RE: [cdn-nucl-l] Winnipeg Free Press Editorial, Oct 3 1999

["Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@aecl.ca>]

Thanks for your posting, Morgan.

...just a note on a couple of interesting items that have come up since the
Tokaimura accident - the first is that the (so far) non-lethal accident in
Japan totally eclipsed an Oct. 3 worker fatality at EDF's Flammanville NPP,
which was NOT radiation-related (Nucleonics Week, Oct. 7, 1999), and the
second is someone's observation that none of the 30-or-so world-wide
historical criticality accidents involved nuclear fuel with less than 5%
enrichment (typically, they involved chemical processing of HEU). This
latter is significant in the W-Pu MOX disposition issue, where G. Edwards
immediately seized on the Tokaimura accident as another reason for rejecting
the scheme ("Say no to plutonium imports," Letters, Montreal Gazette, Oct.
8, 1999).
Jaro.
> ----------
> From: 	Brown, Morgan[SMTP:brownmj@aecl.ca]
> Sent: 	Friday, October 15, 1999 12:49 PM
> To: 	'cdn-nucl-l'
> Subject: 	[cdn-nucl-l] Winnipeg Free Press Editorial, Oct 3 1999
> 
> The Winnipeg Free Press ran an editorial on Sunday Oct 3 (after the
> Tokaimura accident was over).  It was  in favour (in a reluctant sort of
> way) of the continued use of nuclear power.  Here are some snip-its:
> 
> <BEGIN QUOTE>
> Genie in the nuclear bottle
> 
> The nuclear accident at Tokaimura, Japan has put a sharp point on one of
> the
> tough questions of the 21st century: Where will mankind find the power to
> drive economic expansion?  If the nuclear industry cannot find safe and
> trustworthy means of operating nuclear reactors, then acceptable power
> sources are not available.
> <SNIP>
> The leading way to meet those [Kyoto greenhouse gass emission] targets is
> to
> burn less coal and petroleum products.  Canada has steadily increased its
> coal and oil consumption, in part because Ontario Hydro closed some of its
> nuclear power stations and made up the difference by burning coal.
> 
> Canada is gambling that it can evade its Kyoto commitments because the
> United States will never agree to scale back greenhouse gas emissions and
> Canada can shelter behind the U.S. example.  But public intolerance of bad
> air must eventually force some effort to produce power in ways that do not
> provoke asthma attacks or envelop cities in brown clouds of industrial
> waste.
> <SNIP>
> The nuclear industry welcomed the Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gas
> emissions as a first step toward recognition that, with all its faults,
> nuclear power does less harm than thermal power.  Nuclear advocates point
> to
> the vast numbers of coal miners and respiratory disease patients who have
> fallen vicitm to coal and the relatively small numbers of people killled
> so
> far by nuclear power.  Yet the concentrated power of nuclear fuel is so
> awesome that the North American public continues to prefer the grime from
> a
> lump of coal to the eerie glow of nuclear fuel, whose terrifying power
> must
> be kept locked up in containment buildings for fear of the damage it can
> do
> to mortal human flesh.
> 
> That is why the industrial accident at Tokaimura touches a nerve in the
> millenial consciousness.  The genie that was unleashed over Hiroshima and
> Nagasaki at the end of the war has been kept bottled up most of the time
> since then.  While it remains bottled up, it offers the potential for
> enormous benefits, especially for countries whose energy supplies and
> living
> standards still lag far behind Canada's.  Every now and then, the demon
> breaks free - at Chernobyl, now at Tokaimura - and starts to fulfill the
> worst fears of those who thrilled to Jane Fonda's anti-nuclear message in
> the film The China Syndrome.
> 
> The Candu reactor design that Canada pioneered and still offers the world
> has yet to produce an accident on the scale of Chernobyl or Tokaimura.
> Ontario Hydro had to shut down its Candu plants because its management and
> operation fell short of international safety norms, but that showed that
> those Candus were mismanaged, not that Candu reactors are inherently
> unsafe.
> <SNIP>
> North America has deferred the nuclear question by damming rivers and
> poisoning the air.  Eventually, North Americans may have to follow the
> example of other countries and turn again to the genie in the bottle.  The
> Tokaimura accident indicates the need for a better bottle.
> <END QUOTE>
> 
> There was a letter to the editor of the WFP two days ago, by a Manitoban
> anti-nuclear activist, that decried the editorial.  Amongst several wrong
> statements, the author of the letter wrote that the gov't of Japan had
> said
> that the Tokaimura accident was over (i.e. the criticality had finished)
> several hours before it actually was over.  Is there any truth to this
> claim?
> 
> cheerio
> 
> Morgan Brown
> My thoughts alone.
> 
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