Harvey Wasserman : The Demand for a Global Takeover at Fukushima

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant's reactor building number 4 seen in aerial view on July 5, 2012. Photo by Kyodo / Reuters.

The demand for a global takeover
at Fukushima has hit critical mass

Since the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami, the six-reactor Daichi site has plunged into lethal chaos.

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / October 2, 2013

More than 48,000 global citizens have now signed a petition at NukeFree.org asking the United Nations and the world community to take charge of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. Another 35,000 have signed at RootsAction. An independent advisory group of scientists and engineers is also in formation.

The signatures are pouring in from all over the world. By November, they will be delivered to the United Nations.

The corporate media has blacked out meaningful coverage of the most critical threat to global health and safety in decades.

The much-hyped “nuclear renaissance” has turned into a global rout. In the face of massive grassroots opposition and the falling price of renewable energy and natural gas, operating reactors are shutting and proposed new ones are being cancelled.

This lessens the radioactive burden on the planet. But it makes the aging reactor fleet ever more dangerous. A crumbling industry with diminished resources and a disappearing workforce cannot safely caretake the decrepit, deteriorating 400-odd commercial reactors still licensed to operate worldwide.

All of which pales before the crisis at Fukushima. Since the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami, the six-reactor Daichi site has plunged into lethal chaos.

For decades the atomic industry claimed vehemently that a commercial reactor could not explode. When Chernobyl blew, it blamed “inferior” Soviet technology.

But Fukushima’s designs are from General Electric (some two dozen similar reactors are licensed in the U.S.). At least four explosions have rocked the site. One might have involved nuclear fission. Three cores have melted into the ground. Massive quantities of water have been poured where the owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco), and the Japanese government think they might be, but nobody knows for sure.

As The Free Press has reported, steam emissions indicate one or more may still be hot. Contaminated water is leaking from hastily-constructed tanks. Room for more is running out. The inevitable next earthquake could rupture them all and send untold quantities of poisons pouring into the ocean.

The worst immediate threat at Fukushima lies in the spent fuel pool at Unit Four. That reactor had been shut for routine maintenance when the earthquake and tsunami hit. The 400-ton core, with more than 1,300 fuel rods, sat in its pool 100 feet in the air.

Spent fuel rods are the most lethal items our species has ever created. A human standing within a few feet of one would die in a matter of minutes. With more than 11,000 scattered around the Daichi site, radiation levels could rise high enough to force the evacuation of all workers and immobilize much vital electronic equipment.

Spent fuel rods must be kept cool at all times. If exposed to air, their zirconium alloy cladding will ignite, the rods will burn, and huge quantities of radiation will be emitted. Should the rods touch each other, or should they crumble into a big enough pile, an explosion is possible. By some estimates there’s enough radioactivity embodied in the rods to create a fallout cloud 15,000 times greater than the one from the Hiroshima bombing.

The rods perched in the Unit 4 pool are in an extremely dangerous position. The building is tipping and sinking into the sodden ground. The fuel pool itself may have deteriorated. The rods are embrittled and prone to crumbling. Just 50 meters from the base is a common spent fuel pool containing some 6,000 fuel rods that could be seriously compromised should it lose coolant. Overall there are some 11,000 spent rods scattered around the Fukushima Daichi site.

As dangerous as the process might be, the rods in the Unit Four fuel pool must come down in an orderly fashion. Another earthquake could easily cause the building to crumble and collapse. Should those rods crash to the ground and be left uncooled, the consequences would be catastrophic.

Tepco has said it will begin trying to remove the rods from that pool in November. The petitions circulating through NukeFree.org and MoveOn.org, as well as at Roots Action and Avaaz.org, ask that the United Nations take over. They ask the world scientific and engineering communities to step in. The Roots Action petition also asks that $8.3 billion slated in loan guarantees for a new U.S. nuke be shifted instead to dealing with the Fukushima site.

It’s a call with mixed blessings. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency is notoriously pro-nuclear, charged with promoting atomic power as well as regulating it. Critics have found the IAEA to be secretive and unresponsive.

But Tepco is a private utility with limited resources. The Japanese government has an obvious stake in downplaying Fukushima’s dangers. These were the two entities that approved and built these reactors.

