a re-think by the ruling class on their nuclear strategy in the light of their disappointing experience to date. This leaves Westinghouse and Betchel with the problem of reducing their losses by selling their wares elsewhere: hence their involvement with British and other European authorities. Suppression of important facts has to be a big feature of such a sales drive.

Ecoropa has also asked: “Has an evacuation due to accidentally released radiation ever happened”. The answer given is “Yes, apart from Three Mile Island. In 1958 an accident at a nuclear waste dump devastated a huge area of the Urals in Russia: the names of 30 communities have been removed from the maps. In spite of conclusive evidence from US satellites, the nuclear industry here and abroad managed to keep the news concealed for 21 years!” This is confirmed in the Britannica Book of the Year 1980: "The US CIA released previously secret documents in 1977 which confirmed that a massive nuclear explosion did take place at that time near the town of Kyshtym. . ." (p.366). If the answer were not so screamingly obvious, we could have asked why the CIA waited so long before releasing such good anti-Russian propaganda. The UKAEA attempted reply begins with “The news was not concealed in this country: an accident involving radioactivity in the Urals was reported in the London Evening News, 18 March 1959”.

The Sizewell Inquiry will in due course complete the job for which it was set up and rubber-stamp the Thatcher government’s plan. Yet doubts over the future of nuclear fission even in the capitalist environment persist, particularly in view of the virtual halt to development in the United States. The British authorities have, in effect, pleaded guilty to knowing the ecological facts and deliberately acting against them. But lies, distortion, bias, half-truths, innuendoes, white-washing, have long been part of the capitalist stock-in-trade. The facts are against us — suppress the facts has to be their cry. Total ecological benignity is of course an impossible dream, but in socialism full discussion on all aspects will democratically take place before decisions on such matters as fuel and power, which have such all pervading implications, are taken. With the competitive drive for profits removed, there will no longer be any incentive to produce untried products, such as PWRs, whose long-term or even short-term effects are lethal.

E. C. Edge

Material World: Japan’s unnatural disaster (2011)

The Material World Column from the April 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Earthquakes and tsunamis are natural phenomena. But it is known where – if not when – they are going to strike. So in principle society could take action to minimise the human impact.

It was known that the seabed off the northeastern coast of Honshu (the main island of the Japanese archipelago) is prone to earthquakes. It was known that a sufficiently powerful offshore earthquake would generate a tsunami. So why not leave the endangered coastal area uninhabited?

Crammed into the danger zone

This earthquake and most of its aftershocks were offshore. However, the next major earthquake may well occur, as long predicted, on land. It is a matter of when, not whether.

The area at greatest risk is the southern coastal strip of Honshu that stretches west from Tokyo – a city already devastated by earthquakes in 1891 and 1923. And yet the eastern half of this strip, up to Osaka, covering a mere 6 percent of Japan’s land area, is the country’s industrial powerhouse, with 45 percent of its population of 127.5 million. Tokyo and its outlying cities alone contain 30 percent of the country’s population. Would a rational society cram so many people and resources into the zone of maximum danger?

It is true that many modern buildings have been equipped to withstand seismic shocks. But most older buildings are much more poorly designed. For one glaring example, look at some photos of Tokyo street scenes and count the bulky signboards attached to storefronts at a single point, just waiting for a jolt to break free and fall on the heads of the people below.

To accommodate urban growth, about a quarter of Tokyo Bay (150 square miles) has been reclaimed from the sea. When the earth shakes, as it has recently, the loose soil of this reclaimed land undergoes liquefaction (becomes liquid). The shaking is also liable to spill and set ablaze the oil and toxic chemicals stored in the numerous tanks that line the shore of Tokyo Bay. Fires still rage up and down the coast, including a conflagration at the Cosmo oil refinery in Ichihara City.

