SPOKESMAN BOOKS
|
|
|---|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation
|
|
Catalogue
|
Haditha Ethics - From Iraq to Iran?
The Spokesman, 91
Is Nuclear Power
Safe?
Christopher
Gifford
The
author, a Chartered Engineer, worked as HM Inspector of Health and Safety in
mining and quarrying for 25 years. His timely new pamphlet, from which this
excerpt is taken, is entitled Nuclear
Reactors: Do We Need More?
More
than 400 nuclear reactors operate worldwide.
The serious incidents that occurred at Windscale in 1957, at Three Mile
Island in 1979, and at Chernobyl in 1986 are well known. Other incidents,
especially those that occurred during the Cold War, were not then made known
to the public. Some remain to be described. Others such as the releases from
the Hanford site in Washington State where eight reactors were built to
produce military plutonium between 1943 and 1971 have been disclosed in the
United States using Freedom of Information Act provisions. In February 1986,
19,000 pages of documents were released on the application of the Hanford
Education Action League. They learned that clouds of radioactive iodine,
ruthenium, caesium and other elements were released into the atmosphere
contaminating people, animals, water and crops for hundreds of miles. Between
1944 and 1956, 530,000 curies of radioactive iodine was released. The Colombia
River became grossly contaminated. In 1954, with six reactors on line, 8,000
curies of radioactive material was dumped into the river each day. By
comparison, the radioactivity released at Three Mile Island was 15-24 curies
of radioactive iodine. From Chernobyl 3 million curies of caesium 137 was
released – a total comparable with the fallout from all nuclear weapons
tests to date. The estimate of all radionuclides released from Chernobyl is 50
million curies.
During
the Sizewell Public Inquiry it was argued that human factors, not least human
error, had been neglected in the Central Electricity Generating Board’s
estimates of reactor safety. After
the completion of the Inquiry, but before the Inspector appointed to conduct
the inquiry, Sir Frank Layfield, had written his report, the Chernobyl
explosion occurred, and the early accounts of what had happened left no doubt
that human error, notably the defeat by management of the built-in safety
systems, was one of the causes. Sir Frank Layfield in his report recommended
that there should be further study of human factors by the Central Electricity
Generating Board and by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). The study by
the Health and Safety Executive was multidisciplinary and involved all the
inspectorates and the research division. In my contribution to the HSE study,
I stated that what one most needed to know about human error was that one
could depend on it. That conclusion was not disputed by my colleagues, but it
did not feature strongly in the evidence submitted to the
‘The probabilistic risk assessment was based on guesses about human factors by people who had no experience of power station management. That comparisons of risk with other methods of electricity generation were not made as required by the Health and Safety at Work etc Act.
That
the problems of regulating the industry in private ownership were
underestimated,
than
civilisation has existed.’
Fortunately,
no failure similar to Chernobyl has yet occurred. The estimates of the
consequences of the Chernobyl explosions vary widely from 31 proven deaths by
Mikhail
Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union on 11 March 1985 when he was
elected General Secretary of the Communist Party. By November of that year he
had met the US President Ronald Reagan and started the negotiations that led
to the largest reduction in the world’s nuclear weapons ever negotiated.
Five months later, the Chernobyl No 4 reactor exploded. In his memoirs he
wrote:
‘Neither
the politicians, nor even the scientists and specialists, were prepared to
fully grasp
what had happened.
The
closed nature and secrecy of the nuclear power industry, which was burdened by
bureaucracy
and monopoly in science, had an extremely bad effect. I spoke of this at a
meeting
of the Politburo on 3 July 1986: “For thirty years you scientists,
specialists and
ministers
have been telling us that everything was safe. And you think that we will look
on
you as gods. But now we have ended up with a fiasco. The ministers and
scientific
centres
have been working outside of any controls. Throughout the entire system there
has
reigned a spirit of servility, fawning, clannishness and persecution of
independent
thinkers,
window dressing, and personal and clan ties between leaders.”
