Mallen Baker questions whether nuclear power’s legacy is too long for it to be a viable short-term energy fix
You remember the adverts – the ones that suggested that companies needed to focus on the elephant in the room, which in that case was carbon and climate change.
Recent events in Japan have complicated things – because there’s another elephant that companies aren’t currently talking about – and it’s radioactive.
Tepco, the Japanese power company that owns the Fukushima nuclear reactors at the heart of the biggest crisis since Chernobyl, has been having its BP moment.
Nobody can blame it for the earthquake. Nobody can blame it for the tsunami. But, of course, Japan is in an area of high seismic activity, so planning for the worst is rather the entry price if you’re going to build something as dangerous as a nuclear reactor.
The plants were well built, to withstand all reasonable expectations of earthquake activity. As, indeed, is most of Japan.
BP had also done crisis management scenarios covering the most likely events.
But that’s not good enough.
Past errors
Tepco has form in this regard, since it has been criticised in the past for being less than open about safety errors. It was found to have falsified information over the course of 25 years. In the current crisis, the government moved some of its own people into Tepco’s headquarters, so little did it trust the company to be open about what was happening.
The real question this raises is the big one about whether or not a private company should be running nuclear power stations.
In response to the carbon “elephant”, a number are lobbying for the next wave of nuclear power as the response to our need for low-emissions energy. But the timescales involved in nuclear are mind-boggling, and rather beyond the corporate mindset.
Some highly radioactive waste has a half life of hundreds of thousands of years. It is certainly arguable that governments have to question whether or not they have the moral authority to commit human society to stewardship of such waste. But, if anyone does actually have this authority, then it is governments that do.
When companies actively promote nuclear power as the solution to climate change – as opposed to passively taking the brief of the government of the day – they take that moral authority unto themselves.
We know that companies will look towards their own assets and competitive advantage – and from that they will form their view of what needs to be done. They will seek to convince society that, since their particular solution is a hammer, then society’s problems really are nails.
And, as with Tepco, if there are facts that are less convenient – or questions that are unhelpful to consider – then they will seek to gloss over them.
The point is that this isn’t only a question for those countries living on geological fault lines.
The answer of companies elsewhere may well be “we don’t have to worry because we’re not prone to earthquakes”. But the question is about worst-case scenarios. Tepco’s plant was built to withstand a number of bad scenarios. But it failed in the face of a worst-case scenario.
What are the worst-case scenarios in, for example, the UK? What will they be in 20 years’ time? And what is the final solution for the radioactive waste that means we won’t have to worry about the worst case scenarios in 50 years, a 100 years or 200,000 years?
Given unlimited resources, there’s no doubt that engineers can build solutions that are extremely robust. The nature of private companies is that they will seek to balance risk and resources to provide for the likely scenarios. These would include, maybe, a few bad-case scenarios.
But, as we now know, that’s not good enough.
Future leaders, take note
And there’s not much satisfaction in knowing that when, at some point in the future, the consequences come home to roost we can blame the company. Of course, the chief executive that took the decision has long since retired by then.
It may well be that, in the face of climate change, there needs to be an increase in nuclear generation in the short term. If I were in government, I would be seeing such an increase as a temporary measure to cover the period between the era of oil and the era of genuine renewables – maybe a period as long as 50 years.
But even that temporary measure is going to leave a bad smell in the air. Indeed, if you ever put an elephant in a room, you’ll find sooner or later it creates quite a stink.
Mallen Baker is founder of Busines Respect and a contributing editor to Ethical Corporation.
mallen.baker@businessrespect.net