In this article, Socialist Resistance supporter Phil Ward looks at some of the issues at stake in the nuclear disaster at Fukishima and the questions raised by George Monbiot's conversion to support for nuclear power. Socialist Resistance is fully committed to campaigning against nuclear power today, but doesn't have a position on some of the broader questions raised in the article - particularly whether the dangers of ionising radiation make the technology qualitatively different from other large, hazardous industrial processes. Both Phil and Socialist Resistance would welcome feedback.
The destruction of the Fukushima Daiichi 1 nuclear power station in the Thoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11 graphically illustrates the cavalier attitude of the capitalist system to technological risk. It is in the nature of the system to introduce new technologies in haste and without sufficient precaution (and then to hold onto flawed designs). Usually this may be annoying, glitches in electronic consumer goods, for example, but when a major piece of kit is involved the situation may well involve danger. The Comet 1 airliner, which "pushed the state of the art beyond its limits", resulting in two preventable crashes and the associated loss of life, is an example. The operating principles (e.g. moderator, coolant, fuel and casings) of almost all current nuclear power facilities have military origins and have never taken satety into account as a central priority. The reactors mainly in use in the USSR and Eastern Europe up to the Chernobyl disaster were based on the Hanford facilities that produced plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Britain, France and Germany used similar - but somewhat safer - designs, based on UK plutonium production reactors, until they moved over to the water-moderated reactors now most commonly used. The latter had the advantage of compactness - and therefore lower construction costs -as they were based on nuclear reactors for the US submarine fleet. Compactness can mean a greater chance of meltdown if the reactors suffer a loss of coolant. These operating principles show that nuclear power as currently constituted is not a mature technology. Whether it could "become mature" is an open question. At Fukushima, as with all nuclear reactors, cost considerations meant that plant layout was unsafe too: insufficient earthquake and tsunami protection and crazy placement of the spent fuel ponds are the most obvious examples. Chernobyl had more a glaring fault: there was no secondary containment building for the reactor, so that when an explosion blew off its concrete cap the core was exposed to Current estimates are that the radiation released at Fukushima is about 10% of that from Chernobyl. However, as usual in these circumstances (and not just nuclear accidents but other industrial catastrophes, such as Bhopal), there are reports that the operator, TEPCO, has been withholding information. Clearly, Fukushima could potentially be worse than Chernobyl, as it involves the partial meltdown of 3 reactors, with overheating of several of the spent fuel pools as well. There is also the possibility of further earthquakes. Effects of Radiation Chernobyl provides a good example of the problems in estimating the seriousness of major nuclear accidents, as calculations of total deaths there range from 64 to 935,000. This arises from a scientific problem: the connection between ionising radiation - especially at low doses - and death is not well understood. Investigators are forced to resort to epidemiological data, such as changes over time in death rates from certain forms of cancer. This makes them dependent on pre-accident historical records, which may be not as thorough as later ones. There may be other confounding factors as well: in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, the post-soviet collapse of welfare and health services will have had an effect In the face of this uncertainty, interested
33 * Debate parties will pick the statistics that suits them: pro-nuclear forces on the low side and anti-nuclear on the high one. Despite this, the nuclear industry itself actually recognises the possible effects of low doses and uses the "linear no-threshold hypothesis". Here, UK Atomic Energy Authority describes why this is used: "It is conceivable that a single broken DNA chain caused by a single photon or particle of radiation has a finite probability of leading to a stochastic effect. This is the basis of the argument that there is no threshold." What this means is that the industry has to accept the argument that nuclear power causes excess deaths, because they are allowed to emit radiation in normal operation. This makes it no different from other industries, or technologies, where capitalism encourages us to accept "routine" deaths. The most glaring example is motor car use, where about 2 million die per year, 1 million each from accidents and from lung diseases, mostly non-motorists. Another example is coal: 100,000 miners died in the USA in the 20th century and in China death rates are running at about 5,000 per year. Coal also produces mercury pollution and hundreds of millions of tonnes of fly-ash per year. This is radioactive and just dumped in landfills. Just as with any industry, we cannot expect nuclear power to be "100% safe". Indeed, its "catastrophic failure" record does not look too bad. There are 442 (operating, or recently operating) nuclear reactors and 125 closed down, with an average operating time of about 22 years. There have been about 10 reactors completely destroyed by accidents, making about 1 destroyed every 1200 reactoryears. This is probably a similar accidentdestruction rate to passenger aircraft (the data are difficult to find, but there are about 130 crashes and 1000 deaths per year in aircraft with more than six passengers, and probably about 200,000 such aircraft altogether). The purpose of these arguments is to make the point that, in respect to attitudes to safety and indeed the degree of risk, nuclear power is similar to other largescale technologies under capitalism. The difference is that we react emotively to nuclear power and radiation because of its link with nuclear weapons and the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and perhaps also recoil at cavalier attitudes in the past to radiation. In the 1920s and 1930s, radium potions were marketed as
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In many ways Ireland has been a test bed for the working out of the crisis of modern capitalism.