While the IAEA is imperfect, its resources are more substantial and its stake at Fukushima somewhat less direct. An ad hoc global network of scientists and engineers would be intellectually ideal, but would lack the resources for direct intervention.

Ultimately the petitions call for a combination of the two.

It’s also hoped the petitions will arouse the global media. The moving of the fuel rods from Unit Four must be televised. We need to see what’s happening as it happens. Only this kind of coverage can allow global experts to analyze and advise as needed.

Let’s all hope that this operation proves successful, that the site is neutralized and the massive leaks of radioactive water and gasses be somehow stopped.

As former Ambassador Mitsuhei Murata has put it: full-scale releases from Fukushima “would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival.”

[Harvey Wasserman is senior editor of the Columbus Free Press and The Free Press. He edits NukeFree.org, where all factual material in this article can be linked. He hosts the Solartopia Green Power & Wellness radio show at the Progressive Radio Network, and is author of Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth. Read more of Harvey Wasserman's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Harvey Wasserman : Fukushima Continues to Spew its Darkness

House in Fukushima. Image from ABC News.

Still on the brink:
Fukushima continues to spew its darkness

A pool containing many tons of highly radioactive used fuel is suspended 100 feet in the air... Should an earthquake or other trauma knock the pool to the ground, there’s a high likelihood the fuel rods could catch fire.

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / July 25, 2013

Radiation leaks, steam releases, disease and death continue to spew from Fukushima and a disaster which is far from over. Its most profound threat to the global ecology -- a spent fuel fire -- is still very much with us.

The latest steam leak has raised fears around the planet. A worst-case scenario of an on-going out-of-control fission reaction was dismissed by the owners, Tokyo Electric, because they didn’t find xenon in the plume. The company says the steam likely came from rain water being vaporized by residual heat in one of  the plant’s stricken reactors.

But independent experts tend to disbelieve anything Tepco says, for good reason. Reactor Units One, Two and Three have exploded at Fukushima despite decades of official assurances that commercial atomic power plants could not explode at all. The company has been unable to clear out enough radioactive debris to allow it to put a cover over the site that might contain further airborne emissions.

Tepco has also been forced to admit that it has been leaking radioactive water into the ocean ever since the disaster began on March 11, 2011. In one instance it admitted to a 90-fold increase of Cesium in a nearby test well over a period of just three days.

Earlier this year a rat ate through electrical cables, shorting out a critical cooling system. When Tepco workers were dispatched to install metal guards to protect the cabling, they managed to short out the system yet again.

Early this month Fukushima’s former chief operator, Masao Yoshida, died of esophogeal cancer at the age of 58. Masao became a hero during the worst of the disaster by standing firm at his on-site command post as multiple explosions rocked the reactor complex. Tepco claimed his ensuing cancer and death were “unlikely” to have been caused by Fukushima’s radiation.

The impact of work in and near the reactors has become a rising concern. Critics have warned that there are not enough skilled technicians willing to sacrifice themselves at the plant. Tepco has worsened the situation by applying to open a number of its shut reactors elsewhere in Japan, straining its already depleted skilled workforce even further.

Meanwhile, a staggering 40 percent rise in thyroid irregularities among young children in the area has caused a deepening concern about widespread health impacts from Fukushima’s fallout within the general public. Because these numbers have come in just two years after the disaster, the percentage of affected children is expected to continue to rise.

And the worst fear of all remains unabated. At Unit Four, which apparently did not actually explode, the building’s structural integrity has been seriously undermined. Debate continues to rage over exactly how this happened.

But there’s no doubt that a pool containing many tons of highly radioactive used fuel is suspended 100 feet in the air, with little left to support the structure. Should an earthquake or other trauma knock the pool to the ground, there’s a high likelihood the fuel rods could catch fire.

In such an event, the radioactive emissions could be catastrophic. Intensely lethal emissions could spew for a very long time, eventually circling the globe many times, wrecking untold havoc.

The Japanese have removed two apparently unused rods from the fuel pool so far. But intense international pressure to clear out the rest of them has thus far been unsuccessful.

So while a depleted, discredited, and disorganized nuclear utility moves to restart its other reactors, its stricken units at Fukushima continue to hold the rest of us at the brink of apocalyptic terror.

This article, first published at www.progressivemagazine.com, was cross-posted to The Rag Blog.

