Growing up in the US in the 70s, we accepted the commonly
held – but false – belief that if you dug straight down from America, through
the planet, through the core, to the other side, you’d wind up in China.
Recently I screwed around with an app that tells you
exactly where you would wind up if you did exactly that. And from most places in the US, that would be
somewhere in the middle of the South Pacific ocean, literally in the middle of
the ocean. To come up in China, you’d
have to start digging somewhere in Brazil, Paraguay or Argentina. But d’uh!
Both the US and China are well north of the Equator. Shouldn’t this be obvious?
Which made “The China Syndrome” even more puzzling. We have smart people designing nuclear power
plants, and presumably equally smart (?) people concerned about what might go
wrong. Assuming they’re not planning on
building these plants in Paraguay, why would they assume a meltdown would go
all the way to China? Especially a plant
in Japan…
Anyhow. I also had
occasion, when driving back from New Jersey, to drive down past Three Mile Island. My toll-free route takes me past Harrisburg,
either north of TMI across the Susquehanna River on 83/581, at Harrisburg, or
well south of it on Route 30 from Lancaster to York. My cousin Jimmy, upon learning of my travels,
informed me of the location of TMI, which I had NO CLUE was near
Harrisburg. On an occasion of leaving NJ
in the middle of the day and not close to midnight, I had extra time and
decided to drive past it.
It’s a small island off the east bank of the river, which
is pretty wide, though not nearly as wide as it is down in Maryland where 95
crosses over it on the Tydings Bridge.
There are four cooling towers.
The southern two are inactive and that reactor has remained shut down
since the incident in 1979. The northern
two still belch steam, as the northern reactor is still in operation. Presumably the issues of 1979 have been
resolved. But if there is a problem, it
will melt down to the South Pacific, not China.
X-Men
Origins: Wolverine is a recent MCU film. We see Logan (Hugh Jackman) aka Wolverine,
and his brother Victor (Liev Schreiber) aka Sabretooth grow up, serve in the
Union Army, the AEF, and at D-Day taking out German bunkers on Omaha
Beach. Then they wind up in Vietnam, and
Logan gets fed up and quits, eventually hooking up with the babacious Lynn
Collins. Eventually his exploits land
him at Three Mile Island, where he and Sabretooth take on Deadpool 1.0. Earlier in the film Ryan Reynolds treats us
to a smart-ass version of his later self, so the film is worth watching for
that alone, but I find Lynn Collins another good reason. Note:
Taylor Kitsch is here as Gambit, a New Orleans-based superhero who
throws playing cards at people and makes stuff happen that way. He joined Lynn Collins in “John Carter”, with
him as the title character and her as Deja Thoris, the heroine of that story. ANYHOW.
“The China Syndrome”
came out before the TMI incident, and takes place at a reactor in L.A. Jack Lemmon plays the stressed out plant
boss, Jane Fonda is a hot reporter trying to break out of soft news about tiger
birthdays at the zoo and do serious s**t about reactors melting down. Michael Douglas is a renegade cameraman who
wants to blow this whole thing wide open.
Part of me wonders why they build reactors where earthquakes happen most
often (yeah, how about that, Japan?) but the general idea was that the greedy
bastards who built the thing falsified the records and left the plant built
unsafely. This begs the question,
however: are reactors safe IF properly
built? Are they safe if built in an
earthquake-prone area? Is nuclear power
only unsafe if you cut corners and cheap it out, or can it be made safe? The movie really doesn’t answer these questions. But Jane Fonda is undoubtedly hot, especially
as a redhead.
Which leads me to my next topic: brief discussions of the
three most infamous reactor failures, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and
F-U-Shima.
Three
Mile Island (March 28, 1979). What’s remarkable is that the failure at TMI
was almost exactly the problem depicted in “The China Syndrome” released
EARLIER (March 16, 1979). A valve stuck
open, but another sensor gave false readings of high coolant levels, resulting
in a situation where the readings were mutually inconsistent and prevented the
crew from correctly ascertaining the problem and fixing it quickly. Some radiation was released, but no meltdown
occurred. Today, the unit which failed
(TM2) is closed, and has been since the accident. The northern unit, TM1, remains in operation
but will close in 2019.
The shock of having Three Mile Island fail in exactly the
same way predicted by the movie gave serious impetus to the movement against
nuclear energy, and Fonda herself became a vocal opponent to nuclear energy and
an advocate of using NVA anti-aircraft to shoot down US nuclear power plants.
Chernobyl (April
1986). Next to this one, TMI was much
less (level 5 on a scale of 7) – moreover, no one died as a result of TMI and
as of today the area is non-contaminated.
We were in Paris by the time TMI occurred, but were still living there
when the Ukrainian reactor blew up.
There was an explosion and a leak, resulting in enormous amounts of
radiation being released – the equivalent
of a nuclear attack. 28 rescue
workers died soon after, 14 later died of cancer, and 15 cancer deaths from the
surrounding population have been noted.
F-U-Shima (2011). Here an earthquake AND a tsunami screwed
everything up, but experts concluded that the plant should have been able to
prepare for these events (which Japan is well acquainted with) and even
allowing for the natural disasters, the engineers still did not do enough to prevent problems,
including a partial meltdown and release of radioactive material. Unlike Chernobyl, there were no immediate
deaths, but they estimate that 130-640 will eventually die from cancer caused
by the radiation leaked out. There’s
also talk that the Pacific Ocean, as far east as the west coast of the US, is
still contaminated by radiation. Mind
you, the plant is currently operating today.
Nuclear
energy. Think of this:
until the early 1900s, most of the world had NO electricity. Now we take it for granted and freak out if
the power goes out. Notwithstanding
mankind’s ability to live and enjoy life for centuries before Edison and Tesla
gave us 110/220 volts, abandoning it now would be unthinkable. So how to reliably, consistently, and
sustainably provide this to as many of us as possible remains an issue.
In “The China Syndrome”, plant
supervisor Godell (Jack Lemmon) claimed that his power plant provided 10% of
the local energy needs of L.A. Today,
nuclear power provides 11% of worldwide needs, as much as 21% for OECD
countries, whichever those are.
Ironically, aside from those pesky and inconvenient meltdowns and leaks,
nuclear power is actually very clean relative to other forms of generation
(e.g. oil, coal, and natural gas). From
what I understand, nuclear reactors are specifically designed not to accumulate
critical mass and allow an actual nuclear explosion to take place. And even the worst incidents, both rated 7
out of 7 on the scale of “nuclear s**t hits the fan”, Chernobyl and F-U-Shima,
did not result in a meltdown to the opposite side of the globe.
Fossil fuel – coal, oil, and natural
gas – remains the primary source, though it’s the dirtiest and not renewable,
though I suppose biodiesel could be considered somewhat renewable. The problem is that crops grown for biodiesel
take up cropland and cannot be eaten.
Also consider, with regard to electric cars, that the electricity they
run on is mostly generated by fossil fuels which are just as environmentally
detrimental as the gasoline or diesel we might otherwise use in regular cars or
trucks. In fact, these days even vehicles running on gasoline or diesel are
close to zero emissions. Driving an
electric car is really not any better for the environment or for natural
resources than driving a regular gas or diesel vehicle. However, they are ALL vegan AND
gluten-free - and electric cars have NO GMOs. Anyhow.
No comments:
Post a Comment