Assessing Risk of Nuclear Disaster

I commented at LoOG: 

I started this as a reply to Pat above, but it just got longer and longer and longer, and it’s probably the most significant thing I’ve written about Fukushima since it all went down, so I decided to start a new thread with it.

I was a proponent of nuclear power before the Fukushima disaster, and I’ve had a long six months or so to think about this, but I’m not sure if I’m still on board with nuclear because: human error rates are always higher than we estimate them to be. I’m not sure the real risks are worth the benefits; so I’m skeptical of the way we usually evaluate risk when it comes to nuclear power.

In the case of Japan, the tsunami affected sparsely-populated coastal areas (Japan’s infrastructure has already been shaped by insider’s knowledge of risk distributed over thousands of years of seismic activity.) Nevertheless, the tsunami still managed to kill almost 30,000 people. This speaks to the sheer power of a 9.2 quake right offshore more than it does to poor planning à la New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. For what Fate dealt it, Japan did a hell of a job minimizing casualties.

In contrast to the 30,000 tsunami victims, the nuclear meltdown so far has sentenced about eighty people to death from various cancers, according to certain epidemiology panels. This number could be way off-base, but even if it wildly underestimates increases in the incidence of cancer, the point is that the number of deaths-by-tsunami is significantly larger than the deaths-by-nuclear-meltdown. Therefore, in consideration of a worst-case scenario like Fukushima, nuclear power is not that much of a threat to public safety. Or so the proponent’s argument goes.

This argument misses the point that nuclear disaster – even if properly managed – represents a deceptively large economic and social cost. Right now in Fukushima City, Koriyama City, Sendai, and even Tokyo (four urban centers with a combined population of almost forty million people) there are places where the risk of cancer significantly increases after only a few years of normal lifestyle. Where these places are is determinable, especially with so many amateurs wielding Geiger counters and the crowd-sourcing opportunities offered by information technologies. (One of things I want to do with my future medical degree is to create a global toxin crowd-sourced platform.)

Right now, all the people who live in these “hot spots” have modified their lifestyles considerably while they wait for further instructions from the government and scientific experts. (This NHK documentary describes the stress of living in hot spots: http://www.nippon-sekai.com/main/articles/fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-power-plant-crisis/nhk-special-japans-nuclear-crisis-part-2/). These people don’t or can’t go outside, or they have to minimize their exposure to radiation. They can’t start businesses or buy homes, because they may become part of an ever-expanding evacuation zone in the near future.

Accordingly, the economies of five or ten prefectures have been permanently set on courses for destruction. Tohoku is a region which derives its wealth from the pursuits of agriculture, industry, and tourism, much like the Midwest in the United States (minus tourism perhaps). What do you think would happen if even a small amount of nuclear fall-out covered the Midwest from Denver to Detroit? Staple products like corn and wheat would see significant losses (What kinds of images does the phrase “Chernobyl apple” or “Fukushima peach” conjure up? Would you consider buying such products at the supermarket?); and no one would buy Ford, Chrysler, or GM products, just as American companies have stopped importing the hypodermic needles one of my students normally inspects. The motor and steel cities would crumble. Such is happening to northern Japan. Everything that region produces is unmarketable for the next hundred years.

Accordingly, in the six months after the earthquake and nuclear disaster, there has been a brain drain of epic proportions. The wealthy can afford to leave. Foreigners like me can come back to America and weather the comparably-mild displeasures of unemployment for six months and then go start taking classes at Harvard next week. Some of my wealthier professional students have accepted fellowships abroad, or sent their children to international boarding schools, or moved to other cities in Western Japan. Doctors and lawyers and other knowledge-based professionals can perform their services anywhere. The working class – and particularly farmers – remain. This is remarkably unjust.

The risk-management models for nuclear power all miss this human story. It is a unique and significant psychological, black swan consideration that doesn’t exist for other power sources. Oil spills may ravage a region, but no one is afraid of gumbo or Gulf Albacore.