 | Civil disorder and nuclear power |
Nuclear fission, like any other energy source, carries benefits and risks. In discussion on future deployment of different sustainable energy sources, the commentary in this blog has placed a lot of emphasis on the rational weighting of factors such as: (i) lives lost per unit of energy delivered; (ii) costs expended and opportunity losses; (iii) reliability and stability for electricity provision, including essential services; (iv) risks of catastrophic failure of technologies (e.g., hydro dam burst, nuclear meltdown, fossil fuel explosions, super-volcano wipeout of solar capacity, etc.), (v) ability of different technologies to effectively mitigate anthropogenic global warming and close down fossil-fuel power stations [perhaps the most important single factor]; (vi) security of fissile material; (vii) ...and so on.However, there is one topic, related to the above, that has never been broached here. I was reminded of this recently by Geoff Russell:
About the only criticism of nuclear power that still carries any weight with me is the issue of what happens to a nuclear plant when civil order breaks down. I envisage something like Toshiba batteries all over remote areas of the planet or in clusters in not-so-remote areas but want to know more about what happens to a bunch of such batteries around Kampala during a coup or civil war. I figured a specific BNC thread on the issue might be helpful.The recent riots in the U.K. -- a small-scale example of civil disorder, shows that such examples of societal breakdown are not inconceivable. The most likely significant event is during open warfare, however, as Geoff pointed out. How vulnerable would current nuclear installations be to an invading army, for instance? Would they try to destroy them (in order to spread panic among the populace), or preserve them for the use of the occupying force? If civil society broke down, who would close down and secure the nuclear power stations? In the greater scheme of things, would this even be a high priority? Are there examples of wars in the last 50 years in which the invaded nation had nuclear power plants?
I frankly don't have any ready answers. I suspect that some technologies would be far safer than others in such circumstances -- for instance the Toshiba 4S batteries that Geoff mentioned would be self-cooling and buried underground. Tom Blees, in Prescription for the Planet, noted the following:
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