Suicide bomber

The ultimate in insanity, however, is Japan’s growing reliance on nuclear power, driven by the desire of its ruling class to overcome reliance on energy imports, especially oil from the Middle East. Nuclear power currently supplies 30 percent of the country’s energy – a figure projected to rise to 50 percent by 2030. Fukushima, where a Chernobyl-type disaster is still unfolding, is one of a dozen nuclear plants located on the coastal strip of northeastern Honshu, in the path of tsunamis from offshore earthquakes. The Hamaoka plant, to the southwest of Tokyo, perches on an active fault line.

Katsuhiko Ishibashi of Kobe University, a seismologist who resigned from a committee setting safety guidelines for nuclear reactors in 2005 when his concerns over building nuclear plants on earthquake fault lines were ignored, put it this way: “Japan is an earthquake-prone archipelago, and lining its waterfront are 54 nuclear plants. It’s like a suicide bomber wearing grenades around his belt.”

It is not only Japan that generates nuclear power in earthquake-prone areas. Some 20 percent of the world’s 443 nuclear reactors are located in seismic zones. There are two nuclear power plants at risk from earthquakes in China’s Fujian Province, one in Turkey, and one in Armenia. In the United States several nuclear power plants are in places that have experienced earthquakes, hurricanes or tornadoes. Another tsunami-triggered disaster like that at Fukushima is waiting to happen in San Diego, California, where a nuclear power plant stands right on the beach, facing an active fault line a few miles offshore.

There were also technical problems with the design and operation of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima complex. The company that owns the complex, Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), has a record of covering up safety issues. The complex was built by Toshiba, using a reduced-cost design by General Electric with a relatively small containment structure.

Does it make sense?

From the perspective of a truly human community – that is, socialism – it makes no sense deliberately to court disaster in this manner. But does it make sense even from a capitalist point of view, considering the enormous losses borne by the companies most affected by the devastation? After all, capital craves its own expansion, not annihilation. It does not really share the death wish of the suicide bomber.

One answer is that most investors are concerned solely with expected short-term profits – and they never expect disaster, even though they must know it is always a possibility. Moreover, high-speed communications and data processing make it easy to move capital around almost instantaneously in search of maximum short-term profits. By giving priority to reducing risk, a company would have to accept higher costs and lower profits in the short term. It would soon find itself short of capital and might face hostile takeover or bankruptcy.

Another factor may be at work here – namely, the psychological mechanism called denial. Instead of carefully assessing risks and consciously accepting them, a capitalist may avoid stress by closing his mind in advance to considerations of risk that he fears will jeopardise his profits. He may persuade himself that those who draw attention to risks have a hidden political agenda. This applies especially to risks that are posed by nature. To take nature and its requirements seriously might jeopardise not only profits but the whole profit system.

Stefan

Rear View: Principled hostility (2019)

The Rear View Column from the July 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Principled hostility

Socialists are opposed to capitalism and its parties, Left, Right or in between. From our Declaration of Principles: ‘That as all political parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the master class, the party seeking working class emancipation must be hostile to every other party.’ We have as a Party, since our inception in 1904, been maligned, misunderstood, occasionally praised but more often than not just ignored. The conservative news site www.bizpakreview.com recently drew attention to our Twitter feed in an article titled ‘Stephen King and writer of HBO series get ‘Chernobyl’d’ by Dan Bongino when they make the show about Trump’ (31 May). Such attention is very rare, however. Ironically, it is often those praising ‘socialism’ who do just as much damage as its opponents: Andre Vltchek, author of ‘Europe in irreversible decay, UE [sic] elections are proof of it!’ (informationclearinghouse.info, 1 June) is just one example.