[Harvey Wasserman edits www.nukefree.org. His Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is at www.solartopia.org, along with Harvey Wasserman's History of the United States. His Solartopia Green Power and Wellness Show is at www.prn.fm. Read more of Harvey Wasserman's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Harvey Wasserman : We May Yet Lose Tokyo

Cleanup at Fukushima. U.S. experts said they were not getting accurate details of the scope of the Fukushima disaster after reactors melted down last year. Photo from AP / Daily Mail.
(Not to mention Alaska and Georgia)
We may yet lose Tokyo

With bitter debate raging over the killing power of Fukushima's emissions, the certification of a new U.S. reactor design may someday be remembered as a bizarre epitaph for the 20th century's most expensive failed technology.

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / February 11, 2012

As the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves a construction/operating license for two new reactors in Georgia, alarming reports from Japan indicate the Fukushima catastrophe is far from over.

Thousands of tons of intensely radioactive spent fuel are still in serious jeopardy. Radioactive trash and water are spewing into the environment. And nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen reports that during the string of disasters following March 11, 2011's earthquake and tsunami, Fukushima 1's containment cap may actually have lifted off its base, releasing dangerously radioactive gasses and opening a gap for an ensuing hydrogen explosion.

There are some two dozen of these Mark I-style containments currently in place in the U.S.

Newly released secret email from the NRC also shows its commissioners were in the dark about much of what was happening during the early hours of the Fukushima disaster. They worried that Tokyo might have to be evacuated, and that airborne radiation spewing across the Pacific could seriously contaminate Alaska.

Reactor pushers have welcomed the NRC's approval of the new Westinghouse AP-1000 design for Georgia's Vogtle. Two reactors operate there now, and the two newly approved ones are being funded with $8.3 billion in federally guaranteed loans and state-based rate hikes levied in advance of the reactors' being completed.

NRC Chair Gregory Jazcko made the sole no vote on the Vogtle license, warning that the proposed time frame would not allow lessons from Fukushima to be incorporated into the reactors' design.

The four Commissioners voting to approve have attacked Jaszco in front of Congress for his "management style," but this vote indicates the problem is certainly more rooted in attitudes toward reactor safety.

The approval is the first for a new construction project since 1978. The debate leading up to it stretched out for years. Among other things, the Commission raised questions about whether the AP1000 can withstand earthquakes and other natural disasters. Even now the final plans are not entirely complete.

Only two other U.S. reactors -- in neighboring South Carolina- -- are even in the pre-construction phase. As in Georgia, South Carolina consumers are being forced to pay for the reactors as they are being built. Should they not be completed, or suffer disaster once they are, the state's ratepayers will be on the hook.

The industry is heralding the Vogtle approval as a major boon to the "Nuclear Renaissance." But it comes alongside the announcement that all 17 reactors owned by the Tokyo Electric Company are shut, as are all but two of Japan's 50-plus nukes.

Germany has decided to shut all its nukes by 2022. New reactor financing in Great Britain is under legal attack, as it is in Florida. India has announced that in 2011 it led the world in new green energy projects. China has yet to make its future nuclear commitments clear in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. And no American utility is readily available to follow in Vogtle's path, with operating reactors in Vermont and New York's Indian Point under fierce governmental attack.

Florida's Crystal River is beset by huge bills for faulty repair work, and may be headed for permanent shutdown. Both currently licensed reactors at California's San Onofre are closed following radioactive leaks, and a disturbing pattern of tube holes in newly installed steam generators has surfaced at a number of reactors across the U.S.

Tama University Professor Hiroshi Tasaka warned that Fukushima is "far from over." Photo from The Japan Times.
But the biggest shock waves this week were caused by Tama University Professor Hiroshi Tasaka, a key advisor to Prime Minister Naoto Kan during the Fukushima disaster.

Warning that Fukushima is "far from over," Tasaka said official assurances of the complex's alleged safety were based on "groundless optimism." Tasaka cited more than 1,500 fuel rods dangerously exposed to the open atmosphere at Unit Four alone. The waste problem has gone nationwide, he said in a newly published book, as "the storage capacities of the spent fuel pools at the nation's nuclear power plants are reaching their limits,"

Tasaka's statements came as a new temperature spike unexpectedly struck Fukushina Unit Two. For reasons not yet clear, heat releases in excess of 158 degrees Fahrenheit spewed from the core, prompting Tokyo Electric to pump in more water and boric acid meant to damp down an apparently on-going chain reaction. Prof. Tasaka and others warn that this in turn will contribute to spreading still more radiation into the water table and oceans.