In the guise of the Celtic Tiger it was the most exuberant and uncontrolled of the neoliberal
models. After the crash it was the model of savage austerity coupled with appeasement of the banks. Now, quietly, on Black Thursday, 30th September, it has become the first economy where
capitalist strategy hit the rocks and left Ireland and Europe facing into the abyss. The inner mechanisms of the crisis, the incapacity of the Irish gombeen capitalists, and the capitulation of the
union bureaucracy are all subject to a Marxist analysis in Ireland's Credit Crunch' The book, by Keating, Morrison and Corrigan, is priced at £6 and is available online from Resistance Books via 34 Debate: Nuclear Power - different but the same miracle cures. Notoriously, watch dial painters were encouraged to lick their radium-soaked paintbrushes, resulting in the deaths of an unknown number of women. There is also the added fact that - except in cases of extreme exposure -our senses cannot detect ionising This means that we invest in nuclear technologies a sense of mystery, which we don't apply - for example - to the pesticide industry, despite the scale of the Bhopal We cannot therefore oppose nuclear power on the grounds that the radiation makes it more "inherently dangerous" than other industries. Today it is a dangerous industry because, as stated earlier, its immaturity makes the technology risky. But we should also oppose it because of its relationship to nuclear weapons proliferation, energy centralisation and the nuclear state. Finally, capitalism uses the prospect of expanded nuclear power to avoid serious These are all issues concerned with decision-making and control. The capitalist system's dependence on accumulation and profits means that it is incapable of making rational decisions about nuclear power, just as it is incapable of rationally tackling climate change and energy use in general. The whole energy sector urgently needs a plan under workers and community control. "Environmentalism" Lately, several former opponents of nuclear power have become advocates, seeing it as a means of mitigating climate change. George Monbiot's views are the ones that are most prominent - and he is the most recent convert - but others include a former director of Greenpeace and a former Green Party Parliamentary Not long ago, George Monbiot was decrying environmentalists whose attitude is "infused with magical thinking, in which technology is expected to solve all political and economic problems", stating that "Technological change is important, but it will protect the biosphere only if we also tackle issues such as economic growth, consumerism and corporate power". As nuclear states are even starting to review their commitment to nuclear power, Monbiot has dropped his arguments that the technology will come too late to have any serious effect and embraced the technofix: "The only viable low-carbon alternative we have at the moment is nuclear power." He has incorrectly claimed that the scientific debate on the safety of ionising radiation is closed. Many of his opponents, of course, agree with him on this, but say the science states precisely the opposite to what he claims. Their stand, exaggerating the dangers and mystifying the technology, along with incautious claims about the carbon dioxide emissions and costs of nuclear power, has made Monbiot's position look more rational*. Over the years, George Monbiot has made incisive analyses of climate change, decrying government and corporate obstruction and making interesting proposals for low energy housing, transport etc. He has denounced "growth" and "consumerism" as the cause of our problems. What he has never shown is how a low energy, "no growth" society is Marxist analysis of Irish crisis. Amazon and from www.socialistdemocracy.org compatible with the capitalist system, profit and accumulation, which he has never properly analysed or criticised. This has now led him to support one of capitalism's worst technologies. Monthly