Tweeting for socialism or the status quo

@OfficialSPGB takes @dbongino to task for tweeting ‘Why do Hollywood elitists continue to publicly humiliate themselves on Twitter? Chernobyl was a failure of socialism (where the govt controls the means of production), the exact opposite of the Trump deregulation and tax cut agenda.’ We replied ‘You persist in trying to keep the lie going that socialism is “where the govt controls the means of production”. The truth (not that you’re interested in that, obviously) is that socialism is where THE PEOPLE own and control the means of production. The USSR had state capitalism.’ Tom Tillison, author of the BPR piece in question, is incredulous. Yes, the Bolshevik coup d’etat of November 1917 hastened the development of capitalism there, not socialism. Lenin admitted such, and we made our position clear as early as August 1918 in ‘The Revolution in Russia – Where It Fails.’ Reading the BPR article could leave one with the impression that the ‘West’ has no record of nuclear accidents! There are currently 454 operable civil nuclear reactors around the world, with a further 54 under construction. Given worldwide capitalism’s concern for profits over people, further ‘accidents’ are inevitable.

Workers have no country

Vltchek, who recently toured seven EU countries, described as ‘decaying. . . even collapsing,‘ and met some of the people there, adds: ‘What I did not witness, was hope, or enthusiasm. There was no optimism. No healthy and productive exchange of ideas, or profound debate; something I am so used to in China, Russia or Venezuela, just confusion, apathy and decay everywhere. And hate for those countries that are better, more human, more advanced, and full of socialist enthusiasm.’ At one point even North Korea gets a favourable mention: ‘ On both sides of the Atlantic, the establishment is in panic. Their world is in crises, and the ‘crises’ arrived mainly because several great countries, including China, Russia, Iran, but also South Africa, Turkey, Venezuela, DPRK and the Philippines, are openly refusing to play in accordance with the script drawn in Washington, London and Paris.’ And his remedy: ‘ Let us [put] the people of Russia first … China first! And, Asia, Africa, Latin America first!’

Unite for socialism

Lenin wrote tellingly of Russia in 1918: ‘reality says that state capitalism would be a step forward for us; if we were able to bring about state capitalism in a short time it would be a victory for us’ (The Chief Tasks of Our Time). In his Report of an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan (1927), Mao admitted that the coming revolution would not be socialist: ‘To overthrow these feudal forces is the real objective of the revolution’. Iran is a theocratic dictatorship – Hell on Earth for scientific materialists! – and North Korea a family-run cult cum kleptocracy. ‘Maduro recognizes Venezuela is still a capitalist-based economy . . .’ (Popular Resistance newsletter, 27 May, 2018). Capitalist hallmarks, such as class society, commodity production, profit motive, exploitation of wage labour, markets, etc., are found worldwide. If you are of the Left, Right or in between and do not believe the capitalist stooge Vltchek, any of his anti-working class heroes, or us consider Thatcher: ‘there is only one economic system in the world, and that is capitalism. The difference lies in whether the capital is in the hands of the state or whether the greater part of it is in the hands of people outside of state control’ (House of Commons speech, 24 November, 1976).

Anti-Nuclear Movement Unclear On Capitalism (2013)

From the January 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 2011 Fukushima disaster exposed how energy companies sacrifice safety for profit, but the single issue anti-nuclear movement has little to say about the profit system.

As a Tokyo resident, I had a first-hand view of the anti-nuclear movement taking shape after the Fukushima nuclear disaster of March 2011. I work in the district where most of government ministries are located, not far from the Diet building and the headquarters of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), so I’ve encountered all sorts of protests, large and small.

The protests were a welcome sight to me not just because they expressed the anger felt toward that rotten outfit, TEPCO, and the elite bureaucrats who have done its bidding; but also because Japan has been sunk in a depressing mood of political apathy over the past two decades. To finally witness spirited demonstrations that brought together all sorts of people was invigorating. Particularly impressive were the festive gatherings outside the Prime Minister’s Residence every Friday last summer.

In recent months the protests have quieted down considerably, but anti-nuclear sentiment remains among much of the population, as was clear during the December general election campaign when politicians of all stripes made (usually vague) promises to eventually phase out nuclear energy.

