Going Nuclear

On April 26, 1986 at 01:23:43, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine suffered a cataclysmic melt down. To this day, it is considered the worst nuclear power plant disaster to have ever occurred, and it is the only registered level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

On the eve of the Chernobyl remembrance day, I came across an article in the BusinessMirror where Acting Energy Secretary Jose Ibazeta was quoted as saying:

"There’s nothing wrong with nuke [plants] except claims that it may be in an earthquake [fault line]. And so far, after all the tremors we have had in the past 20 years, the pavement of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant did not even crack,” said Ibazeta, adding there should be no fear of having nuclear energy.

Construction on the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) was started in 1977. In 1979 a safety inquiry allegedly found over 4000 defects, temporarily halting construction. By 1984 the BNPP was nearing its completion, but after the overthrow of Marcos, and the Chernobyl incident itself, a decision was made to mothball the entire plant.

Now, according to the BusinessMirror article, there are plans to construct US$ 4 billion worth of new nuclear power plants in the Philippines. A source was cited that the government is currently looking at the possibility of bringing in two 1,000-MW units of nuclear-power reactor from Korea, and that talks are ongoing.

The Acting Energy Secretary is quite right in saying that a properly constructed, and well maintained nuclear power plant is quite safe. We only have to look at Japan to see nuclear power plants in action close to a fault line.

However, we should not forget that the Chernobyl incident on reactor 4 was partly caused, rather ironically, by a safety test. This type of test had been run on the reactor before, but this time the test was conducted using new voltage regulators which had just been installed. Unfortunately, a proper exchange of information and coordination between the team in charge of the test, and the personnel in charge of the safety of the nuclear reactor, had not taken place. Therefore, inadequate safety precautions were included in the test programme, and the operating personnel were not alerted to the nuclear safety implications of the test and its potential danger. As the power-regulating system and emergency safety system of the fourth reactor were shut down for the test on April 25, the reactor was unknowingly placed in a state which primed it for a positive feedback loop. The formation of steam voids decreased the ability of the liquid water coolant to absorb neutrons, which increased the reactor's power output, causing yet more water to flash into steam, and yet a further power increase. In the end, reactor 4 exploded unleashing 400 times more radioactivity than was released at Hiroshima. The fallout was detected over all of Europe, and Chernobyl to this day is still not habitable.

Granted, today's nuclear reactors are much more safe than Chernobyl's. However, even if they are safer today, we should not forget that a major cause of the disaster was human failing. This is a view supported by the IAEA. Although the Soviet Union at the time did not have a stellar safety record, human failing has been the cause for other nuclear disasters as well. After all, it takes only one mistake to set in motion a sequence of events that can result in a serious disaster.

Then we should not forget the countless dangers that come with the disposal of spent nuclear fuel. Apart from choosing a proper site for storage that will withstand millennia, it only takes one unscrupulous person to get his or her hands on this material to create a dirty bomb.

If the reactors do come online here in the Philippines, let's hope all the proper procedures are in place to stop any human failing...