Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist

by Patrick Moore

  I visited Hiroshima recently as part of a public speaking tour on nuclear energy. The head of the Hiroshima Memorial Peace Museum gave me a tour of the exhibits, including models of the city and photographs showing the scale of devastation caused by the bomb. One could not avoid being deeply moved by the personal accounts and images that showed the horrible effects of the bomb on what appeared to be living corpses of men, women, and children. We must never forget.

  I was guided to the courtyard where a gas flame burns as a memorial to the victims. Our tour leader explained the flame would burn until the last nuclear weapon was eliminated from the face of the earth. “Do you call it the eternal flame?” came to my lips. My host had to admit that was a good question.

  In the wake of World War II, the arms race began with the U.S., Russia, and then Britain and France engaging in atmospheric nuclear testing and a buildup of nuclear weapons to be delivered by bombers and missiles. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the world lived in constant fear that there would be an all-out nuclear war. My generation was born into that world and by the time I came of age, the Beat Generation had had its heyday and the hippy years of the late 1960s had just begun. We celebrated life in the face of the death machine that had been assembled to annihilate us all. Through altered consciousness we escaped into a world best captured by the Beatles film Yellow Submarine. Many of us became radicalized and turned against the establishment that was preparing for what seemed like our inevitable annihilation.

  In 1953, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had announced the Atoms for Peace program to use nuclear fission to produce energy rather than bombs.[31] Many of us believed this had been a cover for the continued buildup of nuclear weapons. Cold War rhetoric made us cynical as did the eventual advent of the Vietnam War. We concluded that everything nuclear was evil and the waste from weapons manufacturing and nuclear power generation was a toxic legacy that would poison our children for generations. We lost trust in the established order, and for good reason. We focused our attention on turning the tide of ever-increasing arms production—more missiles, multiple warheads, and submarines that were so deadly that one alone could wipe out an entire nation (they are still cruising around out there).

  Meanwhile the U.S. and many other countries embarked on programs to build nuclear reactors in order to produce electricity. Most of the 439 reactors that operate around the world today were built during the 1960s, 1970s, and into the 1980s. During those early years of the nuclear energy industry, there was an optimistic outlook and it seemed nuclear power would sweep the nations of the world. That all changed at 4.00 a.m. on March 28, 1979, when Reactor 2 on Three Mile Island in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, had an accident involving loss of coolant water, which caused a meltdown in the core of the reactor. A wave of fear spread across the country in the aftermath of the accident. I was nearly 2500 miles away in Vancouver when I woke up to the news and I felt afraid. There was no way a nuclear reactor accident in Pennsylvania could possibly harm faraway Vancouver, but I got swept up in the mood of the time.

  It didn’t help that the hit movie The China Syndrome, starring Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon, had been released only two months before the accident. In the movie, a nuclear plant accident, which results from a meltdown of the reactor core, threatens the world with destruction. The Three Mile Island accident seemed eerily similar; it was as if fiction had suddenly become reality. For days the news was dominated by the unfolding events in Harrisburg. Pregnant women and young children were evacuated, President Carter tried in vain to calm the populace, and then it was over. The containment structure around the reactor, five feet of steel and heavily reinforced concrete, did its job and prevented the radioactive material in the core from escaping into the environment.

  In the aftermath of the accident, many follow-up health studies focused on the people who lived near the reactor. In the end there was no negative impact on the public or the workers in the plant.[32] In many ways the accident at Three Mile Island turned out to be a success story. It was a major mechanical failure, but no one was injured, never mind killed. Three Mile Island was a huge wake-up call for the nuclear industry, not only in the U.S., but in all Western countries that had reactors. All the safety systems and operating procedures were gone over and strengthened to make sure such an accident would not be repeated. Since then there has not been a meltdown accident in any reactor in the West.

  Unfortunately the Soviet Union still lay behind the Iron Curtain in 1979 and the Three Mile Island accident had no effect on its nuclear program. Years earlier the Soviets had begun to build reactors around the country for power production. They took a short cut and simply copied the design of their nuclear weapons production reactors, failing to include a containment structure and adequate safety systems. It was like putting a nuclear reactor in a warehouse. The RBMK class of Soviet reactors was an accident waiting to happen. And it did.

  There were four identical reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear complex in the Ukraine. In 1986 a group of engineers was assigned to do a test on Unit 4, which had the best operating record in the group. Ironically, the test was designed to improve the safety of the reactors. When the operators contravened basic safety procedures, the test went horribly wrong and the reactor blew up, breaking through the roof and spewing the radioactive contents of the core downwind over the Ukraine, Belarus, and on to Sweden.[33] There, at a Swedish nuclear reactor, alarms went off indicating elevated radiation levels. At first the Swedish operators thought there was a radiation leak at their own reactor. Two days later the Soviets finally admitted there had been an accident at Chernobyl.[34]

  In many ways, Chernobyl was symptomatic of everything that is wrong with the Communist system: secrecy, central control, shoddy engineering, and lack of concern for human life.