With bitter debate raging in Japan, the US., and elsewhere over the killing power of Fukushima's emissions, the certification of a new U.S. reactor design may someday be remembered as a bizarre epitaph for the 20th century's most expensive failed technology.

Without state ratepayers and federal taxpayers being forced to foot the bill, new reactor construction in the U.S. is going nowhere.

And without a final resolution to the ongoing horrors at Fukushima, the entire planet, from Tokyo to Alaska to Georgia and beyond, remains at serious radioactive risk.

[Harvey Wasserman edits www.nukefree.org. His Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is at www.solartopia.org. The Solartopia Green Power and Wellness Show airs at www.progressiveradionetwork.com. Read more of Harvey Wasserman's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Harvey Wasserman : Countdown to Nuclear Disaster

Political cartoon by Olle Johansson, Sweden / Cagle Cartoons.
Countdown to disaster:
Fukushima spews, Los Alamos burns,
Vermont rages, and we’ve almost lost Nebraska

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / June 29, 2011

Humankind is now threatened by the simultaneous implosion, explosion, incineration, courtroom contempt, and drowning of its most lethal industry.

We know only two things for certain: worse is yet to come, and those in charge are lying about it -- at least to the extent of what they actually know, which is nowhere near enough.

Indeed, the assurances from the nuke power industry continue to flow like the floodwaters now swamping the Missouri Valley heartland.

But major breakthroughs have come from a Pennsylvania senator and New York’s governor on issues of evacuation and shut-down. And a public campaign for an end to loan guarantees could put an end to the U.S. industry once and for all.


FUKUSHIMA: The bad news continues to bleed from Japan with no end in sight. The “light at the end of the tunnel” is an out-of-control radioactive freight train, headed to the core of an endangered planet.

Widespread internal radioactive contamination among Japanese citizens around Fukushima has now been confirmed. Two whales caught some 650 kilometers from the melting reactors have shown intense radiation.

Plutonium, the deadliest substance known to our species, has been found dangerously far from the site.

Tokyo Electric and the Japanese government have admitted to three 100% meltdowns but can’t confirm with any reliability the current state of those cores. There’s reason to believe one or more have progressed to “melt-throughs” in which they burn through the thick stainless steel pressure vessel and onto the containment floor.

The molten cores may be covered with water. But whether they can melt further through the containments and into the ground remains unclear.

Possibilities may include a “China Syndrome” scenario in which one or more still-molten cores does melt through the containment and hits ground water. That could lead to a steam explosion that could blow still larger clouds of radioactive steam, water and debris into the atmosphere and ocean.

At least three explosions have occurred, one of which may have involved criticality.

There is no doubt at least two containments were breached very early in the disaster. Unit Four is cracked and sinking. The status of its used radioactive fuel pool, which has clearly caught fire, is uncertain. Also unclear is the ability of the owners to sustain the stability of Units Five and Six, which were shut when the quake/tsunami hit.

That stability depends on continued power to run cooling systems, which could disappear amid seismic aftershocks many believe are inevitable. A very substantial quake hit after the tremors that led to Indonesia’s devastating tsunami, and few doubt it could happen again -- soon -- at Fukushima.

All the above is dependent on reports controlled primarily by Tokyo Electric and the Japanese government. There is every reason to believe the situation is worse than it seems, and that those in charge don’t really know the full extent of the damage or how to cope with it.

Just five years ago a quake shut seven reactors at Kashiwazaki. The entire nation of Japan sits on a wide range of fault lines. Tsunami is a Japanese word.

Radiation from Fukushima has long since been detected throughout the northern hemisphere, with health effects that will be debated forever.

Some 50 reactors still operate in Japan. According to some, the Japanese public has the legal right to shut them all.

Let us pray they do. Yesterday.


LOS ALAMOS: A massive wildfire has swept at least to the outskirts of the national laboratory that was at the core of the program that built the Atomic Bomb.

The first explosion irradiated a nearby valley on July 16, 1945. Then came the two that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There are significant quantities of stored radioactive material in and around Los Alamos. How much there is, where it is, how badly it is threatened, how much (if any) has already been engulfed in flames remains to be seen. Evacuations are underway.

