Turkey has just suffered a massive failure of its electricity grid. A long-lasting blackout spread over more than half of the country, leaving the capital Ankara and many large cities in the dark.
It may take a while to investigate the initial cause of that failure, but there already is one clear lesson: it has been a wake up call against the construction of nuclear reactors in earthquake- and blackout-prone Turkey.
Every knowledgeable engineer will confirm that a fragile and unstable grid requires more flexible power plants that can quickly turn on and off or promptly change their output, in order to help the electricity network find a new balance and stability. On the other hand, large nuclear power plants are the most unflexible source of energy, because they take several days to start, and while they can stop within seconds, every sudden shut down creates a safety risk and large financial loss. Because of this, nuclear reactors make the grid even more vulnerable, and are definitely not a suitable solution to the blackout problems.
Even worse, an operating nuclear reactor represents a real ticking bomb in case of a loss of electricity supply. Do not forget that it was actually the loss of electricity - and not directly the damage from the earthquake - that caused the nuclear reactors in Fukushima to melt down and explode, releasing the massive radiation cloud that contaminated large areas of land and sea. More than 150,000 people had to abandon their houses, villages, farms, livelihoods and sacred places where their families were buried, never to be able to return. They have lost nearly everything, and a number of them may die prematurely – especially the children who are most vulnerable to the radiation.
In Fukushima, the earthquake was the cause of a major black out, but it was the black out itself that eventually resulted in the nuclear disaster. This is because there is a high concentration of radioactive material inside every nuclear reactor, and its radiation generates huge amounts of heat even after the reactor has been stopped. A typical 1,200 MW reactor, such as the one planned for Akkuyu in Turkey, contains about 100 tons of highly radioactive fuel. This nuclear fuel still produces about 40 MW of heat when the reactor is stopped – this is enough to boil and turn roughly 50,000 liters of water into vapor every hour. This intense heat generated from the radioactive decay inside the reactor continues for days and weeks, and there is nothing that can stop it. The only way to prevent even a closed nuclear reactor from melting down (and releasing its radiation into the environment) is non-stop cooling. This however requires large motors and pumps to circulate thousands of liters of water through the reactor every minute.
Whenever there is a blackout (or even a simple failure of a transformer between the nuclear power station and the electricity transmission grid), the nuclear reactor has to stop, because the grid cannot take away the electricity it produces. But as the reactors stops, and with no power supply through the network, there is also no electricity to run the reactor cooling system. This is exactly what makes nuclear reactors extremely vulnerable to blackouts.
The only life-line in such a situation is formed by the backup diesel generators inside the nuclear power plant. They have to quickly start up to produce the electricity vitally needed for the reactor cooling systems. But if these diesel generators fail there is nothing that can stop the disaster. It only takes a few hours after the loss of cooling before the reactor begins to melt. In Fukushima, the first nuclear building exploded and released a radioactive cloud less than 24 hours after its reactor’s cooling system failed.
There are numerous studies into the problem. For example research by US Sandia National Laboratories shows that in the case of total failure of reactor cooling, radiation starts escaping in about 17 hours. What happened at Fukushima was a well known problem, but the government and the nuclear industry kept denying the risk by saying it was unlikely or even impossible that it could happen. Unfortunately, the reality has proven the opposite, at the cost of hundreds of billions of in economic damages and human suffering.
Before Fukushima, a very similar accident happened in Sweden in 2006. Following a black out and shut down of reactors at the Forsmark nuclear power plant, the backup diesel generators failed to start. The power plant went into darkness, computer screens in the control room went blank, and the indicators and control systems were down. It was only thanks to a huge stroke of luck that, twenty minutes later, at least some of the generators were eventually started up manually. It did not take even an earthquake or tsunami to cause a total black out and almost a major nuclear accident there.
There are many lessons that Fukushima has taught us. One of them is that no matter how technically advanced the nuclear reactor, there is always an unpredictable and deadly combination of human error, technological failure and natural disaster that can lead to a catastrophic nuclear accident. The other is that not even a rich country like Japan, famous for its robots and skills to handle major disasters, can handle a large nuclear reactor accident.
Many countries have started to take this problem seriously. Even the French nuclear Institute IRSN published a report in 2012 showing that a major nuclear accident in France could result in damages exceeding 540 billion EUR. The leader of the study, Patrick Momal was quoted as suggesting that it would be an “unmanageable European catastrophe”
I was a high school student in Czechoslovakia when the Chernobyl accident happened in 1986 and contaminated large parts of my country. In the past three years, I have travelled to Fukushima five times after the accident in 2011, working there as a radiation protection expert.
