What is the scariest thing about nuclear power? The bomb, right? Ok – but let’s set that aside for the moment and look at it separately later. What is the second scariest thing? I say it’s meltdown. The worst nuclear power accidents in human history, in descending order of severity, are Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island. These were all disasters in their own way. Let’s explore each briefly and evaluate the real risks from nuclear power in the U.S. today. Most of the information below is summarized from World Nuclear Association, Nuclear Now, and Chernobyl. The last source is a fantastic example of art that stokes fear about nuclear power but contains many accurate and interesting details.
Chernobyl
The most serious commercial nuclear accident in human history happened in Chernobyl in 1986. It happened at a time when Chernobyl was ruled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, an organization which systematically murdered approximately 60,000,000 human beings. I say this only to point out that the value they placed on human life was not comparable to the west. The Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse at the time of the accident, and their industrial operations lacked “safety culture.” Chernobyl’s Reactor 4 (a dangerously cheap “RBMK”-style reactor) melted down and lost approximately 5 percent of its core contents to the surrounding environment. The accident resulted from several contributing factors:
- Lack of a reactor containment building.
- Forming a positive void coefficient in the reactor cooling system, which caused a runaway reaction.
- Peculiar control rod tip design that exacerbated runaway conditions.
None of these flaws are permitted in modern commercial nuclear reactor design, even in Russia. To my knowledge, none of them were ever allowed at commercial reactors in the U.S. Considering that Chernobyl is the only commercial nuclear accident that appears to have killed anyone, and the second and third worst accidents had containment buildings, it seems likely a proper containment building would have changed everything in Chernobyl. ProPublica cites the lack of a containment building as the number one factor that caused the Fukushima accident (summarized below) to differ from Chernobyl.
30 people died within three months of the Chernobyl meltdown from Acute Radiation Syndrome. This syndrome was diagnosed and confirmed in 134 cases of onsite workers in total. The UN identified 5000 thyroid cancers, resulting in 15 fatalities. Aside from that, they found “no evidence of major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident.”
Fukushima Daiichi
The most serious accident in Japanese commercial nuclear history happened because of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami. Although the disaster significantly reduced global confidence in nuclear power, an objective analysis of the following facts from the accident demonstrates the radically misunderstood safety of nuclear power generation:
- The magnitude-9.0 earthquake was the largest earthquake ever recorded in the region, and the fourth largest ever recorded in human history.
- The resulting tsunami killed approximately 20,000 Japanese people
- The earthquake and tsunami together destroyed or partially collapsed more than a million buildings, and damaged more than $400 billion (2024 USD) of property in Japan alone.
- Not even one of the 20,000 deaths is associated with nuclear radiation, and authorities have not identified even one case of radiation sickness.
- Despite the size of the earthquake, not a single reactor in Japan was compromised by seismic activity.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2016/03/5-years-since-the-2011-great-east-japan-earthquake/473211/
Japan eventually shut down all its reactors because of the incident (more than 48,000 MW of nuclear generating capacity; representing approximately 30 percent of Japan’s electric power consumption). Most of this capacity was replaced by burning imported natural gas. The incident also influenced other countries to reduce nuclear power generation. For example, Germany decided to shut down all its more than 20,000 MW of nuclear generating capacity (representing 25 percent of Germany’s electric power consumption). Most of this capacity has been replaced by burning coal.
Although significant tidal waves hit four nuclear power plants in the region, only the Fukushima Daiichi plant lost auxiliary power, which caused three of its reactors to eventually melt down because of the loss of cooling water. The Daiichi rectors would have proven to be robust against the Tsunami if certain aspects of its operation were improved prior to 2011 (e.g., more conservative Tsunami modeling, placing emergency power inland or higher up, protection of backup seawater pumps, accident management training). However, the containment and careful management of the radiation hazards associated with the meltdowns after the tidal wave subsided should have been held up as a major success for nuclear safety, considering the death and destruction caused by the largest Tsunami ever recorded in Japan.
Three Mile Island
The most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear history happened at Three Mile Island near Middletown, Pennsylvania, when the Unit 2 Reactor melted down partially on March 28, 1979. Its small radioactive release had no detectable human health effects, but it caused major regulatory changes with respect to emergency response planning, reactor operator training, human factors engineering, radiation protection, and greater regulatory oversight. The accident was caused by a pilot-operated relief valve that did not reseal, and operators did not have information indicating that the valve was stuck open. This issue is easily prevented through installation of valves
Source: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html
If Three Mile Island was a disaster, it was a public relations disaster. It coincidentally occurred immediately after the movie China Syndrome came out, which stoked public fear about a more catastrophic nuclear accident. This public relations disaster led to a vast reduction in new nuclear power generation in the country, and closure of many perfectly good, incredibly cheap-to-operate nuclear power plants. Its likely that the fear caused by this incident led to the increases in the costs to build and operate nuclear power plants in the U.S., which has stopped the nuclear industry from keeping pace with energy demand growth.
Final Thoughts
France has consistently generated a higher portion of its electricity from nuclear power than any other country. Its nuclear power production peaked in 2006, when more than 78 percent of its electricity came from nuclear power. Today that number is closer to 65 percent[1]. The worst nuclear accident in their history was a cooling system failure at the Saint-Laurent nuclear plant in 1990; no radioactive material was released outside of the plant.
The factors that led to the Chernobyl disaster have never been observed (or legal) in the U.S. The factors that led to the Fukushima disaster have never been observed in the U.S. On a total capacity basis, the U.S. has produced far more nuclear power than any other country without the loss of a single human life as the result of a commercial nuclear power accident. Unfortunately, popular entertainment and media have stoked irrational fear of American nuclear power, which has led to the demand for ever-increasing regulatory burden on an industry that already had a tremendously safe operating record. But the fear of cost escalation is rational, as the U.S. can no longer afford to add nuclear power capacity – few projects are completed, and all come in vastly over budget.
The following figure compares the deaths associated with nuclear power worldwide to other scalable, centralized power sources.
Source: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/externalities-of-electricity-generation
Consider the ways in which our instincts prevent us from evaluating risks properly. People fear flying, but riding in an airplane is statistically much safer than riding in a car.
The leading causes of death in the west are all lifestyle diseases that can be avoided through diet and exercise. The biohacker Bryan Johnson talks about how he eats according to an algorithm that tells him what is best for his health, based on verifiable markers through blood and organ testing. The algorithm displaces his appetite as the decision-maker, because his appetite would prefer things that would slowly kill him.
We, in the U.S., must ask ourselves whether we are serious about truly carbon-free power generation possibilities for the next generation, possibilities that don’t come with reliability tradeoffs. We must ask whether we are willing to look with an objective view at the fear-producing content on nuclear power from Greenpeace, petroleum interests, and entertainment studios. I am for more nuclear power for the U.S., because I believe in its safety record.
[1] https://ideas.energy/france-2023