Fukushima should be island’s wake-up call
Thursday 17th March 2011, 2:29PM GMT.
The damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility in Japan. Authorities are struggling to prevent a catastrophic release of radiation in the area devastated by a tsunami. (AP Photo/DigitalGlobe)
JAPAN’S nuclear disaster should be a wake-up call for Guernsey, a local former Greenpeace activist has said.
Japan’s Emperor Akihito yesterday made a rare appearance on TV saying he was deeply worried about the worsening situation at the country’s damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility.
Currently a 20km evacuation is in force around the site due to low levels of radiation spewing out from the facility.
Former Rainbow Warrior skipper and veteran Greenpeace campaigner Jon Castle said he had protested against Japan’s nuclear development before and now the crisis had put the global industry under the spotlight.
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Let’s hope Cap de la Hague never has a problem!
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Mr G, that on Cap de la Hague is a nuclear reprocessing plant, not a power station like Fukushima.
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so what should we expect if this ever happened i know it proberbly never will , we have no air raid sirens do we wait for some one to knock on the door!, the states in my eyes have made a big mistake taking away the sirens and why has the new system not been practiced so people know what to expect it will be for emergences after all come on states buck your ideas up.
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My point still stands, let’s hope Cap de La Hague never have a problem, especially with the transportation of nuclear waste.
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The chain of failures at Fukushima is somewhat reminiscent of the incident at Flamanville in 2002. I hasten to add that the latter did not, as far as we know, involve the release of any extra radioactive materials.
However it does serve to demonstrate that an earthquake and tsunami are not necessary to reveal inadequate engineering of the backup and safety systems.
So much went wrong that the Flamanville story is too long to tell here, but anyone interested can find an account using the link below and going to page 5: ‘When the “turbogenerator of last resort” fails’.
http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/563/563.pdf
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slep! Not wishing to make a song ands dance about it.
However nuclear reprocessing is a dirty job.
It has a potential to attract terrorists to ‘grab’ some of the results, which is suitable for making a bomb.
However don’t listen to me.
But go to google and just write
“nuclear reprocessing.”
The reports sound frightening to me.
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I hope that the situation in Japan will be minimised and improved with the relief now being sent. Very worrying time for both local people in Japan and globally.
This did make me think with the earth being volatile and causing unexpected damage that Guernsey should be endevouring to protect it’s capital reserves so that funding is available should the Island suffer a crisis of unimaginable impact.
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i have, from time to time, over many years, tried to pose the question publicly as to what the island authorities have planned for me and my kids should the nearby french nuclear facilities go pear shaped (or maybe mushroom shaped). i never get anywhere. i do get a little folded-up emergency planning paper from the postman telling me not to worry and listen to the radio. but, i am not angry, i just need simply to know … i cannot drive away 200 miles, so do the authorities have a plan to get my kids off the island within 48 hours or not? if not, i have to arrange – beg steal or borrow – a little boat of my own. it is all i want to know. so … just… simply tell me … do the children get evacuated or not?!
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What does this have to do with Guernsey then?
I do, however, think that Jon Castle is right, it is a wake-up call for Guernsey. We should close down our many nuclear power plants and get rid of all nuclear materials and weapons that we currently own.
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I once floated around the bridge of the Rainbow Warrior at its final resting place 20 meters under the sea at the Bay of islands NZ and had the thought that getting between a government and its nuclear program/industry is not easy.They are not likely to want to hear it as this ships experiance at the hands of the French pro nuclear government illustrates.
Lets hope that this shall change and its the whole world doing it from now on,not just a few brave souls like the crew of the Warrior.Safety first and any other consideration second is the way its got to be with a force as lethal and difficult to control as nuclear reactions.
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Never knew that, thank you
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Forget Cap de la Hague what about Flamanville is that not a power station.
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So far as I am aware, there is nothing at Cap de la Hague that would cause a significant explosion. The danger there is not a Chernobyl style disaster, or even less a mushroom cloud explosion, but is small scale leaks which occur almost without anyone beiong aware until after the event.
local guern – nice to see someone trotting out the old “siren” point. So what exactly would you do when you hear the siren? It wouldn’t tell you what the problem is. Sirens only work if there is a specific risk where everyone knows what the siren means and what they should do when the siren sounds (ie air raids during the second world war, or tsunami zones or earthquake zones now, where people practice the response)
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I think you’ve summed up the dangers well Terry. I’ve been to Flamanville power station and despite its past problems I think it is extremely safe as nuclear facilities go. Our main nuclear threat for the last 50 years has been the steady seepage of radioactive material from La Hague. This has been going on since the 60s and in the days of the old Nuclear Action Group (NAG) in the 70s there was a study of local seaweed and sand samples (carried out by America’s Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) that showed the odd tiny trace of plutonium from La Hague in our local environment. Maybe it’s time for another study?
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Jon Castle’s idea of a sustainable population is Europe circa 4000 BC. Populations need energy, and windmills aren’t the answer.
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Does anybody know if this island still has its radiation detectors in use.
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What about the Hurd Deep?
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/press-releases/thousands-of-radioactive-waste-barrels-rusting-away-on-the-seabed
What is Guernsey doing about monitoring these things?
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Guernsey’s doing what it always does.
Nothing. We are powerless, as usual, to actually do anything, so the response to to say we are “keeping an eye on the situation”
Jo M.
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I think it’s worth pointing out that the number of deaths directly attributable to Chernobyl (the world’s worst nuclear accident) is 57. These were people in the immediate vicinity.