  It took a week to put out the fire because of the huge graphite moderator in the reactor core. Graphite is pure carbon and when it catches fire it is extremely difficult to extinguish. Thirty-four people died, either during the explosion or from radiation and burns they suffered while trying to put out the fire that continued to spread radiation into the atmosphere for a week after the explosion. When the fire was finally extinguished, a large area downwind had been contaminated with strontium-90, cesium-137, iodine-131, and other fission products.

  After the accident the Iron Curtain was opened briefly as the Soviets sought help from nuclear scientists in the West. They helped to modify the other RBMK reactor’s safety systems and operating procedures so such a situation could not be repeated. No other serious accident has occurred, even though the other three reactors at the Chernobyl site continued to operate for 13 years after the accident. Even today there are 10 RBMK class reactors operating in Russia. Thankfully they will eventually be shut down and replaced with reactors with containment structures and better safety systems.

  The antinuclear movement in the West used Chernobyl as proof that nuclear energy should be rejected and all existing reactors should be closed. Just as the Cold War was coming to an end, there was a new cause to replace the campaign against the buildup of nuclear weapons. In a way, nuclear energy simply replaced nuclear weapons as the cause of the day. The Greens in Europe made ridiculous claims that 300,000 people had died in the aftermath of Chernobyl. To this day Greenpeace claims that there were more than 90,000 deaths.[35]

  A Chernobyl-like accident could not possibly occur in the reactors operating outside the former Soviet Union. Whereas the Three Mile Island accident involved a loss of cooling water from the reactor that, in turn, caused a meltdown of the core due to the heat of radioactive decay in the fission products, the Chernobyl accident was a runaway nuclear reaction. One of the most serious flaws of the RBMK reactor design is that it has a “positive void coefficient,” which makes it possible for the reactor to experience a rapid, uncontrollable power increase.[36] This could not happen in the reactors in the West, most of which are designed to have a negative void coefficient. The Candu r
eactor design has a small positive void coefficient that is easily managed in the case of a power surge.

  In 2003 the United Nations established the Chernobyl Forum, an investigative body composed of seven UN agencies, including the World Health Organization, the UN Environment Program, and the International Atomic Energy Agency as well as Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.[37] In 2006, 20 years after the explosion, the forum published its findings on the impact of the accident. Two facts stand out. First, it concluded that only 56 deaths, including the 34 people who died in the explosion or fighting the fire, could be directly attributed to the accident. Second, they acknowledged the worst effect of the accident was the forced evacuation of 350,000 people from the contaminated zone into tenement blocks on the outskirts of Kiev. The incidence of suicide, drug and alcohol addiction, marriage breakdown, and mental illness and trauma that resulted from living in these crowded urban quarters far outweighed the possible effects of the slightly increased radiation exposure they would have experienced if they had been left in their country homes. The evacuation was ordered with the best of intentions, but it would have been better had most of the people been allowed to stay in their own communities.[38]

  Despite the unfortunate fact that injury and death were caused at Chernobyl, nuclear energy is still one of the safest technologies we have invented. Every industry, whether it be construction, farming, mining, steel production, forestry, financial services, transportation, or energy production, has risks associated with it. For the amount of power it produces and the number of people involved in its operations, the nuclear industry is a very safe place to work.

  In 2008, workers in the U.S. nuclear industry experienced an accident rate of 0.13 accidents per 200,000 worker-hours. The accident rate for all manufacturing industries combined in the U.S. was 3.5 per 200,000 worker-hours, 27 times higher than for the nuclear industry.[39]

  U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics confirm that it is safer to work in a nuclear plant than it is to work in either real estate or financial services.[40] A study of 54,000 nuclear workers conducted by Columbia University and published in 2004 found these workers had significantly fewer cancers, less disease, and lived longer than their counterparts in the general population.[41] If it is that safe to work inside nuclear plants, surely we can feel confident that it is safe to live near them. When asked by a reporter for MSNBC if I would be willing to live near a nuclear plant, I replied, perhaps a bit flippantly, “I’d be happy to live in a nuclear plant.” When you think about it, there are not many safer or more secure places to be.[42]

  Compare the record of the nuclear industry to other major energy technologies. An accident in the turbine room of Russia’s largest hydroelectric dam caused 69 deaths in July 2009.[43] In February 2010 the Connecticut Kleen Energy natural gas plant exploded, killing five plant workers.[44] In April 2010 an explosion in a coal mine in West Virginia resulted in 29 deaths (about 5000 workers die in coal mines every year, mostly in China).[45] Later that same month, 11 workers were killed when a British Petroleum oil rig blew up and sank in the Gulf of Mexico.[46] By contrast, no nuclear worker has ever been killed in a nuclear plant accident in the West and only one accident has caused fatalities. The Chernobyl accident was the exception that proves the rule that nuclear energy is one of the safest industries we have.