The
Cold War and the mutual secrecy of the two military alliances had also been a
factor. There had been 151 significant radiation leaks at nuclear power
stations throughout the world, but almost nothing was known about them or
their consequences. Academician VALegasov said that the likelihood of nuclear
accidents was believed to be very small, and that science and technology
throughout the world were not particularly prepared for them. Complacency and
even flippancy ruled. I still recall what Academician A P Aleksandrov and Ye P
Slavsky told the Politburo immediately after the accident. These men had stood
at the heart of our nuclear power industry and were its creators – people
who were honoured and respected. But what we heard from them were arguments
like this; “Nothing terrible has occurred. These things happen at nuclear
reactors ...”’
The
effects in Britain 20 years after the explosion require the monitoring of
sheep reared on 359 upland farms in Wales where rainfall increased the
Chernobyl fallout. If when ready for slaughter the animals have radioactivity
levels higher than 1000Bq per kilogram (one Becquerel is one atomic
disintegration per second) they are deemed unfit for human consumption and the
farmer can be compensated. Farmers mitigate the effects by moving the animals to lower
pasture or more distant sites where the grazing is less contaminated and where
the animals’ radioactivity levels can be gradually reduced to below
1000Bq/kg.
It
is not only farm animals that eat vegetation grown on contaminated land. All
forms of plant and animal life and water supplies can be affected. The effects
are not confined to one generation suffering cancers and reduced immunity to
other diseases. Exposed persons and their children and their descendants can
suffer mutagenic effects, even teratogenic effects – literally
‘monstrous’ birth deformities.
The fatalities and the ill health resulting from bomb tests and discharges such as Chernobyl are not as large as those attributable to hydrocarbon extraction and its conversion to electricity or its use in transport. The Chinese mining industry, for example, is reported to have more than 3,000 deaths per year from injuries suffered below ground. Such losses were shown to be avoidable in the UK mining industry which once killed 50,000 miners in 50 years but which, in the 1980s, could produce 100,000,000 tons of coal with good management and better technology and deaths in single figures. Global warming probably caused by human activity could entail even greater losses. Action is required by the precautionary principle.
At
a conference attended by World Health Organisation (WHO) and International
Atomic Energy Agency personnel and others in Kiev in June 2001, there was
concern that the proceedings of a similar conference held in 1995 had not been
published. The reason was that the World Health Organisation was allowed to
publish material on the effects of ionising radiation only with the agreement
of the International Atomic Energy Agency and permission had been withheld
under the terms of an earlier agreement. Neither organisation had been
sufficiently represented in studying the health effects of the Chernobyl
explosion, and a recurring concern even in 2001 was that data was not being
collected and reported in the Ukraine, in Belarus to the north, and in Russia.
In
a film of some of the proceedings of the Kiev conference made by Swiss film
makers, now published by the UK Low Level Radiation Campaign, some of the
disagreements remain all too visible. Agency officials and others are shown
arguing with medical practitioners that Chernobyl as a hazardous event is
over, that there is nothing that need now cause concern. One argues that there
is no difference between exposure to external radiation and exposure from
ingested and retained sources of radiation. The manner of dispute by some
Agency proponents is revealing to those who may not be expert in the field but
who detect arrogance, intolerance and a readiness to denigrate an opponent
rather than argue a case. One is left with the impression that the dominant
position of the International Atomic Energy Agency vis-à-vis
the
World Health Organisation is not justified and should be ended. One can
speculate that having a brief to promote nuclear power has affected the
culture of the organisation at the expense of its other commitments.
The
film includes scenes of a mother and child. The child born long after
Chernobyl has a body mass of 8 kg and a total radioactivity of 10,000Bq.
(1250Bq/kg). The explanation for such a level of radioactivity is likely to be
the ingestion of radioactive food and water and its incorporation into body
tissue where the activity continues as internal emitters. Few people know that
in 1990 a Department of Health survey found plutonium in the teeth of every
teenage child examined in Britain. The survey of 3,300 adolescents showed
minute traces of plutonium in amounts correlating with the distance from
Sellafield. When I discussed this finding with my doctor she speculated ‘How
did it get there?’
