Japan’s catastrophic weekend earthquake and tsunami have precipitated not only the nation’s worst emergency since the end of World War II, leaving more than 10,000 dead, but also the worst nuclear disaster to face the world since Chernobyl a quarter-century ago. The two explosions at a nuclear plant 150 miles north of Tokyo raise the possibility of dangerous radiation releases, although the threat to the Japanese people hinges on how much of the radiation is contained and which way the winds blow.
As The New York Times reports, the disaster appears nearly certain to chill the recent spurt of enthusiasm for nuclear plants in the U.S. and will raise new questions about the role nuclear power should play in the nation’s energy future.
“I think it calls on us here in the U.S., naturally, not to stop building nuclear power plants but to put the brakes on right now until we understand the ramifications of what’s happened in Japan,” Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut independent, said in a Sunday television appearance.
Still, the White House signaled that President Obama is not ready to abandon nuclear energy. “Information is still coming in about the events unfolding in Japan, but the administration is committed to learning from them and ensuring that nuclear energy is produced safely and responsibly here in the U.S.,” said Clark Stevens, an administration spokesman.
President Obama’s most recent budget proposal includes $36 billion for loan guarantees to spur the production of 20 new American nuclear plants. With climate change concerns increasing, nuclear energy has been perceived as a cleaner alternative to coal and oil. Those fuels have been linked to disasters of their own over the past year — namely, last year’s Upper Big Branch coal mine disaster in West Virginia and and the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the problems at the Fukushima Daiichi plant started when the earthquake and subsequent tsunami cut off the power used to fuel the cooling system, which served the plant’s six reactors. Without that system, and despite an improvised cooling effort using seawater, two containment buildings housing reactors exploded, prompting widepsread evacuations.
Authorities also said that radiation levels outside the plant were above legal levels, the Los Angeles Times reports, which sparked fears of a massive radiation release, though officials called that unlikely.
American lawmakers also expressed concern about the similarities between the Japanese safety processes and designs to those of many U.S. nuclear plants. “The unfolding disaster in Japan must produce a seismic shift in how we address nuclear safety here in America,” said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Penn.