Official reassurances are not reliable.

Nor are estimates of the potential for radioactive fallout to spread throughout North America and beyond.

Political cartoon by R.J. Matson / The St. Louis Post-Dispatch / Roll Call.

VERMONT YANKEE: Entergy, owner of the one reactor in Vermont, has sued to shred a solemn public contract.

The one thing certain here is the company’s contempt for the sanctity of its own word.

Years ago Entergy sought official permits at VY. It promised in return that the state could choose to shut the reactor on March 21, 2012, which it’s now done.

In recent years VY has spewed tritium into groundwater and the Connecticut River, in some cases from underground pipes whose existence the company denied. A cooling tower has collapsed.

But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has extended the reactor's license and asked the federal Justice Department to intervene on behalf of the utility.

The request trashes any credibility retained by the NRC. The Commission was established in the mid 1970s to be a disinterested party on which the public could rely. For it to now take a partisan stand on behalf of a reactor owner it’s bound to regulate thoroughly contaminates the core of its existence.

Entergy has sued so it can buy some $65 million in radioactive fuel the people of Vermont do not want burned on their land.

This will go to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the future legal sanctity of any and all public contracts signed by any corporation, nuclear or otherwise, may be determined.


NEBRASKA: The flooding Missouri River continues to threaten at least two heartland reactors.

Late reports indicate Cooper may still be running, with public assurances it could be shut very quickly. What might happen if the operators are a little bit late has not been explained.

Nor is there much to go on about the impacts of flooded cores and fuel cooling ponds on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers or the eco-systems along the way to a Gulf of Mexico still reeling from BP’s toxic dose.

But an almost surreal set of circumstances surrounds the true nature of design specifications and protections in place (or not) at Ft. Calhoun.

They may be best summarized by what happened to a “flood berm” meant to protect Ft. Calhoun. This huge rubberized water-filled sausage was 16 feet at the base and eight feet high.

But CNN has quoted a company representative as saying that some sort of equipment “came in contact” with the berm and punctured it.

Not to worry: the “same level of protection is in place” as had been prior to the installation of the berm.

In other words, the device was installed to protect the reactor. Then somebody punctured it. But things are as they were before so they must not have needed that berm in the first place. Got it?

It’s as yet unclear whether flood waters will continue to rise at these two reactors, whether the operators can protect them, and what will happen if they can’t.

The corporate media is carrying virtually zero coverage of any of the above stories. All are subject to rapid, dangerous changes about which we may have little reliable information.

But we do know for sure that U.S. Senator Robert Casey, Jr. (D-PA) now wants to see more deeply into one of the key holes in the nuclear façade: evacuation.

After Three Mile Island’s 1979 partial melt-down, new federal legislation allegedly gave states more power over how to get people out of the path of a melting nuke.

But after an as-yet unopened Perry reactor was damaged by a 1986 earthquake, Ohio's then-Governor Richard Celeste sued to keep Perry shut pending a state evacuation study.

The NRC refused and won in federal court. Perry opened. Ohio’s official study then said evacuation was virtually impossible.

A quarter-century later, Casey wants to see what it might now take to move downwinders out of harm’s way from a TMI, Perry, Chernobyl, Fukushima, Vermont Yankee, Cooper, Ft. Calhoun... you name it.

Casey’s being joined by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose demands for the shut-down of Indian Point, 35 miles north of Manhattan, have left its owners “shaken.”

Cuomo and Casey might do well to join governors of states like Vermont, Massachusetts, California, and others in testing the law on evacuation planning. Populations have vastly increased at virtually all U.S. reactor sites since TMI. And the ugly realities that define the so-called “peaceful atom” are still making themselves all too apparent.

Whether the U.S. will now turn with Germany, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, Israel, and others away from atomic power and toward a green-powered Earth is up to us. The Solartopian technologies of wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, ocean thermal, bio-fuels, increased efficiency, and conservation are now demonstrably cheaper, safer, cleaner, more reliable, more job-producing, and quicker to install than anything atomic energy can promise.

A $36 billion loan guarantee give-away still mars the proposed 2012 federal budget. Constant pressure on Congress and the White House can kill that, and any other proposed funding for still more of these nightmares.

The stream of reactor disasters spewing from this dying industry is certain to escalate. The toll rises with each leak at Fukushima, every flame at Los Alamos, each legal brief at Vermont Yankee, every foot of Nebraska floodwater.

