When appropriate isn’t

When Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana, a nuclear power plant there lost all its outside power.

The facility operated on generators for several days. Those generators were unharmed by the storm. They were located in concrete bunkers and were able to keep the reactor’s cooling system working until power was restored.

Of all the tragedies attributed to Hurricane Katrina, a meltdown at this nuclear power plant was not one of them.

American nuclear reactors are reportedly built to “appropriate” standards based on where they are sited. Those on the geologically active faults in California are supposedly more strongly constructed than those in the Mid-West.

“Appropriate” has also been used to describe the plants in Japan.

Even so, the cataclysmic earthquake off Japan’s coast and ensuing tsunami showed that “appropriate” may not be enough.

The Japanese thought they were “appropriately” prepared, but neither the tsunami barriers built over a period of 50 years nor the nuclear reactors withstood the onslaught of natural forces. They were first shaken by the earthquake and then overwhelmed by the tsunami. Victims are now being buried in mass graves, the international community is rejecting Japanese produce and radioactivity is threatening the drinking water in Tokyo. The extent of the crisis is still not fully known.

Nuclear power is nothing to take lightly. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and now Fukushima tell us that.

As natural resources dwindle and the human race precipitates climate change, nuclear power could prove to be the most effective way of solving multiple problems. Yet, if nuclear power is ever to gain wider acceptance in this country, we will need to know that such facilities are being constructed in more than just an “appropriate” way.

They will need to be inappropriately resilient.

Gordon Forgey

Publisher