Nuclear insanity: playing with fire

Nikhil Desai

Nikhil Desai is an energy economist splitting his time between the US and India.

Article courtesy: Nautilus Institute for Peace and Security

Some sage – not me – is said to have said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.

Nuclear advocates learnt early on that the promise of “forever energy” was so great, so intoxicating and potentially addictive, that to not be seen as insane and indeed to perpetuate an aura of sanity, rationalism, care for the collective good, all they had to do was assure the public, whenever necessary, that “This time it is different.”

 Yes, a different reactor type. A different supplier. A safety upgrade. Or new protections against fires, earthquakes, airliner crash, tsunami, operator error.

This duplicity in service of insanity had three elements.

First, rely on changing reactor and power plant technologies and learn-as-you-go (or protect-the-reputation betting-other-people’s money) designs and regulatory regimesⁱ.

Second, keep people excited enough about reactor safety, even while fighting the industry opponents (in some countries) and claiming absolute safety – or at least, “acceptable risk” of loss-of-coolant probability of x in a million reactor-years, something that lay people would find it difficult to grasp – ignore or hide the risks to workers and general public from the fuel-cycle risks, from uranium mining to waste management to disposal.

Nukes on platter?

And third, of course, titillate people about the glory of nuclear technology, bearing nuclear power as a badge of technological prowess and acquiring nuclear weapons capability as a defense necessity.

Of course, all this required double-speak. Some things could not be said publicly and it was necessary to ensure that some such things were not said at all, even privately.

“What if not nuclear (power or weapons)?” The necessity borne of certainty. If there was no God, at least there was the Atom. One way of playing dice with God’s creation.

After TMI and Chernobyl (27 years ago this past week), the industry found a “forever” problem – climate change – perfectly matching the “forever” of the atom. As Nick Stern said HIV/Aids was not a priority while facing “existential risks” of climate change, nuclear reactor or fuel cycle accidents, or nuclear weapon discharges by accident or design, were not to be bothered with when facing up to the risk of mother of all catastrophies – climate change.

But, just as people had begun to forget that a candle caused the devastating fire at Browr ns Ferry 1 power reactor, they were shown that in repairing Fukushima, just so as to get it ready for permanent retirement, “a rat caused a blackout and subsequent work to prevent a recurrence led to another system failure”.