The Once and Future Nuke
"Zombie reactors are being reanimated "
As my aging brain gathers memories into sweet honeycombs to be sampled and savored, I occasionally am forced to remind myself that anyone born halfway through my life would not have many of the same lived experiences or whatever frame of reference I am using. Take, for instance, Three Mile Island. Anyone younger than 46 (and probably 60) would not recall that event as a lived experience.
Allow me to help younger readers to visualize. In March, 1979, my publisher had just released my fourth book, Shutdown: Nuclear Power on Trial, to bookstores. Some 5000 copies had shipped. The book was a recap of the then-known public health effects of nuclear energy, as authenticated by government sources—publications such as the Health Physics journal and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists—and the courtroom testimony of expert witnesses John W. Gofman, medical director of Livermore National Laboratory and author of Radiation and Human Health, and Ernest Sternglass, an epidemiologist specializing in populations of atomic workers, downwinders, bomb test eyewitnesses, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors. The experts and the literature concurred that, likely for Cold War national security reasons, government safety regulations understate the biological effects of ionizing radiation by several orders of magnitude.
As Amory Lovins said at the time, a 2-fold error at each stage of a 20-fold process (and they were all in the direction of lowered risk) produces a millionfold error at the end.
Then Three Mile Island happened. Owing to operator error in switching off and on a cooling pump, there was a core meltdown of TMI Unit 2 reactor, generating a hydrogen explosion and subsequent venting of 50% of the radioactive core. The radioactive plumes blew lethal radioactive gases and particles across Pennsylvania and the eastern seaboard. Thousands were evacuated, but the evacuation radius was far too small and haphazard. Some of the radionuclides deposited in soils and forests will linger for hundreds, thousands and millions of years. Others will cycle through food chains, killing, composting, reabsorbing, and killing again. Many people reported illnesses, hair loss, and farm animal deaths and mutations. Eventually, cancers and birth defects showed up in the statistics, just as they did following Chornobyl and will again in the decades after Fukushima. The full health effects may not be felt, or described, for centuries. We have known since the 1930s that the genetic effects of radiation exposure can promulgate 100 generations—for humans as far into the future as we have come since the birth of Christ. That is how long there will be Three Mile Island birth defects.
Could radiation from nuclear plants explain the dramatic increase in autism in the United States? Yes, it could. Proving this would require extensive epidemiological, medical, and genetic studies.
An important takeaway from that lived experience for so many was that the government insisted everything was fine and that the levels of radiation released were too low to harm; that it couldn't be proven that the illnesses, deaths and mutations being documented were linked to the Three Mile Island meltdown. Mainstream media went along with that narrative, and still does. President Carter, a former nuclear engineer, toured the “clean-up.”
It's now reasonable to project that half of the electric grid will be powering the digital-Internet economy within the next decade. The global implications are enormous. Intel projects a billion people on-line worldwide. That's $1 trillion in computer sales—and another $1 trillion investment in a hard-power backbone to supply electricity. One billion PCs on the Web represent an electric demand equal to the total capacity of the U.S. today.
No method exists to 'clean up' the intensely radioactive waste entombed in the dead TMI-2 reactor. A twin reactor on site was shut down for safety concerns but has now joined the cadre of “zombie nukes” being reanimated. Microsoft plans to restart TMI-1 to power a single energy-guzzling AI data center. Microsoft is doubtless confident that none of the young techies it employs are old enough to remember Three Mile Island or the lies that the accident exposed. They will happily expose their genes to invisible bombardment as they commute to work, not knowing what may happen to themselves decades later, their children, or future descendants who will carry those mutations.
When my publisher and I learned of the accident, we stopped the presses and I hastily added an extra chapter to a revised edition of Shutdown, describing the accident in detail.
An important takeaway from that lived experience for so many was that the government insisted everything was fine and that the levels of radiation released were too low to harm; that it couldn't be proven that the illnesses, deaths and mutations being documented were linked to the Three Mile Island meltdown. Mainstream media went along with that narrative, and still does. President Carter, a former nuclear engineer, toured the “clean-up.”
No method exists to 'clean up' the intensely radioactive waste entombed in the dead TMI-2 reactor. A twin reactor on site was shut down for safety concerns but has now joined the cadre of “zombie nukes” being reanimated. Microsoft plans to restart TMI-1 to power a single energy-guzzling AI data center. Microsoft is doubtless confident that none of the young techies it employs are old enough to remember Three Mile Island or the lies that the accident exposed. They will happily expose their genes to invisible bombardment as they commute to work, not knowing what may happen to themselves decades later, their children, or future descendants who will carry those mutations.
For the Tech Bros, it is an acceptable risk. For the nuclear companies it spells money. Corporate personhood is immune to ionizing radiation.
The governments of Germany and Spain are less willing to take that risk. By phasing out nukes—Germany closed its last one in 2023—they have derisked their countries from any future TMI either melting down, being attacked as targets of opportunity for the mass casualty value, or being knocked off the grid by regulatory authorities following a serious (and inevitable) accident anywhere.
Spain closed its last coal plant this year and, despite the pleas from AI data center owners, is plowing ahead with plans to shut down its seven nuclear reactors, which currently contribute 20% of its power mix.
Writes Bloomberg’s Laura Millan:
Moreover, countries across Europe have struggled to balance supply and demand on their grids as more intermittent renewable energy comes online, with negative electricity prices becoming more common.
It is curious to see the expression “low-emission power supplies” used to describe nukes. Of course, they are speaking about greenhouse gases, but even there, when the full nuclear fuel cycle is taken into account, nukes are just as climate-warming as fracking. And, of course, “low-emission” has nothing to do with ionizing radiation, which Bloomberg and others assume is under control.
And thus we drift, ever closer to the terminal waterfall of near-term human extinction. No matter how many lifelines are thrown from the shore, we choose to ignore them and paddle faster.
It may take another TMI to wake us up. Or perhaps, like the Spanish and Germans, we will awaken to the peril without needing to be battered again.
Meanwhile, let’s end these wars. We support peace in the West Bank and Gaza and the efforts to cease the war immediately. Global Village Institute’s Peace Thru Permaculture initiative has sponsored the Green Kibbutz network in Israel and the Marda Permaculture Farm in the West Bank for over 30 years. It will continue to do so with your assistance. We aid Ukrainian families seeking refuge in ecovillages and permaculture farms along the Green Road and work to heal collective trauma everywhere through the Pocket Project. You can read about it on the Global Village Institute website (GVIx.org). Thank you for your support.
And speaking of resettling refugees, did you know? A study by Poland’s National Development Bank found that the influx of Ukrainians added between 0.5% and 2.5% to GDP growth and paid more in taxes than they received in benefits.
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#RestorationGeneration.
When humans are locked in a cage, the Earth continues to be beautiful. Therefore, the lesson for us is that human beings are not necessary. The air, soil, sky and water are still beautiful without you. So, when you step out of the cage, please remember that you are guests of the Earth, not its hosts.
We have a complete solution. We can restore whales to the ocean and bison to the plains. We can recover all the tremendous old-growth forests. We possess the knowledge and tools to rebuild savannah and wetland ecosystems. Coral reefs rebuilt with biorock build beaches faster than the seas are rising. It is not too late. All of these great works of nature are recoverable. We can have a human population sized to harmonize, not destabilize. We can have an atmosphere that heats and cools just the right amount, is easy on our lungs and sweet to our nostrils with the scent of ten thousand flowers. All of that beckons. All of that is within reach.
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