The need to stop the madness grows more desperate every day.

[Harvey Wasserman edits the NukeFree.org website. His most recent book is Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth. His “Solartopia! Green-Power Hour” is at www.talktainmentradio.com every Wednesday, 8-9pm. Read more of Harvey Wasserman's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Harvey Wasserman : After Fukushima: A Nuclear Industry Meltdown?

A home in Glen Rose, Texas, with the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant hovering behind. Photo from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
After the Fukushima nightmare:
Will the nuclear power industry melt down?

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / May 2, 2011

"There's never been a death because of radiation... in a civilian nuclear power plant... In Texas, if there's any kind of a serious earthquake or natural disaster, I want to be in the control room at Comanche Peak [Nuclear Power Plant] because that is the absolute safest place to be." -- Texas Congressman Joe Barton, April 6, 2011

In the wake of the apocalyptic nightmare at Fukushima, the multi-trillion-dollar global nuclear power industry is looking over the abyss at a long-overdue extinction.

But the issue is far from decided. Japan's horrifying catastrophe has sent the industry's spin machine into overdrive. We've been shown the script of what reactor-backers -- hell-bent on minimizing the dangers of this unprecedented disaster -- are willing to say and do to save themselves.

It is not a pretty picture. It focuses on the assertion that there are safe doses of radiation, and that atomic energy has harmed few, if any. Three Mile Island "hurt no one." There were few casualties at Chernobyl. And Fukushima's long-term damage will be minimal.

Atomic apologists argue that only nuclear power can fill our long-term "base load," that renewables are of no real consequence, and our choice is between more nukes and more coal.

Yet the nuclear industry faces significant hurdles in cost and construction lead time, two inescapable factors that are on the brink of killing atomic electricity-generation.

The end is not guaranteed. New reactor construction cannot proceed in the United States without huge federal handouts. There are no private sources willing to fund additional U.S. projects. Wall Street has only been keen on atomic energy when subsidies and ironclad guarantees have been available.

No reactor ordered in this country since 1974 has been completed. In that year, Richard Nixon promised 1,000 atomic reactors licensed to operate by the year 2000. Today there are 104.

There are many reasons those 896 reactors went missing. Number one is the fact that the No Nukes movement stopped the industry from gouging from the government the trillion or more dollars it would have taken to build that fleet.

Local and national public opposition slowed and canceled many projects and created a political atmosphere in which it is impossible for the industry to do what was done in France. There the industry established a radioactive form of national socialism. It is amusing to watch American "free-market advocates" go rhapsodic about the French nuclear industry, when in fact it is owned, insured, operated, monitored, and regulated by the government.

Here the government doesn't own the reactors, but it does own their liabilities. When atomic power was introduced, utilities refused to invest unless Congress would insulate them from the damage caused by an accident. So the Price-Anderson Act of 1957 required reactor owners to establish a pay-out pool of $540 million: the industry's liability for an accident whose potential was estimated to be capable of destroying a land mass the size of Pennsylvania.

The protection has been periodically renewed by Congress. Today the pool has grown to $12.6 billion. As Fukushima has demonstrated, that's a fraction of the potential damage from a disaster at one or more American reactors. Preliminary estimates of the cost for radioactive cleanup at Fukushima mean little, in part because they're intertwined with destruction from quake and tsunami.

And the accident is far from over. Radioactive emissions seem to be worsening, and five weeks after the earthquake the level of radioactive iodine 131 was 6,500 times the legal limit in the Pacific waters near the plant. Should such fallout occur from a U.S. reactor, beyond the $12.6 billion pool, liability would rest with the victims and the taxpayers.

Without government cash to build reactors that would produce electricity once billed as "too cheap to meter," the industry has stalled. In recent months, even before Fukushima, local voters have begun to force the shutdown of operating reactors.

In Vermont, Governor Peter Shumlin was elected on a pledge to shut the Yankee reactor. A deal cut by its owner, Entergy, and the state legislature requires official approval for operations beyond March 2012. In New York, newly elected Governor Andrew Cuomo is focused on shutting down Indian Point, 35 miles north of Manhattan.

But as fans of monster movies know, there comes a moment when the beast has been slain, all are celebrating... and then... BAM! It comes back to life.

