Nuclear - Energy Policy Analysis: A Conceptual Framework - page 50

immediately after the earthquake. Diesel engines were started to power reactor cooling. While the
cooling system for Unit 3 was undamaged, the other reactors were affected. The cooling systems
remained operational, but overheated. The cooling systems were repaired and activated in Units
1, 2, and 4 in the days following the emergency shutdown after cooling could resume. By March
15, 2011, all four reactors of Fukushima II had reached cold shutdown (Winter 2011).
The disaster at Fukushima I illustrates how poor design responses to foreseeable natural di-
sasters can produce catastrophic environmental costs, releasing large quantities of radioactive
contamination into the atmosphere and ocean and completely destroying valuable generating
plant assets. The contrast between the results at Fukushima I and the speed with which cooling
water was restored at Fukushima II units is striking, considering both plants are owned and oper-
ated by the same utility. Fukushima II incorporated more realistic information about the potential
severity of earthquakes and tsunamis into its design, and although it was damaged, it was able
to recover without release of nuclear materials or permanent loss of its assets. For example, at
Fukushima II, backup generators were located in waterproof buildings instead of in the turbine
building as at Fukushima I, and diesel fuel tanks for backup generators were not located where
they could be destroyed by a tsunami. Such precautions might have been taken at Fukushima I,
but the utility decided it was too expensive to make the necessary changes and therefore suffered
the expensive consequences.
Political repercussions from this event began soon after it occurred. On May 30, 2011, Ger-
man chancellor Angela Merkel abandoned plans laid only nine months earlier to extend the life of
Germany's nuclear power stations and ordered instead that they be phased out by 2022 (Cowell
2011). This decision is likely to have a profound effect on the German industrial sector, which uses
about half the electricity produced in the country. Earlier in May, Switzerland decided to abandon
plans to build new nuclear reactors and will phase out its existing plants when they reach the end
of their normal lives (Dempsey and Ewing 2011). Japan has made no announcement about its
future plans to construct nuclear plants.
REPROCESSING SPENT FUEL
Less than 1 percent of the uranium is typically burned in a reactor before it is discarded as “spent
fuel.” This is because of buildup of neutron-absorbing by-products in the fuel from the fission
process and because metal cladding on the fuel assembly weakens over time with exposure to
radiation. The remaining uranium and newly created fissile plutonium in spent fuel can be re-
claimed for future use in reactors or weapons by chemical reprocessing. However, in the United
States, the “once-through fuel cycle” is currently preferred in national policy over reprocessing
of spent fuel (Andrews 2008).
A Purex solvent extraction process has been used in the United States for many years to recover
fissile material from military waste and was seriously considered for reprocessing spent fuel from
nuclear electric generating reactors. In this process, spent fuel is chopped into small pieces and
dissolved in nitric acid; the uranium, plutonium, and remaining radioactive waste materials are
easily separated either for disposal or for shipment and further use as reactor fuel (Bishop and
Miraglia 1976, 2-3).
The primary radiological effluents are gaseous fission products and solid materials such as
U-235, krypton-85, iodine-129, iodine-131, carbon-14, tritium, and transuranic wastes (Bishop
and Miraglia 1976, 2-21). Of these, doses and potential health effects from exposure to krypton-85
are believed to be the most dangerous (USEPA 1973b, 124). Reprocessing spent fuel creates new
forms of radioactive waste that require remote handling and geological isolation and that have a