Critical Reflections on Nuclear and Renewable Energy: Environmental Protection and Safety in the Wake of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

By Way Kuo

The Fukushima nuclear incident made people ponder and question nuclear safety again, resulting in decisions by certain countries to phase out nuclear power completely. Is this the right decision? Are there better ways to deal with this important issue of the 21th century?

 

The book analyses the pros and cons of a spectrum of energies, ranging from petroleum, coal, gas to water, solar and wind energies as well as nuclear energy in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear incident in 2011. It maintains that we should look at nuclear energy from a rational point of view instead of being influenced by emotions or politicians’ arguments.  The book also examines policies that concern science and technology, energy resources, environmental protection and occupational safety, emphasizing the need to deepen the general populace’s understanding of the concept of reliability.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Mar 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781118773451

Book preview

Contents

Cover

Half Title page

Title page

Copyright page

Foreword 1

Foreword 2*

Preface

Introduction

Part One: The World after March 11, 2011 — Ripple Effect of the Fukushima Accident

Chapter 1: Reliability and Nuclear Power

Nuclear Accidents in History

Nuclear Power Plants are not Atomic Bombs

Is Nuclear Power Reliable?

Second-hand Contamination — An Unfounded Notion

Nuclear Power Plants: Economical and Safe

Monitoring Imported Japanese Food

Human Factors

Paying Heed to Maintenance

Nuclear Waste and Waste Management

Impact of Nuclear Science and Technologies on Modern Society

Social and National Security

Chapter 2: Some Flowers Fall, and Again They Bloom

Visit to Sendai During the Cherry Blossom Season

Tohoku University

Chapter 3: Different Responses Across the Waters

Different Reactions to the Nuclear Accident

Chapter 4: Aging and Reliability

Law of Aging

When Will Signs of Spring Replace the Old?

Chapter 5: Transparent Management Guarantees Nuclear Safety

Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine

TEPCO’s Crisis Management

Recent Events at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant

Rules-based Management versus People-based Management

Chapter 6: The Need for Quality Control

An Ancient Doctor’s Comment on Quality Control

Performance of Power Plants

In-breeding Encroaches upon Quality Control in Nuclear Plants

Chapter 7: Don’t Let Gossip Affect the Safe Operation of Nuclear Power

Self-defeating Hearsay

Three Elements in the Safety of Nuclear Power

Nuclear Power and Nuclear Energy Industry in Japan

South Korea: An Emerging Power of the 21st Century

China: Nuclear Power House in the 21st Century

Taiwan: Confounded by the Nuclear Power Issue

Speaking from Evidence

The Unsettling Element in Discussions about Nuclear Power

Part Two: Environmental Protection, Occupational Safety and Innovation — A Spectrum of Energies

Chapter 8: A Spectrum of Energy Sources

A Brief History of Energies

Energy Crisis

Of the Spectrum of Energies, Which is Most Splendid?

Sense and Sensibility

Chapter 9: Facts about Background Radiation

Where is the Nuclear-free Homestead?

Chapter 10: Human Negligence of Occupational Safety Leads to Numerous Accidents

Occupational Safety in Serious Jeopardy Right by Your Side

The Unheeded Serious Problems of Occupational Safety

Train Collisions Throughout the World

Natural Calamities are Less Destructive than Man-made Accidents

Chapter 11: When Will Environmental Pollution End?

The Misleading and Mislabeling Food Products

The Ubiquity of Biological and Chemical Sources of Pollution

Non-nuclear Pollution Permeates the World

Coal-fired Pollution Shocks and Global Warming

Coal Mining

The Melancholic Beauty of Idaho

Which Way Forward: Nuclear or Non-nuclear?

Passengers and Taxi Drivers

Chapter 12: Non-nuclear Calamities Are Also Horrible

Natural Calamities

Man-made Disasters

Horrible Consequences

Seeking Enlightenment Instead of Chasing Shadows of An Illusion

Chapter 13: Where Can We Find Safe Energy Sources?

Where to Look for the Spring of Energy?

Petroleum-producing Countries’ Plans for Nuclear Power

World-wide Trend in Building Nuclear Power Plants

Essential Conditions for Safety Design of a Power Plant

Ah Q’s Story of Generating Electricity by Marsh Gas

The Need for Rationality

Chapter 14: Pick up Our Share of the Energy Cost

Hike in European Electricity Prices Expected

How Much Does Energy Cost?

The Real Cost of Electricity

Stop Food Waste

Insatiable Desire for Energy

Purity Endures Like the Lotus

Chapter 15: In Search of Innovation in Formulating Energy Policy

Address the Energy Problem by Means of Innovation

Scientific Innovation: Cornerstones of Safety and Reliability

The Myth of Building a Nuclear Power Plant by the Sea

Formulation of an Optimal Energy Policy

Energy Conservation: Only a Precondition for the Formulation of an Energy Policy

Smart Grid

Democracy, Populism and Innovation

Chapter 16: Practice Makes Great

PhD Stands for… What?

