Nuclear Energy Poses Little Risk to Public Health

On the 11th of March 2011, Japan was hit with a magnitude 9.1 earthquake—the world’s third largest since 1900. The earthquake itself causes relatively little damage but triggers a tsunami of unprecedented violence—according to the official figures released in 2022, there were 15,899 people dead, 2,526 missing, and 6,167 injured. There were a further 2,202 disaster-related deaths from evacuation stress, interruption of medical care, or suicide. [60] Over 1,000 aftershocks are recorded during the rebuilding efforts, including 80 over magnitude 6.0, which is considered strong. A million buildings are damaged, several ports are completely destroyed, all infrastructures are heavily disrupted. The Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami is the most expensive natural disaster in history.

The earthquake also induced the shutdown of numerous power plants in the northeastern part of Honshu, Japan’s main island. This includes the successful automatic safety trigger on all eleven nuclear units that were concerned, spread over four sites. The power grid fails. However, electricity is needed to run the emergency core cooling system. Diesel generators should be available as backup. Unfortunately, when the tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the wave was 14 metres high—much higher than the 5.7 metres protecting levee. The whole site is flooded, including the diesel generators which are rendered useless. Emergency batteries can be used as an ultimate resource, but they only last a few hours. All three reactor cores eventually largely melt in the first three days, with high radioactive releases on the fourth and sixth days.

Reading first-hand recollections of these events, whether from civilians or professionals from the rescue teams, is a real lesson in humility. The perspective of a full-blown nuclear catastrophe close to a major urban area like Tokyo is beyond scary. Containing the incident on an island nation that just went through one of the worst natural disasters of modern history, with the aftershocks serving as constant reminder, is beyond brave.

Yet, despite these extremely adverse conditions, the consequences from the nuclear incident itself were relatively mild. According to the World Health Organization, "there were no acute radiation injuries or deaths among the workers or the public due to exposure to radiation resulting from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station accident. [...] From a global health perspective, the health risks directly related to radiation exposure are low in Japan and extremely low in neighbouring countries and the rest of the world." [61]

Moreover, the lessons learned from the accident were completely integrated by the nuclear industry. By 2016, the post-Fukushima safety upgrades represented a global spending of $ 47 billion. [62] The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), for example, required all commercial nuclear power plants to implement measures such as the maintenance of capabilities to maintain safety functions after a large-scale nuclear disaster, of to update evaluations on the impact from earthquakes and floods.

Nuclear energy is dangerous. Flying an airplane is dangerous, driving a car is dangerous, eating mushrooms is dangerous. On any normal day, we engage in countless dangerous activities. Yet, we don't feel constantly threatened. That is because human ingenuity makes dangerous things safe.

Nuclear energy, in particular, is not exempt from the great responsibility that comes with great power. Quite the contrary: safety and security are the core concerns from all parties involved. Decades of experience have enabled an exemplary safety record. Renewables and nuclear both cause around 0.03 casualties per TWh of energy produced. This includes deaths from air pollution and accidents in the supply chain, over the entire life cycle. The death toll from gas is a hundred times higher, and coal a thousand times higher. [63] If a country like the USA were to shut down their nuclear power plants, the worsening of air quality alone would result in an additional 5,200 premature deaths per year. [64] Ironically, coal plants even discharge more radioactive pollutants into the atmosphere than nuclear plants. [65]

As for Japan, the government has not turned its back on nuclear energy. Twelve reactors have been restarted since 2015, and an additional sixteen are currently in the process of restart approval. The Japanese government aims for nuclear power to provide over 22% of the country’s electricity needs by 2030.

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