That resurrection has come to be known as the "nuclear renaissance," which again rests on federal handouts. The Bush administration provided $18.5 billion in loan guarantees to underwrite the beginning of a new generation of reactors. In 2007, with former Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), the "senator from nuclear power," the industry attempted to get $50 billion in additional loan guarantees.

But a grassroots movement arose with help from a NukeFree.org effort, led by singers Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, and Graham Nash. With a website, a YouTube video, a petition drive that gathered 120,000 signatures, and a lobby day in October 2007, Domenici's $50 billion proposal was defeated.

In 2008, 2009, 2010 and thus far in 2011, similar efforts by the industry to grab federal money have been denied, which is remarkable because, as reported by an investigative team at American University, proponents of reactors have spent some $645 million in the last decade lobbying Congress for more subsidies. For an underfunded grassroots movement to beat a campaign that spent on average $65 million a year (excluding what was spent on media) is miraculous.

Two major factors have contributed.

One is the soaring cost of the reactors. Three years ago, cost projections for a new reactor were as low as $2 billion to $3 billion. Today, with barely a shovel having been turned, they are in the range of $10 billion to $11 billion, and moving relentlessly and rapidly higher. Design and safety considerations coming out of Fukushima are sure to send that figure up even more. A Texas project that was to be bankrolled by the Japanese almost certainly won't happen now.

The scientific staff at the Nuclear Regulatory Agency -- a captive regulatory agency whose budget is provided by the industry -- has raised concerns about new designs undergoing constant and often confusing changes proposed by the utilities building the plants, which also increases costs.

The other major factor that helped defeat the loan guarantees is the plunging cost of renewables. When the No Nukes movement began, reactor opponents were forced to argue that "sometime in the future" such green technologies as wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, ocean thermal, and biofuels would be cost competitive.

That time has come. The solartopian vision of a green-powered Earth has, in the last few years, become economically viable within a free-market model. With photovoltaic cells leading the way, and wind power following close behind, the projected price for green-generated electricity has fallen into the range of nuclear power and has drawn closer to coal.

A constant stream of technological breakthroughs in renewables and energy efficiency shows every sign of continuing to accelerate past the tipping point, where what has until now been known as "alternative" technology takes over the mainstream.

With that has come a green industry with political clout of its own, in both lobbying power and job creation. For every month that passes without new reactors coming on line, the renewable-energy lobby gains an increasing ability to flex its muscles in Congress and the marketplace.

Will these factors be sufficient to prevent a renaissance capable of reviving the nuclear industry?

The nuclear renaissance got its most recent big break in 2010, when Barack Obama put up $8.33 billion in loan guarantees for two reactors in Georgia -- the first money from the $18.5 billion set aside by Bush to actually go to a reactor project. (Another plant is in the works in South Carolina.)

Serious legal and technical issues have been raised about the loan guarantees. That did not stop Obama from staging a news event to announce the first new reactor projects to break ground in decades. State regulators are forcing ratepayers to fund construction. If the reactors never generate a kilowatt of electricity, the public will still foot the bill.


Waste not

The public always foots the bill. After half a century and more than $10 billion, the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository in Nevada has failed, for technical and political reasons. Consequently, more than 60,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste is stored at reactor sites across the U.S. None of the world's reactor operators have a safe solution for storage of the most lethal substance ever created by human beings. Almost all of it sits onsite, alongside more than 430 reactors worldwide.

But Fukushima has belied the industry line that in the absence of permanent sites waste can be safely stored onsite. Onsite storage of high-level waste in spent-fuel pools at each of six stricken Fukushima reactors, plus a seventh common pool, has created a fiery nightmare.

Spent rods were exposed to air, allowing zirconium alloy cladding to ignite, releasing huge quantities of radiation while endangering the complex cooling systems on which the entire facility depends.

When the quake destroyed critical pump and piping networks, water from the tsunami created short circuits and ruined electrical systems.

Hydrogen explosions at two or more of the reactors may have compromised containment domes, while a crack in at least one reactor pressure vessel indicates a dangerous level of damage to the structures meant to keep the cores intact.

Meanwhile, some of the spent fuel rods sit five stories in the air. They were put there largely to make it easier to move used rods out of the core and directly into the elevated pools. But given the damage done by the quake, tsunami and mechanical failures inside the plants, getting cooling water to them has proven extremely difficult. Some of the rods might have fallen into melting reactor cores. The disaster defies description and won't be fully understood for decades.