I will never forget the fear of mothers worried about their children, tears of teachers not able to protect their students, the despair of people left on their own and deceived by their government, and the hopelessness of those who had to flee and have not received the compensation or means to find a home and start a new life.
This is why I also want to share my horrifying experience and tell the truth about nuclear hazards: because we can’t allow Chernobyl and Fukushima to happen again. Turkey still has a chance to avoid such a fate by changing its mind about Akkuyu and other nuclear power plans. The simple fact is that the country does not need them to keep its lights on.
Jan Beranek currently works as Program Director for Greenpeace Mediterranean. He studied physics and has a university diploma for graduating a radiation protection course. He also led the response work of Greenpeace International in Japan after Fukushima accident in 2011.
[Image: Bags of Contaminated Soil in Fukushima. Piles of bags containing contaminated soil, mud and grass at a site in Iitate village, three and a half years after the nuclear accident. 10/27/2014 © Noriko Hayashi / Greenpeace]
(Unregistered) Shawjaws says:
There are large parts of this article that I disagree with. An unstable grid needs one thing to function well and that is for the vast ma...
There are large parts of this article that I disagree with. An unstable grid needs one thing to function well and that is for the vast majority of its energy to be running constantly and reliably for very long periods of time, known as a base load. Nothing damages existing electrical systems quite like varying loads of electricity. You do need to have flexible power sources in your electrical grid to increase the supply of electricity during peak demand times. The argument of Fukishima Daiichi when it comes to talking about Turkey is quite frankly invalid. The point of critical failure from Daiichi was due to the backup generators being located on the sea side of the plant. The sister plant, Fukushima Daini, that sits right next to Daiichi had their backup generators situated on the land side of the plant up a hill so when the Tsunami hit Daiichi went critical and Daini was largely fine. This unique set of geographical circumstances is something that Turkey don't have to worry about. As long as you have cooling and backup cooling running systems operational then your plant will be fine. I would like to add that the backup cooling comes solely from huge diesel powered generators so a blackout would have very minimal effect on a nuclear plant. The cables between the backup generators and the cooling system are built to be alot more robust than your traditional grid. In terms of the reliability of the generators that takes us into the interesting area called Functional Safety, they will be thoroughly assessed first by a LOPA (Layer of Protection Analysis), then most likely by a Fault Tree, they will then undergo a SIL assessment (Safety Integrity Level) and finally they will write up the SRS (Safety Requirements Specification) so they know the specifications of the equipment that they need to buy. As for the Sweden the "pure luck" quote, it is the words on Wikipedia referring to an article on a website that no longer exists. In reality what happened was that the generators started but the busbars didn't energise. So they manually restored power to the busbars, as stated in their emergency procedures, and everything was then fine. It was assigned a Level 2 on the Nuclear Event scale, upon request from management of the plant, but the Swedish Radiation Protection Authority didn't agree with this rating. Chernobyl was caused by a unique set of circumstances in which 1 man had a theory and forced others to do what he was telling them, as he was a member of the Communist Party at the time they did what they were told. The technicians on site could have prevented the tragedy by feared the consequences if they disobeyed management.
Posted 8 April, 2015 at 12:02 Flag abuse Reply
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Jan Haverkamp - Greenpeace says:
Dear Shawjaws, I sincerely disagree with most of your argumentation. Baseload and grid stability have little in common. Grid stability wa...
Dear Shawjaws, I sincerely disagree with most of your argumentation. Baseload and grid stability have little in common. Grid stability was in the old paradigm of base-peak-load already mainly defined by the demand side, which is highly variable, but largely predictable. What you need on the input side is generation that is likely to deliver that demand in a likewise predictable way. The paradigm on which that is done nowadays in modern grid structures with high (variable) renewable input is very comparable to the way that the variable output was planned always. The decentralised structure of most renewables is helping with that and grid stability in Northern Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Portugal is high... all countries with high renewable parts. Loss of off-site grid was a vital part of the Fukushima catastrophe - the fact that Daini survived was largely because one off-site connection survived the earthquake. The swamped diesel problem came on top of that, as did the swamped battery problem. But no nuclear operator will want to operate in an unstable grid environment. For very good reasons. You underestimate the complexity of what happened in Forsmark. SSM did put it on INES 2 for very good reasons. This was not peanuts and indeed a vital safety threat. All nuclear (and other) accidents are unique. That does Chernobyl not make stand out. You underestimate the training the staff of that reactor had and the technicalities that were involved in the development and the complexity of that accident. If you work with concentrated dangerous materials, you have to be aware that things can go wrong.