Putting Knowledge and Practice Together

Ah Q’s Daydream

Appendix I

Reliability Through the Ages

The Essence of Reliability

Reliability Bottleneck and Historical and Societal Track

Black-dress Lane: An Embodiment of Reliability

Public Construction from the Perspective of Reliability

How Reliable Are High-tech Products?

Stress, Strength and Aging

Infant Mortality

Nuclear Energy Industry

Conclusion

Appendix II

Analyze the Crisis and Opportunity in the Aftermath of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

A Dialogue with Chip Tsao

Enjoy a Hot Spring and Eat Seafood

Japanese Nuclear Warriors Didn’t Die

iPhone 4 and Radiation from Reclaimed Land

Residents Nearby a Uranium Mine Live a Longer Life

Way Kuo is Realistic and Truthful

Death of Luo Fu’s Son

Postscript

Bill Gates Discussing New Nuclear Reactor with China

Technical Lessons Learned from the Fukushima Catastrophe

Japan’s NAIIC Report

My Reflections

A Story about Ted Kennedy

A Trip to Fukushima on July 2, 2013

The Current Status of the Disaster-stricken Fukushima and its Prospects

Additional Reading Materials

Afterword

Index

Critical Reflections on Nuclear and

Renewable Energy

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Co-published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Hoboken, New Jersey, and Scrivener Publishing LLC, Salem, Massachusetts.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Cover design by Russell Richardson

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

ISBN 978-1-118-77342-0

Bureaucrats are those who feel disinclined to say what should be said or to do what should be done.

Engineers are those who do not dare to say what should be said, but persist stubbornly in doing what should be done.

Scholars are those who say whatever comes to their mind, but shy away from doing what should be done.

Politicians are people who talk rot without thinking and act rashly and randomly without regard to whether such action should be taken.

Foreword 1

by Arden Bement

President Way Kuo applies his world-recognized expertise in system reliability in sharing his reflections of why energy sustainability is critical for society’s well being in the information age. This especially applies to developing countries, which are actively building economic capacity to meet their societal needs. The availability of affordable, reliable, and safe energy will control their rate of progress. However, Way Kuo in a most scholarly way explains that one can’t have energy sustainability without concurrently assuring environmental and economic sustainability. Achieving all three will require not only continued innovation but also an improved understanding of the interrelationships among the technical, social (including behavioral) and economic factors involved in building greater energy capacity and distribution on ‘smart grids’.

The author approaches his reflections on nuclear and renewable energy as a true scholar, giving the reader extensive evidence for evaluating the viable alternative forms of energy supply for themselves while maintaining a light touch, embracing oriental culture, history and poetry to illustrate his points, when arguing their relative advantages and disadvantages.

Way Kuo in posing his arguments lets facts speak for themselves. However, in terms of net present value of environmental protection, affordability, and safety he concludes that nuclear power offers the best form of energy supply for the future. He devotes an extensive part of his book making this case, informing the reader of the relative impacts and deaths caused by the disastrous use of coal over time for large-scale energy supply. He gives evidence that even so-called ‘clean’ forms of renewable energy have environmental impacts. He explains in comparative detail the consequences of the major three nuclear disasters over the past forty-five years — at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Reactor in 1979, at the Chernobyl Reactor site in the Ukraine in 1986, and at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Site on March 11, 2011.

In the case of the Three Mile Island and Fukushima disasters, which were designed with full concrete containment meeting international standards, the reader may be surprised to learn — contrary to a widely held view — that not a single life was lost to date. While they certainly may rank as economic disasters, they should not be accounted as disasters that entailed enormous losses of life. In the case of Fukushima Daiichi, less- than-transparent owners and government leaders exacerbated public hysteria shortly after the disaster occurred. In the case of the Chernobyl Plant the explosion that penetrated the reactor building resulted in a human disaster of monumental proportion, with thirty-one deaths among operators and emergency workers and over 4,000 civilian deaths caused by excessive exposure to radiation. Adequate engineered safeguards, such as a containment building meeting international standards, were not provided for this plant. As Way Kuo points out, all three disasters can be attributed to human error, where the operators proved to be the least reliable link in the chain of control for returning the reactors to safe control and shutdown after a major upset.

The author devotes much of his book to discussing human fear of radiation as a key factor in the public’s willingness to accept nuclear energy. By pointing out that the thousands of deaths that occur each year in the mining, transportation, and combustion of coal receive little attention he argues that humans are more comfortable with the forms of death that they do understand than those they don’t understand, such as exposure to radiation. However, he points out exposure to radiation is part of living. It is ubiquitous and can’t be avoided if one wants to live in cities, fly airplanes, eat certain foods, or undergo medical radiation diagnosis and therapy. People actually expose each other by small amounts of radioactivity in their bones and organs.

Finally, the author points out from his experience that the lessons learned from disasters such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima also have positive outcomes in compelling corrective actions to achieve greater safety and reliability. The design, construction and operation of future nuclear power plants will benefit from the lessons learned from these events.

