Look Ma, No Fire Protection
Alternet is featuring a story about the Bush administration’s attempts to reduce nuclear power plant safety requirements. This news might have slipped by unnoticed, except Mainichi Daily News is reporting on a steam explosion at a Japanese nuclear plant that killed four and injured seven workers today. Bush’s plan, against this background, seems haphazard.
At least this accident didn’t result in a radiation leak, the the 1999 Tokaimura nuclear accident did. One worker was immediately killed and two others seriously injured when a batch of uranium ‘went critical.’ At least one of the injured workers died during recovery, and countless others will be subject to as-yet unknown health effects from the radiation leak.
Most people think of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island in this context, but InfoPlease has a convenient short-list of nuclear disasters, Green Peace has much longer (though more complex) list of nuclear accidents.
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[...] Because of the need for power, the remaining reactors of Chernobyl NPP were kept in operation until 2000, and and even now there are 12 RBMK reactors like those at Chernobyl in operation in Russia and Lithuania. Safety (and training, I hope) is said to have improved. Westron, a joint venture between Westinghouse and Hartron, is bringing Western-style safety systems to Eastern European power plants, even though they often get paid in IOUs. (Sadly, “Western-style safety” may not mean what it used to. Practice here.) [...]