Low
level radiation and internal emitters
Clusters
of possibly radiation-related disease near nuclear installations led to public
concern and investigation by the Committee on the Medical Aspects of Radiation
in the Environment (COMARE). In its Fourth Report (1996) on a tenfold excess
of childhood leukaemia in the vicinity of Sellafield the Committee included
‘…
the current best estimates of radiation doses to the Seascale population is
far too small to account for the observed cases of leukaemia and
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that have occurred in the young people of the village
during the period of time studied.’
A
similar conclusion had been reached at Dounreay. In rejecting radiation as a
cause the Committee was in need of another explanation and suggested a
population mixing hypothesis which posits that childhood leukaemia is a rare
response to a common but unidentified infection. No biological mechanism was
proposed.
There
is widespread agreement among scientists that there is no safe level of
radiation. Radiation-dose-to-disease relationships based on cancers in
survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs are questionable because of the
possible underestimated low level radiation over long periods and dubious
control group selection. It seemed to those who suspected that low level
radiation from ingested radionuclides was the cause of the Sellafield cluster
that rejection on the grounds of low dose did little more than beg the
question. There were other objections from those who knew that the extent of
illegal discharges into the environment were not known and who envisaged
pathways for sea-borne material to return to the atmosphere and to the land.
At
Dounreay, again estimating low dose, the COMARE Committee had not been told of
the explosion in the Dounreay shaft which discharged unknown quantities of
radioactive material over a wide area and their inquiries did not discover it
either. One suspects that if they had asked at the nearest pub someone might
have told them. The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate had found many
irregularities at the plant, even that the licensee, the United Kingdom Atomic
Energy Authority, was not in control and lacked expertise and funds after 36
years of virtual self-regulation. The
management and monitoring of stored waste was inadequate. The monitoring of
personnel was so lax that employees could choose to leave controlled areas
without checks and could have taken contamination to their homes.
After
consulting the Committee on the Medical Aspects of Radiation in the
Environment, the then Environment Minister, Rt Hon Michael Meacher, MP,
announced that a working group would be set up with the remit
‘to
consider present risk models for radiation and health that apply to exposure
to radiation
from internal radionuclides in the light of recent studies and to identify any
further
research that may be needed.’
Michael
Meacher added that
‘the
Committee’s review takes account of the views of all parties in the debate
on the risks of radiation. It aims to reach agreement where possible. On
topics where differences of view remain after its deliberations it will
explain the reasons for these and recommend research to try to resolve them.
The Committee Examining Radiation Risks from Internal Emitters (CERRIE) will
produce a report that is agreed by all its members.
The report will not be subject to amendment by COMARE, the Department
of Health or DEFRA and will be published. COMARE will consider the CERRIE
report and advise government on it.’
The
committee was unable to agree on many issues; for example, about half of the
members believed that the Seascale excesses were not linked to radiation and
that the population mixing hypothesis was a possible explanation. The
committee failed to achieve its remit and the failure is best explained by the
letter of resignation of one of the three members of the secretariat. She said
that her work had been altered and distributed to members without reference to
her and that she and a third member of the secretariat had been excluded with
the effect that there was bias in the work of the committee towards the views
of the chairman. She saw no prospect of there being an agreed report.