As a result of Fukushima, regulators are taking firmer measures to routinely inspect nuclear power plants and assess their safety and reliability as a function of aging. They will also be more stringent in testing the effectiveness of training plant operators to respond to upset conditions no matter how rare. Finally, they will recognize that records are made to be broken. There is nothing sacrosanct about a hundred-year accident. Fukushima proved that designing to a hundred-year event was not sufficient. He also points out that even though absolute safety is an unreasonable expectation, that 100% reliable is a time-dependent challenge that must engage well-trained regulators, management, and operators alike. Safety, reliability, and transparency factor in his formula for building and operating nuclear power plants now and in the future.

Arden Bement

David A. Ross Distinguished Professor, Purdue University

Director of National Science Foundation, 2004–2010

Director of National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2001–2004

December 1, 2013

Foreword 2*

by Xu Kuangdi

The exploitation of energy resources has been indispensable to human evolution. Though I am not an anthropologist, I believe learning to make use of fire was a defining factor in distinguishing human beings from other animals. Humans, with their ability to use fire, evolved into the most dominant living creatures on earth, and developed a dependence on fossil fuel, especially since the era of the steam and internal combustion engines, for producing food, clothing, shelter and transport.

But in the course of making our lives more prosperous, we have produced huge amounts of greenhouse gases. But burning fossil fuels is threatening the environment we live in. The emission of PM2.5 has reached serious levels, and SO2, NOx and particles produced during the consumption of fossil energy account for 94%, 60% and 70% respectively of air pollutants. This is why we must strictly control the consumption of fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil on the one hand, and vigorously develop cleaner energies on the other.

Typical examples of cleaner energies include hydropower, wind-generated power, solar energy, geothermal energy and safe and reliable nuclear energy. Hydropower, which is restricted by water resources and geological conditions, usually accounts for 10 to 20% of the total energy consumption of a country, except in a small number of countries such as Norway and Switzerland which enjoy ample levels of rainfall and snowfall, as well as high mountains and great gorges. Limited in scope, geothermal energy is unlikely to become a main source of energy, except in Iceland, which has an extraordinary geological structure. Wind and solar energy, which are favorite sources of clean energy for the 21st century, generally account for less than 10% of the power capacity of a country. What’s more, the production of solar panels and wind turbine blades is expensive, their operation not stable, and their access to the national grid restricted. As a result, these two energies are mostly available in scattered residential areas for the purpose of separate power supplies.

A series of scientific discoveries concerning the structure of the atomic nucleus and nuclear energy at the beginning of the 20th century brought about a historic change not only in the field of physics, but also in the whole scientific and technological world. As a result, people began to look at the microscopic material world from an entirely new perspective and discover the amazing potential of nuclear energy. Against the special historical background of World War Two, the technology of nuclear fission was adopted for the development of nuclear weapons.

The large-scale application of nuclear energy serves as a successful example of the transformation of basic physics into engineering applications. More than 400 nuclear reactors have been built in 20-plus countries. People have accumulated the operational experience of 14,000 reactor-years, and nuclear power accounts for 14% of the world’s power supply. Like all other energy industries, the nuclear power industry has witnessed industrial accidents in the course of its development. Calamitous incidents in Three Mile Island, USA, in Chernobyl, former USSR, and Fukushima, Japan, have raised doubts about the safety of nuclear power and its environmental consequences, greatly dampening enthusiasm for the development of nuclear power.

Professor Way Kuo, President of City University of Hong Kong, is a famous expert in the field of reliability. Using the Fukushima nuclear incident as a point of penetration, Professor Kuo has adopted the method of reliability analysis for engineering safety in nuclear energy and environmental protection. He has succeeded in analysing the abstruse principle of this hi-tech problem, about which opinions differ greatly. The plain and vivid terms he uses in his writing will make his readers easily understand the complex ideas involved. I am sure his humorous style will evoke smiles from his readers, too, which reminds me of a remark made by the late Mr Qian Xuesen: An expert is one who can explain precisely the problems about special science, but his audience may find it difficult to comprehend his explanation. A great master is one who can explain precisely the problems about special science, and his audience will find it easy to comprehend his explanation.

In my opinion, Professor Way Kuo’s book has reached a very high standard of science. What’s more, it distinguishes itself by its readability and comprehensibility. Professor Kuo’s book is so reader-friendly that it can help dispel the doubts of its readers.

Xu Kuangdi

Honorary Chairman of the Chinese Academy of Engineering

President of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, 2002–2010

Mayor of Shanghai, 1995–2001

January 1, 2014

* The original was written in Chinese.

Preface

Nuclear energy has been a controversial topic ever since it was adopted for commercial purposes. In spite of its impressive safety record over the past 60 years, you can find some level of opposition to it everywhere it is used. It doesn’t help that the development and use of nuclear energy have become, in many countries, political issues rather than scientific or technological ones. Decisions, therefore, are made for or against nuclear energy based on political sentiments to influence election results, for example, which is not beneficial to mankind’s long-term well-being.

Nuclear energy has its pros and cons. It is one of the cleanest and most economic sources of energy. Many countries with limited natural sources have no feasible substitutes. And yet, nuclear radiation, once leaked in an accident, and nuclear waste, if not properly treated, could cause major environmental destruction and serious health problems to all those in the vicinity. While the likelihood of a large-scale nuclear accident is minimal, we should be aware of the risk. However, the remote possibility of a disaster should not cause us to give it up