The debate about the future of nuclear energy has taken capitalism quite for granted, however. Much of the discussion has revolved around whether it is “economically feasible” to dump nuclear power for alternative energy sources. Those in favour of the change try to bolster their case with a Keynesian claim that developing solar and wind energy will spur overall economic growth.

No plan is feasible unless it is profitable, which should already give anti-nuclear activists pause if they take the issue of human health and happiness as seriously as they claim. So far, though, the movement has shown little willingness to ponder the role of nuclear energy under capitalism, or how this profit-happy system heightens its inherent dangers.

A ‘manmade disaster’

A basic position among most opponents of nuclear energy is that it is beyond our ability to control; a technology that can never be made safe enough for human beings. The Fukushima disaster was taken as evidence of this failed technology—not the latest manifestation of a disastrous social system.

The myth that nuclear energy is safe had been propagated in Japan for decades by the energy conglomerates and their network of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, and journalists. This myth crumbled before people’s eyes as the Fukushima disaster spun out of control. We saw the experts trotted out to insist that the accident was not as bad as it looked, or that radiation was not such a terrible thing. Scientists, government officials, and TEPCO spokesmen were still peddling the safety myth but the public wasn’t buying it.

But, in a peculiar way, turning the safety myth on its head has helped let TEPCO off the hook. That is to say, if nuclear energy is a force that defies human control, the question of the company’s responsibility becomes a secondary issue. Rather than being guilty of criminal negligence for the disaster, TEPCO could only be more generally blamed for promoting an unmanageable technology.

The underlying logic of many anti-nuclear activists is not so different from the way TEPCO tried to dodge its own responsibility by blaming the disaster solely on the ‘unimaginable’ scale of the tsunami. In either case, the emphasis is on a natural force beyond human control.

But TEPCO’s ‘who’da thunk it’ excuse did not stand up to scrutiny. The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, a parliamentary panel that carried out a six-month investigation of the disaster, stated in its report that ‘The direct causes of the accident were all foreseeable prior to March 11, 2011’; and that ‘The operator (TEPCO), the regulatory bodies (NISA and NSC) and the government body promoting the nuclear power industry (METI), all failed to correctly develop the most basic safety requirements.’

More specifically, the report points to how TEPCO overlooked various warnings over the years that had pointed to the ‘high possibility of tsunami levels reaching beyond the assumptions made at the time of [the plant’s] construction.’ Another fatal screw-up was the placement of diesel generators and other internal power equipment ‘within or nearby the plant,’ where they were soon inundated by the tsunami.

Based on its investigation, the panel concluded that the disaster must be categorized as a preventable, ‘manmade’ disaster—rather than an unavoidable result of the natural disaster. Of course, the level of safety needed to actually prevent the disaster was well above what existed at the Fukushima plant, or what exists now at many nuclear plants across this quake-prone land.

Preventable yet inevitable?

The crucial question, however, is not the technical issue of what TEPCO might have done to prevent the disaster but why it in fact did so little. This is a question that the government panel claims to answer but only arrives at a half-truth.

The panel’s report clearly states that the ‘accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators, and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by said parties’ adding that: ‘The root causes were the organizational and regulatory systems that supported faulty rationales for decisions and actions, rather than issues relating to the competency of any specific individual.’

Remove the word ‘root’ and there is little to object to as a description of the corruption at the heart of Japan’s nuclear industry. But blaming the ‘organizational and regulatory systems’ does not account for why the systems were so defective in the first place.

Reading the report, one has the impression that TEPCO is simply an organization that society happened to entrust with the purely technical matter of running nuclear power plants, and that it fell short in that responsibility because of its organizational defects and the shortcomings of regulators. All that is needed, therefore, are fundamental internal reforms and stricter oversight.

But let’s not forget that power plants exist not just to generate electricity but to generate profits for their operators as well. Couldn’t that simple fact have had something do to with the lax safety measures and ‘collusion’ with regulators?

