Thomas Brocher of the U.S. Geological Survey and nuclear activist John Rosenthal discuss which coast has the bigger nuclear threat.
MSNBC TRANSCRIPT:
>>> well, as the full fear of a nuclear meltdown in japan continues to persist, the startling revelation today is that they were warned. wiki leaks cables revealing a u.n. official told the japanese government 2 years ago that its nuclear power plants were not capable of withstanding powerful earthquakes. in fact concerns with the design of the plants’ containment system had been voiced as early as 1972. even more troubling, that same design is used here in america. “new york times” reporting that 23 reactors in 16 states use the containment vessel developed by ge which to this say is a make stakeholder in this network. experts have called for decades that this particular system may be more susceptible to explosions from hydrogen buildup, which is precisely what we have seen in japan. now, there are 66 nuclear power plants in the u.s., containing a total of 104 licensed nuclear reactors. the reactor with the highest risk ? rating, none other than new york’s independencian point energy center. you can see how close it is to north america’s most pop you lated city. to the west coast we go, the diablo canyon nuclear power plant has long been a focus of its concerns with the reactors located near the san andrea fault, step secretary stephen chu insists —
>> we don’t believe there’s a danger, but in any instance like this, when there are truly unfortunate events like what we are seeing in japan, what we do is we look and learn from that.
>>> joining us is thomas m. broker, the director of the science center for the u.s. geological center. and in fact we have — he appeared on “today” to voice those concerns.
>> what we have is a massive nuclear power plant, less than three miles from a major active earthquake fault that in 1927 generated a quake 7.3 on the richter scale.
>> john, what is your sense of both the government and industry’s state of play when it comes to american nuclear facilities?
>> well, my feeling is the same 30 years later. what we have are 104 nuclear power plants that all have the same generic risks. they’re all built on water for cooling. many are built on or near earthquake faults. as we’ve seen in japan, one of the greatest risks, in addition to a meltdown of the core when it can no longer get water, you also have the storage of spent fuel rods on ? site in non-contained pools, because there is no place to put — after 60 years, there is still no long-term storage of nuclear waste. so you have the danger of a core meltdown from the operation of a plant. you also have the danger of a meltdown from the lack of water surrounding these spent fuel rods that are not even in containment buildings. what we are now experiencing is the potential of the nuclear nightmare that we have known all along, and frankly the utilities have known it all along, which is why they required congress in 1957 to pass the price/anderson act which sets limits on liability in case of a nuclear accidents like this. they also had maximum credibility accident studies that showed if you have a meltdown like we are seeing in japan from the core meltdown or from the release of these storage pools, the maximum credibility accident that jimmy carter, as president of the united states, was aware of when he thought he might have to evacuate the tees coast because of the three mile island that would actually render an areaed size of pennsylvania uninhabitable.
>> thomas we heard the energy secretary characterize this earthquake as an unforeseen event. is it fair to characterize earthquakes along known fault lines as unforeseen events?
>> no, we don’t think so. the usgs, of which i am a member, is responsible for assessing size mchards of the nation. we look carefully at the past history of earthquakes along faults, and i don’t believe it should be a great surprise to any of us that a major earthquake could happen along a plate boundary such as that the japan islands and the pacific plate.
>> is it safe to say that a ? large earthquake will occur in north america at some point in the future?
>> yes, of course. that’s — about three years ago, the usgs and others were involved in a study that concluded in the next 30 years there would be at least one magnitude 6.7 or greater earthquake just in california alone with about a 97% probability. but in california it’s likely we will have the kind of earthquake we had inhquakes we’ve had in california and that we sxhekt in the future are something like 30 or even 900 times smaller than the earthquake we had last week in japan, because of the — the areas involved with the earthquake faulting are very much smaller in california than they are in japan.
>> turning back to the actual nuclear sites themselves, john, my understanding is the vast majority of these facilities received their licenses and operating agreements in the 1970s. indian point received theirs in 1976. a lots has changed since then, both in our understanding of geology and our understanding of nuclear technology player movement do you get any sense that either the utilities or the government are prepared to make the investments to update 40 and 50-year-old nuclear technology, even if it’s expensive?
>> well, we certainly are more at risk as a result of the older plants than the newer designs, but one thing that has never changed in 60 years. there is still no solution to long-term storage of nuclear waste. these fuel rods are sitting at every nuclear power plant across the world. and certainly across the ? country, in storage pools without containment. there is no long-term storage. there isn’t even an idea of how to store these things long term. and what we’re talking about, and when you watch the images of the japan disaster, when you see explosions at nuclear — at power plants or if these storage pools, they are emitting large amounts of high-level nuclear waste materials. radioactive materials that get blown by the wind, and they are ingested. alpha emitter radiation is ingested as you breathe, and unfortunately it takes so long in most cases for cancers to show up, on some levels, i wish that radiation caused acne, because you would never have nuclear power. we are no safer now than we were 60 years ago as far as i’m concerned, because there’s no long-term storage of nuclear waste and there’s this economic incentive by the utilities to keep these plants operating even when they’re old, tired and leaking, because they all leak radiation on a regular base.
>> john, thank you for your time today. thomas broecher, thank you as well for educating us. we appreciate.