Fukushima anniversary: B.C. looks south to closest nuclear plant
Sitting a six-hour drive south of Vancouver, the Columbia Generating Station is B.C.'s closet nuclear plant. As we near the one year anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, VO investigates.
An almost featureless long, flat stretch of highway leads to the Columbia Generating Station, near Hanford, Washington – the closest nuclear plant to B.C. and one that raises questions of how safe Canadians are in the event of a disaster to our south.
Only 550 kilometres from Vancouver, the facility – a slightly newer model than Fukushima's General Electric Mark 1 plants – rises like a cube from the fields, unlike the famed cones of the Simpsons or the ill-fated Three Mile Island plant.
When an earthquake and tsunami struck the multiple nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan last March 11, leading to a long chain of failures, meltdowns and toxic waste leaks, it caused Columbia's plant regulatory affairs manager to reflect – and, he told the Vancouver Observer, to act.
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(2) Comments
The event happening at Fukushima being too hastily dismissed. A lesson has yet to be learned by many, and especially by many, and especially many in our nuclear power industry. (I myself as a professional engineer work in that industry.)
Basically the lesson is; the improbable does happen. Mrs. Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany who is also a Doctor in Quantum Chemistry, with her bold decision to shut down nuclear power in her country may have said it best, "Fukushima has forever changed the way we define risk in Germany." No longer can a mathematical calculation of a risk ten to the minus seven or something be grounds for discounting an event. More or greater safety features may make an event more improbable, but cannot prevent the event from happening so long as it is possible. Eventually one must face the possible consequences. Most all nuclear power plants as we know them today have an Achilles heel. In the event of a shutdown nuclear power plants require some form of external power to maintain core stability. Should such power be disrupted for whatever improbable reason, the ensuing consequences are catastrophic. Simply adding more safety devices to existing reactors does not solve the problem.