Posted 23 April, 2015 at 20:47 Flag abuse Reply
(Unregistered) peterW says:
Jan, you are rehearsing all the old and worn out 'arguments'. Worst of all: Greenpeace and you yourself are the perpetrators here....
Jan, you are rehearsing all the old and worn out 'arguments'. Worst of all: Greenpeace and you yourself are the perpetrators here. False claims, for example your "children who will die of radiation in Japan", should not be spread; it is malicious and damaging, akin to the damage hate crime does. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Real damage is done to people by the fear mongering of hysterical antinuclear activists. You yourself help to spread the worry, and then you dare to write: "I will never forget the fear of mothers worried about their children, tears of teachers not able to protect their students, the despair of people left on their own and deceived by their government, and the hopelessness of those who had to flee and have not received the compensation or means to find a home and start a new life." Have the courage to dip into information that is difficult to stomach for you, read Will Boisvert's "Five Surprising Public Health Facts About Fukushima": "Four years after the Fukushima nuclear accident, which catalyzed fears around cancer epidemics and large radioactive exclusion zones, it’s time to take stock of the scientific consensus on the health effects of the reactor meltdown. Increased scanning for thyroid cancer found that cancer rates were in fact lower for children in Fukushima than in other parts of Japan. Only a clearer perspective of such public health findings will allow us to understand future risks." http://theenergycollective.com/breakthroughinstitut/2214691/five-surprising-public-health-facts-about-fukushima?utm_source=tec_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter
Posted 11 April, 2015 at 4:13 Flag abuse Reply
Dear Peter Weiss, My colleague Jan Beranek did not write about "children who die in Fukushima", although there may well be children th...
Dear Peter Weiss, My colleague Jan Beranek did not write about "children who die in Fukushima", although there may well be children that will die prematurely because of the Fukushima radiation - even if you will not find them in the statistics. He writes that children are the most vulnerable and that is scientific fact. But you are twisting his words and I warn you (once more) that we do not tolerate that kind of propaganda twisting of words in this blog comment part. Nobody sofar has argued that the evacuations were not necessary - in contrary, there has been a lot to criticise about how the evacuations were implemented. But you seem to imply that evacuations should not have taken place at all. Am I right? greetings, Jan Haverkamp
Posted 23 April, 2015 at 20:39 Flag abuse Reply
Jan, I do not twist anything here: in the article Jan Beranek writes:"They have lost nearly everything, and a number of them may die prematurely – especially the children who are most vulnerable to the radiation." And you are repeating: "there may well be children that will die prematurely because of the Fukushima radiation" adding a IMO heinous "even if you will not find them in the statistics". UNSCEAR states that no negative health effects will likely occur from the radiation associated with the accident. Independent big scientifically sound Japanese studies have found similar. https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/pjab/89/4/89_PJA8904B-01/_pdf http://www.env.go.jp/en/headline/file_view.php?serial=499&hou_id=1922 Negative health effect will, according to the UNSCEAR report, result from anxiety and fear. Spreading fear, and in my book, talking about children that may "well be dying as a result of the Fukushima radiation" as you and Belanek are doing, without scientific back up to that claim, does just that. If I remember correctly, Greenpeace supported that travesty of a case for the "right" of a teenager of a misguided antinuclear minded couple in Koriyama City. In my book that teenager would have needed support to calm down her fears - but instead she was (ab)used as a political pawn in the antinuclear fight. I do not claim, as you seem to suggest, that no evacuations were needed around Daiichi. If there was a rational evaluation of the risk of radiation, that evacuation could have been organised in a civil manner - and the return ditto. The fear spread by antinuclear activists is not enhancing security, but sabotaging an evidence based approach to security.
Posted 16 May, 2015 at 0:17 Flag abuse Reply
Martin Weaver says:
http://www.greenpeace.org/japan/Global/japan/pdf/20141030_Fukushima_Monitoring_data_en.pdf Interesting to look at Greenpeace's indepe...
http://www.greenpeace.org/japan/Global/japan/pdf/20141030_Fukushima_Monitoring_data_en.pdf Interesting to look at Greenpeace's independent monitoring of Fukushima and compare the very highest levels to the ICRP dose limits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert#ICRP_dose_limits
Posted 19 April, 2015 at 21:34 Flag abuse Reply
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