If You Want Clean Power, Go Fission

Nuclear accidents happen, but the risk of harm is minimal 

By Robert Hargraves. 

"Fission is in fashion as drawbacks of intermittent wind and solar power emerge. Fifty-seven nuclear plants are under construction around the world. The European Union is greenlighting new financing, while Boris Johnson in the U.K. and Emmanuel Macron in France have endorsed new domestic construction. China promises 10 new plants a year.

As the new reactors come into operation, some accidents may leak radioactive materials, but the radiation won’t harm people. We need to educate the public so that mass hysteria doesn’t stop progress toward reliable, economical CO2-free energy.

No one was harmed by radiation at Japan’s Fukushima in 2011 or Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island in 1979. At Ukraine’s Chernobyl in 1986, 134 emergency workers were treated for acute radiation poisoning, and 28 died. Up to 15 children died of thyroid cancer after drinking milk from cows that ate grass contaminated with radioactive iodine. But those cancers were preventable had authorities warned against drinking the milk for 90 days.

Regulatory limits on annual exposure around nuclear plants are less than a year’s background radiation from rocks and cosmic rays. Radiation scientists now know that people can safely absorb that much radiation every day because DNA is repaired and cells are replaced constantly in living beings. Yet regulators’ mandated limits, at a thousandth of what’s really harmful, create fright of all radiation. No one needed to be evacuated at Fukushima or around Chernobyl, places where thousands died from unwarranted fear and relocation stress.

Regulators try to assuage fears by reassuring the public that accidents won’t happen. A 2012 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission report predicts an accident rate of only 1 per 300,000 reactor-years. Westinghouse, which built many of the plants, claims a rate of 1 per 4 million reactor-years. The historical figure is 1 per 17,000 reactor-years.

The public needs to know that accidents happen, but harm to the public from radiation is unlikely. The public understands that occasionally airplanes crash and kill hundreds of passengers. Airlines explain safety procedures on every flight. People still fly. Unless we tell the truth about nuclear power, the next nuclear accident may end mankind’s only hope for the energy we need.

Mr. Hargraves teaches at Dartmouth’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and is a co-founder of ThorCon International, a nuclear-engineering company."