Like most Americans growing up before the Cold War went lukewarm, we just worry...a little. Back then we would practice for a nuclear disaster by retreating to fallout shelters built into each primary school. Periodically (at least 6 times a year) we were marched in an orderly fashion to a dimly-lit subterranean room marked “Fallout Shelter” (otherwise used to store schoolbooks and extra pencils) and told to lie on the floor in the fetal position until a bell rang out the “All Clear” signal.
As a child with a wild imagination, I can remember daydreaming about the apocalypse that I might have to return to after the drill: burned out cities, mushroom clouds in the distance, and my parent’s x-ray-like imprint on the living room walls - the only remaining reminder of authority in a world gone completely mad.
Reinforced by my favorite media of the day: Gozilla vs. Mothra movies, Steven King’s ´The Stand´, and countless other sci-fi classics that all predicted the doom of the human race in the very near future, it’s no wonder that most Americans my age are pretty darn sensitive about reactor meltdowns as they occur.
And growing up with events such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and The China Syndrome might explain my generation’s sensitivities; as we all remember (and can even interpret) what “Scram the son of a bitch” means and what “I know that vibration was not normal” refers to – as Jack Lemmon in his role of Jack Godell, the nuclear plant manager who finally sees the warning light of nuclear hazards, confesses all to Kimberly Wells (played by a voluptuous Jane Fonda).
Now a horror movie such as The China Syndrome might not have had such an impact on young minds as it did, if it had not been for the fact that the horror of the film (a nuclear reactor meltdown) was almost realized just 12 days after the movie was released, i.e. Three Mile Island. That’s like going to watch a new Godzilla movie, and then one week later seeing a huge Tyrannosaurs Rex reeking havoc in downtown Manhattan – in person!
But even after all of that hype growing up, I am not some anti-nuke whack job. After all, my 6th grade science project was on the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant of Peekskill NY, and I even won 3rd place. (That was before it blew up.) Then, as now, I understand the potential of nuclear energy. I feel that reactors should be relegated to powering space vehicles to Mars that have no chance of ever falling back to earth – that makes perfect sense to me.
Now while we all understand that this sort of pollution has the ability to spread globally, we don’t really understand how this might affect us individually.
You see, we as a human species are just not smart enough (yet) to deal with this Frankensteinian energy monster that we have created for ourselves and for future generations. Part of the problem is in the marketing, as pointed out this week by one of those late-night comedians: “Lesson learned: never label your most efficient form of creating energy the same as your most cataclysmic military weapon.”
Of course, the other part of the problem is in the engineering. We can build these plants, but we can’t keep the result of our efforts safe, as proven time and again, and most recently with the ongoing crisis at Fukushima Daiich.
Yesterday, an international team of experts measured 3.7 million becquerels per square meter of radioactivity about 25 miles away from this stricken set of reactors. To put that in perspective, standing in that same meter of space over a period of years would eventually kill you, or at least give you some form of cancer. There is also evidence of high amounts of radiation in the air and in the surrounding seawater as well. In short, it’s another nuclear mess that the global community will have a real hard time cleaning up.
Now, while we all understand that this sort of pollution has the ability to spread globally, we don’t really understand how this might affect us individually, hence the inference in my wife’s opening question. What she really wants to know is this: Will the fallout from Japan hurt my loved ones and I?
Personally, I don’t think any of our scientists can answer this with any exact certainty - if one looks at fallout in the broadest sense. Will more cancers appear in Japan or elsewhere? Perhaps. What would be the economic result on the global population if nuclear power was banned or curtailed? Probably not good. Can other reactors sitting on shifting tectonic plates and in tsunami-likely zones be made safe? Possibly - but not without a lot of work.
Like the half-life of Uranium 232, it may take us 69 more years to figure this all out, as the answers are really no more than faint glows in the dark.
Herojig is quirky kinda expat happily living in the Kathmandu valley with Nepali family, friends and a very large dog – now wondering if iodine tablets are stocked at the local cold store
herojig@gmail.com
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