Yet the industry continues to blame its waste problem on opponents they claim have prevented a viable disposal site from being established, not only in the U.S., but in every country where reactors operate.

Fukushima has also raised the specter of an airborne stream of radiation killing people all over the world. This includes the United States, where fallout was detected on the West Coast within days of the disaster in Japan, followed by reports of iodine 131 in milk and water from Maine to Florida. Cesium has been found on vegetables in Vermont, though it's unclear whether it came from Fukushima or the nearby Yankee reactor, a Fukushima clone that opponents in Vermont are desperately trying to shut.

On April 12, the Japanese government reclassified the Fukushima crisis to Level 7, in a general category with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, while reassuring the public that most of the airborne radiation has been blown "out to sea."

There was no sea at Chernobyl, where the heaviest radioactive contamination quickly settled on areas in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The public debate continues regarding the number of Chernobyl fatalities. Last year, three Russian scientists published a book based on a broad literature survey. They reported that by the early years of this century, 985,000 Chernobyl downwinders died as a result of the accident -- a number far higher than any previous estimates.


The peaceful atom

Commentator and author Ann Coulter might tell a national TV audience that radiation can actually be good for you, and that small doses can actually improve your health and that of your children. But scientists such as Dr. Karl Z. Morgan and Dr. John Gofman, highly regarded pioneers in the study of radiation health physics, long ago established that there is no identifiable safe dose of radiation. That there is no established threshold below which exposure to x-rays, gamma rays, and alpha or beta emissions is "safe" has been accepted in the radiation health physics field since its inception.

In an effort to deny this reality, the industry and its apologists have discounted health impacts from of the Fukushima fallout in the United States. Typical was Matthew Herper in a Forbes blog, who assured readers that there would be minimal health danger from Fukushima "even if things go horribly wrong." The line that no dangerous doses of radiation have reached the U.S. has become an article of faith among major media from CNN to NPR.

Yet difficult to ignore is the presence of four California reactors that sit near major earthquake faults, in tsunami zones. The two reactors on the beach at San Onofre are far closer to San Diego and Los Angeles than Fukushima is to Tokyo. Two more at Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo, are within a mile of a newly discovered fault line, and considerably less than that from the shore. Had the Fukushima quake hit either of those sites, southern and central California would be in evacuation mode, and our nation would be blanketed in lethal fallout.

With reactors like Indian Point and San Onofre hauntingly close to major population centers, with some two dozen U.S. plants identical in design to Fukushima, and with still more on or near earthquake faults, industry backers are working to convince the public that however dangerous their nukes might be, coal is worse. Global warming, they say, favors nuclear because it's "carbon free."

Both technologies are doomed by cost, supply, and their impact on the environment and human health.

Our survival ultimately depends on burying fossil fuels -- and more immediately, the "Peaceful Atom" that has given us Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and other accidents that will inevitably follow.

Thus far, Barack Obama has been the industry's best ally. Early into the Fukushima accident -- long before it was clear what would happen -- he assured the public that there was nothing to worry about here, and that he would continue to push for more reactors. The administration also has failed to establish a national monitoring network that could inform the public about where the radiation is and what individuals might do to protect themselves and their families.

Obama's non-response may date back to his early days as a state senator, when he allied himself with the Illinois-based Exelon, America's biggest private nuke owner. The president's career is rooted in the 11 reactors that ring Chicago. The consulting firm founded by his chief campaign strategist David Axelrod, who would later become a senior White House advisor, represented Exelon.

Obama's former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel (now mayor-elect of Chicago) put together investment packages for Exelon's Illinois plants when he worked as an investment banker. And Exelon CEO John Rowe has been a longtime financial backer of the president.

A critical moment is coming soon, when Obama goes to Congress to request an additional $36 billion in loan guarantees for new nukes in his 2012 budget.

With them, America's atomic industry has a chance to build a few more reactors. Without them, a green-powered Earth is within our grasp.

(As we go to press Entergy has filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Vermont attempting to prevent the state from forcing the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant to cease operation on March 21, 2012.)

[Harvey Wasserman edits the NukeFree.org website. His most recent book is Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth. This article was also published at the Washington Spectator. Read more of Harvey Wasserman's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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