Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

Chapter Eleven: Nuclear Power 163results of a worst possible accident. Worse ones were physically possible butwere assigned a lower probability and not considered. 160 A saboteur would befree to select all-worst-case conditions–near-urban reactor, mature core, meteorologicalinversion, wind blowing toward the city–and could disable mitigatingsystems and breach the containment.Furthermore, these effects would occur at ranges up to tens of miles–a rangewhich, for some reactors such as Zion and Indian Point (but not the “model”reactors assumed in the Rasmussen analysis), includes some of America’slargest cities. But at a longer range, the radiation dose would be spread amonglarge numbers of people who would receive relatively small individual dosesbut large collective doses–and thus, by the normal conventions of such calculations,would suffer as many injuries as if fewer people had received largerdoses. For this reason, delayed effects, especially land contamination and thyroiddamage, “can be a concern more than one hundred miles downwind froman accident and for many decades”–that is, far beyond “the distances for whichemergency planning is required by current Federal guidelines.” 161 Consider, forexample, a major release from (say) Three Mile Island shortly before refueling,in typical weather, with the wind blowing towards population centers. Such arelease could occur with or without a full core meltdown if the containment failed orwere breached deliberately. Over the following seventy-five years, counting onlyranges greater than fifty miles downwind, it would cause up to•sixty thousand delayed cancer deaths;• sixty thousand genetic defects;• four hundred fifty thousand thyroid nodules;•long-term land contamination of fifty-three hundred square miles; and• short-term farming restrictions on one hundred seventy-five thousandsquare miles (an area larger than California). 162These long-range consequences should be added to the shorter-range consequencesquoted above from the Rasmussen Report.The Rasmussen Report thus understates the possible effects of a major releaseby ignoring worst-case conditions which a saboteur could deliberately select, andby omitting long-term, long-range effects. Its calculations of consequences havealso been severely criticized by many independent reviewers, including anAmerican Physical Society study group, the Environmental Protection Agency,and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Whatever the actual size of the consequences,163 though, it is common ground that they could be graver than anypeacetime disaster, and perhaps any wartime disaster, in recent history.This point has been tellingly made by comparing the radioactive releasesthat might be caused by a major reactor accident with the fallout from the