Although
at one stage the committee accepted by a 10 to 1 vote to include what amounted
to a modified minority report, it rejected it when all its members received
letters from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ lawyers
warning of personal legal liability for any mis-statement of fact. The third
member of the secretariat agreed that he had been excluded and that the views
of some of the members had been excised from the final report. Michael Meacher,
who by then had ceased to be the minister, wrote to his successor asking for
an explanation. Two members, Chris Busby from Green Audit, and Richard
Bramhall from the Low Level Radiation Campaign, produced a minority report
with an introduction by Michael Meacher in which he expressed disappointment
that on such an issue as the increase in childhood leukaemia across Europe
after Chernobyl the Committee
Both
reports contain valuable references and some conclusions. The CERRIE report
concedes that some risks have been underestimated by a factor of ten. The
adoption of that conclusion alone and the international agreements to ban sea
dumping and liquid discharges to the sea will make the continued operation of
the Sellafield plant difficult. The minority report argues for revision of
risk factors by two orders of magnitude. It cites many papers from Chernobyl
affected areas. One by Professor Yuri Bandazhevsky, a pathologist, Rector of
the Medical Institute of Gomel, on the ingestion of radio caesium includes
‘Clinical
checks on children between 1996 and 1999 show that at levels greater than
50Bq/kg there are pathological changes in vital organs and systems –
cardiovascular, nervous, endocrine, immune, reproductive, digestive excretory
and eyes. Caesium concentrations in the placenta reveal a relationship with
nervous system defects in the foetus. The health condition of the population
is a disaster but being a physician myself I cannot accept it as hopeless.
With all my faith in God and life I appeal to anyone who can influence it: do
your best to improve the situation. There is nothing more precious on this
planet than life. And we should do everything possible to protect it.’
He
is the author of over 400 publications, a member of five academies and the
holder of five international awards. His critics, one from the International
Committee on Radiological Protection, explain the phenomena as psychosomatic
effects of radiophobia generated by such publicity as his own. He criticised
his government for lack of involvement. In 2001 he was arrested, charged with
corruption, which he denies, and sentenced by the military court of the
Supreme Court of Belarus to eight years imprisonment. He was adopted by
Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience. The European Parliament
awarded him the Passport for Liberty and the European Union called for a
review of his trial. Data on caesium 137 effects was not included in the
conference record.
Was
the Chernobyl explosion nuclear?
At
the Hinkley Point ‘C’ Public Inquiry is was suggested by at least one
witness that the Chernobyl explosion was a nuclear explosion. The suggestion
was vigorously refuted by the Central Electricity Generating Board. One of the
design requirements for the licensing of a reactor in the United Kingdom is
that the containment shall be capable of withstanding the effects of any
fault. Safety Assessment Principle 152 requires ‘The containment should
adequately contain such radioactive matter as may be released into it as a
result of any fault in the reactor.’ Clearly if nuclear explosions are
possible a licence should not be granted.
That
they were granted suggests that the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate reject
the view that nuclear explosion is possible. What then can we make of the
information that two nuclear engineer Fellows of the Royal Society and of the
Royal Academy of Engineering have recorded their opinion that the Chernobyl
explosion was nuclear? It did displace the 2,000 tonne concrete cap from the
reactor.
The
Secretariat of the Nuclear Free Local Authorities quote Sir John Hill, a
former chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority, who wrote in ATOM,
the
Atomic Energy Authority house journal
‘When
the Americans chose graphite moderated water cooled piles for plutonium
production they recognised that a failure of the water supply or control
system could result in prompt criticality and a nuclear
explosion
such as happened 40 years later at Chernobyl.’ (my emphasis).
Jack
Harris is a former Central Electricity Generating Board nuclear metallurgist
who writes a monthly column in the Journal Materials
World, one
of the journals of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. An article
he wrote in June 2004 makes clear his acceptance of his colleague Ross
Hesketh’s view that the Chernobyl explosion was a nuclear explosion. Jack
Harris, now a university professor, has been a Fellow of the Royal Society
(FRS) since 1988. It would be interesting to know how many other Fellows of
the Royal Society, Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering, nuclear
engineers and physicists share the view that our more recently built reactors
are capable of blowing themselves to bits. We really ought to know. Perhaps
the matter was decided by the Chernobyl experience but was too difficult to
contemplate, let alone acknowledge. It could be the best kept nuclear secret
since 1986.
The
nuclear industry remains uninsurable worldwide. United Kingdom legislation
allows the industry to operate with what is obviously inadequate cover and
provides for further cover by the government and the taxpayer.