TEPCO executives may have acted stupidly in the eyes of the company’s own scientists in neglecting safety, but at the time their decisions seemed shrewd enough to shareholders. (Although it all backfired spectacularly in the end!) What terrified the executives more than an earthquake or tsunami was the prospect of business losses.

In 2007, the company posted its first annual loss in nearly 30 years following the shut down Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant as a result of the fire and radiation leak caused by a magnitude 6.8 earthquake that same year. The plant was closed for two years, meaning huge losses for the company.

The irony is that this disaster (and earlier accidents at the Tokaimura plant), which should have alerted TEPCO to catastrophic risks, only drove it to pursue profit more relentlessly, cutting corners to make up for its losses. Clearly, even though the disaster was “preventable,” technically speaking, under the profit system accidents of some scale are a near inevitability.

The anti-nuclear movement itself has concentrated on the technical side of the issue, and only aimed to remove the ‘evil’ of nuclear power without placing any blame on capitalism. Whatever their disagreements over nuclear energy, both sides of the debate support the continuation of a profit-based system.

Out of control system

If the nuclear energy sector and its regulators were a monstrous exception to the norms of behaviour in other industries, the anti-nuclear movement’s case might be compelling. But let’s be serious. Recall that just a year before Fukushima the lax safety measures of British Petroleum and its subcontractors resulted in a three-month-long (!) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Or what about the deadly coal-mine accidents that occur every year like clockwork. Or take whatever industrial accident you like.

If the Fukushima disaster proves that nuclear power is ‘out of human’ control, as anti-nuclear activists argue, couldn’t the same argument be made regarding those and other industries? Not only for the deaths of the workers in those industries, but because of the long-term health impact from coal-burning thermal plants and the like.

This is not to argue that ‘nuclear energy isn’t so bad.’ The point is rather that an acceptable level of safety for nuclear power (if that is indeed possible) is incompatible with capitalism—just as safety is sacrificed in so many other industries in the same pursuit of profit.

What is ‘out of human control’ is not this or that technology, but the social system of production under which we live. That system is quite literally out of our hands as workers, and even the capitalists who administer it must act in accordance with the needs of Capital.

People in Japan and elsewhere are right to be deeply suspicious of the nuclear industry. But that suspicion must be extended to other industries and to the capitalist system as a whole if fundamental social change is ever to occur to bring society under conscious human control.

Much of the power of the anti-nuclear movement seems to stem from the widespread sense of powerlessness people naturally have under capitalism. Nuclear energy is almost a symbol for Capital itself: something created by human beings but with a power that eludes our control.

Capitalism is the issue

The way the Japanese leftist have rallied behind the single issue of abolishing nuclear energy, without having much if anything to say about capitalism, is characteristic of their overall approach. The politics of the Left comes down to the assortment of positions taken on the burning social problems of the day, without stopping to consider the deeper causes; this is why an air of unreality hangs about the ‘solutions’ leftists propose.

Leftists vehemently oppose nuclear energy in moralistic terms, viewing it as a social evil, but pay little attention to the role of nuclear energy within capitalism. They seem to forget what sort of world we are living in; a world in which each nation’s energy policy is ultimately dictated by the needs of Capital.

Japan rapidly developed nuclear energy in the 1970s to fuel its rapid growth amid rising oil prices. The issue of whether the technology was safe enough for human beings was not the primary concern. How can the Left bemoan this outcome without calling for an end to such an inhuman system? Don’t they recognize that the insatiable thirst for energy is linked to the thirst for profit? This economic reality is precisely why China, India, and other countries are going ahead with nuclear expansion despite the Fukushima disaster.

That is not to say that without the profit motive nuclear energy—or coal or oil for that matter—would suddenly become ‘safe.’ But human beings under socialism would finally be in a position to discuss the risks and benefits of each energy source, and rationally decide on the best choices to make.

Michael Schauerte