  Fear of Radiation

  The fear of radiation fuels much of the opposition to nuclear energy. I attended a public hearing in Vermont, conducted by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to receive comments on whether or not the Vermont Yankee reactor should be granted a 20-year license extension. A young woman came to the microphone with a small child in her arms and proclaimed that she had moved to a house near the reactor and she knew her child was going to get cancer from the radiation being released into the environment. My immediate thought was, If you really believe your child will get cancer from living near this plant, surely you should move somewhere else. Apparently this is not a politically correct thought, as my colleagues advised me later. Why would someone stay where they think their child will inevitably get cancer? Was she just grandstanding for the crowd? Or did she genuinely feel concerned? It is not for me to judge.

  One of the most helpful and annoying aspects of radiation is it is so easy to detect at minuscule levels. You can buy a radon test kit for $25 and determine if you have unusually high radon levels in your basement. The natural geology of many regions contains higher than average levels of uranium, which decays into the radioactive gas, radon. The radon can seep up through cracks in the foundation of your house and concentrate in the basement. This can result in exposure to radiation that is considered unsafe, especially if the basement is occupied. Your 25-dollar test kit can easily detect very low levels of radon, and you can easily rectify the problem by improving the ventilation in your basement.

  Not all environmental hazards are so easy to detect. Detection of toxic chemicals requires highly trained technicians to collect samples, analyze them with expensive equipment, and interpret the results, all of which takes considerable time. Radiation can be measured instantly from levels that pose no harm to levels that should be avoided. This makes it very easy to monitor radiation levels in and around nuclear facilities. The second radiation is present it can be detected and then its source can be discovered. There is no radiation-related health hazard around any of the nuclear power plants operating in the world today.

  But it is annoying because antinuclear activists are fond of detecting minute amounts of radiation near nuclear plants and then claiming the radiation came from the nuclear plant and that it will cause widespread cancer. The “Tooth-Fairy Project”, conducted by the stridently antinuclear group Radiation and Public Health Project, collects baby teeth and analyzes them for strontium-90, one of the fission products from nuclear explosions and nuclear reactors.[47] They claim the levels of strontium-90 in the teeth “may” cause an increase in cancer among people who live near nuclear plants.

  A quick search finds that 99 percent of the strontium-90 in the environment is from atmospheric nuclear testing that occurred between 1945 and 1980 when China conducted the last nuclear explosion in the air. During that time period 522 atomic and hydrogen bombs were set off in the atmosphere.[48] These tests injected 4.2 tonnes (4.6 tons) of strontium-90 into the global environment.[49] Because strontium-90 has a half-life of nearly 30 years, about one-third of that amount still remains; much of it has been washed into the sea, but some of it still remains in the food chain and is deposited in babies’ teeth.

  About 1 percent of the strontium-90 in the environment came from the Chernobyl nuclear accident. It is not as widely distributed as the fission products from atmospheric testing because the plume from the explosion and fire did not enter the upper atmosphere. But the strontium-90 signature from Chernobyl was detected in many areas far distant from the main plume that spread northwest toward Sweden.

  It is not possible to determine the level of strontium-90 that is emitted from operating nuclear plants because it is either nonexistent or is so miniscule that it can’t be detected as distinct from the amount released by nuclear testing and the Chernobyl explosion.[50] To top it all off, the levels of strontium-90 in baby teeth are not high enough to cause concern in the first place. Many studies have been conducted and they clearly indicate that there is no increase in cancer rates near nuclear plants.[51] [52]

  How Much Radiation Is Good for You?

  Odd question, you might think, but not so odd once you know the facts. Antinuclear folks constantly repeat that any amount of radiation is bad for us. The “linear, no-threshold” model holds there is no safe dose of radiation. If this were true, we would have all been dead long ago. There are 60 naturally occurring radioactive substances in the air, earth, and water. We are exposed to these, along with radiation from the sun and the cosmic radiation from outside the solar system, every day of our lives. Radiation from natural sources is one of the driving forces of evolution, causing rare mutations that are usual
ly neutral, sometimes negative, but occasionally beneficial.

  Radiation is measured in millisieverts (mSv). The average person in the world receives a dose of 2.4 mSv of radiation per year from natural sources (referred to as background radiation).[53] Artificial sources, such as medical X-rays, smoke detectors, and residual nuclear weapons test fallout, can elevate the total exposure to about 3.6 mSv per year. The dose members of the American public receive from industry, including from the full life-cycle of nuclear power generation, nuclear medicine, and research where nuclear materials are used is 0.003 mSv per year. The full life-cycle of nuclear power generation is responsible for 15 percent of this small total dose from industry. The average dose to members of the public from nuclear power reactors themselves is 0.00045 mSv per year, about 1/10,000th the intensity of natural background radiation[54]

  Some regions in Iran, Brazil, India, Australia, and China have very high background radiation. People in Ramsar, Iran, receive 260 mSv of background radiation per year due to naturally occurring radium, uranium, and thorium. This is several times greater than the maximum dose for nuclear workers recommended by the International Commission for Radiological Protection and 100 times the average worldwide. Yet there is no evidence of any ill effects on the populations living in very high background radiation environments. In fact the local people believe the radioactive hot springs in Ramsar promote healthier, longer lives. Many toxicologists and radiologists with PhDs agree with this assessment, that relatively low levels of radiation actually improve our ability to stave off disease and to heal from injury. This hypothesis is called “hormesis.”[55]