Whilst there were fears that hundreds of thousands of people would die from radiation-related cancers and illnesses that hasn’t been found to be the case (and they’ve had since 1986 to look for evidence).
When I was first told this I was extremely sceptical, but I can’t find any data that reliably disputes it. Only groups like Greenpeace claim otherwise and that doesn’t convince me, as they have a political agenda that goes beyond their original aim of ‘saving the planet’.
The tsunami remains the biggest cause of tragedy for Japan, not some man-made disaster that was just waiting for the wrath of a vengeful god to be wreaked upon them.
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Mrs meat
Nonsense. Attributing just 57 deaths to the explosion itself is no way an indicator of the decades, if not centuries, of damage done by Chernobyl.
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Nuclear power is safe! The only real major concern with regards to recent events in Japan is should they build the plants on the Ring of Fire? Probably not, but then the reactor hasn’t caused any deaths?
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Mrs Meat,
Although it’s true that the death toll from Chernobyl was not in the hundreds of thousands as has been suggested, 57 is definitely misleading in the other direction. Epidemiological studies indicate that the total death toll from Chernobyl will include many people beyond those killed in the vicinity – certainly numbered in the thousands.
Saying Chernobyl only cause 57 deaths is rather like saying nobody ever died from smoking, or taking herbal supplements – in fact these things all cause many extra deaths, and the number can be quantified with a degree of confidence, but it’s may never be possible to point to an individual and say conclusively that their death was causally related.
Still, the number of deaths caused by Chernobyl failing catastrophically is hundreds of times smaller than the number of deaths caused every year by the world’s coal power stations operating normally.
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Arnald. Chernobyl is thriving in wildlife. Mrs Meat is quite correct.
People get more rads getting CT scans, flying in planes and being exposed to Radon than living near a nuclear plant (or indeed even working on a submarine).
The whole media circus is scaremongering again.
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Arnald, ChrisJ…look it up. As I said I was particularly sceptical when told this by my brother – especially as our mother has had thyroid cancer. I looked it up to prove him wrong and found it seems he was right.
Most of us presume that there were all these radiation-related deaths because the media (and parties with other agendas) want us to think so. Studies seem to be showing that since the explosion in 1986 there really hasn’t been any noticeable rise in cancers or illnesses which can be correlated.
We keep getting all these alarming stories, like Avian Flu, where the actual numbers we’re led to believe will be in the Black-Death-millions territory and yet rarely rise above hundreds worldwide. It makes it very hard to trust governments & their announcements, or anyone else who employs spin doctors and marketers.
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*nonplussed*
To deny that radioactive pollution has no effect on the biosphere is second only to denying that human activity has no effect on climate.
Well done. I’m glad we live in enlightened times.
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Son of Blah, the states don’t care about you and your kids, they don’t care about anyone but themselves. If your that worried about living on the furthest island from the radioactive situation go and live somewhere else. I’d be more worried about Jersey and Alderney (they’re gonners for sure).
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Mrs Meat,
I’m happy to be proved wrong, as I’m strongly pro nuclear power as a better (and viable) alternative to fossil fuels. However, the the IAEA’s FAQ on the matter is pretty clear:
(from http://www.iaea.org/blog/Infolog/?page_id=25)
‘How many people died and how many more are likely to die in the future?
‘A reasonable central estimate is about 4,000 fatal radiation induced cancers during the lifetime of the 600,000 most highly exposed individuals and perhaps another 5,000 in more peripheral populations.’
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ChrisJ, but that’s pretty much what I’ve said: not tens of thousand, possibly not Even 10,000. Your figures (whilst tragedies for all involved) are not on the scale that most people anticipate when talking about nuclear disaster. Especially not Chernobyl. And the data still comes as probability rather than proven fact, which is also not what most people would expect.
I never meant to imply that ‘only’ 57 people died, just that those were the only definite attributable deaths at the time. Public perception is that people were dropping like flies for miles around and that a provable legacy lives on. But it’s all vague.
It’s this association of nuclear power disasters with the bombing of Hiroshima, and maybe it’s pointless even commenting because people seem to Need to believe that mankind is bringing itself to a sticky end, which the media play up to because it sells copy.
But why should Guernsey people be frightened into thinking that they’re sitting on a time bomb? Greenpeace would love us to think so because they rely on subscriptions to fund their eco-warrior jaunts.
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Mrs Meat,
We are largely in agreement I think. The only bit I’m not sure about is this:
‘And the data still comes as probability rather than proven fact, which is also not what most people would expect.’
By the same token you could say it’s only ‘probability rather than proven fact’ that smoking causes lung cancer. But the causal relationship between Chernobyl and the deaths of many thousands of people is no more vague than the causal relationship between smoking and the deaths of many hundreds of thousands.
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Don’t worry everyone, as we have Mr Lyndon Trott looking after everything for us.
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Not exactly known as a risk area for major techtonic plate shifts or Tsunamis around these parts though are we?
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@ Rob Roy
The ultimate cause of failure is not important compared with the intrinsic ability to nuclear power stations to fail.
The American Pressurised Water Reactors, for example, were assessed for their probability of failure by a technique in the so-called Rasmussen Report. That technique, when applied to the Apollo rockets, gave a failure rate of 1 in 10,000 missions. The actual failure rate was 4 in 100 missions.
Nuclear power stations are extraordinarily complex and it is correspondingly difficult, if not impossible, to predict all their failure modes.
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don’t forget Guernsey is plugged in to the French grid !
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