Several people have asked me what this incident says about whether nuclear plants are built to withstand earthquakes. Plants are supposed to be able to handle the anticipated quake intensity and likelihood relevant to their location, but it appears that this quake in Japan was far stronger than anticipated. Moreover, the problem here looks to be more of a power supply issue, a secondary effect of the quake and tsunami. It's the combination of events that created the bigger problem here. As Ellen Vancko, the nuclear energy project manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists and a former staffer at the North American Electric Reliability Council told me earlier today, "The one lesson we can draw from Japan is no matter how technologically advanced we are as a society, it's virtually impossible to plan for every curveball Mother Nature is going to throw at us." That said, it's probably not a great idea to put a nuclear power plant on an active fault line. [my emphasis]

Proponents argue that the energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) for nuclear power is sufficient to power our societies, that nuclear power can be scaled up quickly enough as fossil fuel supplies decline, that there will be sufficient uranium reserves for a massive expansion of capacity, that nuclear is the only option for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and that nuclear power can be operated with no safety concerns through probabilistic safety assessment (PSA).

I disagree with all these assertions. Looking at the full life-cycle energy inputs for nuclear power, it seems to be barely above the minimum EROEI for maintaining society, and the costs (in both money and energy terms) are front-loaded.

Scaling up nuclear capacity takes extraordinary amounts of both money and time. While construction can be speeded up, where this has been done (as it was in Russia), the deleterious effect on construction standards was significant. Uranium reserves, especially the high-grade ores, are depleting rapidly. The reduction in carbon dioxide emissions over the full life-cycle do not impress me. In addition, nuclear authorities make risk decisions without informing the public. They have consistently made risk calculations that have grossly underestimated the potential for accidents of the kind that can have generational impacts.

In my view, nuclear power represents an unjustified faith in the power of human societies to control extremely complex technologies over the very long term. Any activity requiring a great deal of complex and cooperative control will do badly in difficult economic times.

Also, no human society has ever lasted for as long as nuclear waste must be looked after. It needs to be held in pools on site for perhaps a hundred years in order to cool down enough for permanent disposal, assuming a form of permanent disposal could be conceived of, approved and developed. During this period, the knowledge as to how this must be done will need to be maintained, and this may be more difficult than is currently supposed.

We need to evaluate the potential for a nuclear future in light of the disaster in Japan. This was not unpredictable, and should have been accounted for in any realistic assessment of nuclear potential. It cannot realistically be described as a black swan event. [my emphasis]