From Fukushima to Brussels, Nuclear Energy Isn’t Worth the Risks
The scariest part of the Brussels attacks is something that hasn’t happened
yet and hopefully never will: an act of nuclear terrorism.
By Emily Schwartz Greco
Foreign Policy In Focus, March 31, 2016
http://fpif.org/fukushima-brussels-nuclear-energy-isnt-worth-risks/
Originally published in OtherWords.
(Cartoon: Khalil Bendib)
The ISIS supporters who attacked Brussels killed more than 30 people and
injured hundreds more. Bombings at the city’s airport and a subway station
blew up the notion that measures taken after the Paris siege were keeping
Europe safe.
The scariest part of this story is something that hasn’t happened yet and
hopefully never will: an act of nuclear terrorism.
World leaders and the experts who track the whereabouts of fissile material
should see Belgium’s ordeal as a wakeup call. Nuclear reactors--as the
Fukushima disaster proved five years ago in Japan--aren’t worth the risks
they pose based on operational safety considerations alone. But security
questions also render them unacceptably perilous.
Consider this news out of Europe that you may have missed.
Didier Prospero, a security guard at a Belgian reactor, was murdered in his
own home two days after the March attacks. The killers shot the slain man’s
dog too. After Prospero’s children found his body, authorities determined
that his security pass was missing.
This gut-wrenching tragedy is even more troubling than it sounds.
Belgian authorities discovered hours of secretly recorded video footage of a
nuclear scientist during a raid on a suspected terrorist late last year.
Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui, two brothers believed to have participated
in the Brussels attacks, planted a camera in the bushes outside that
scientist’s home.
Perhaps the suspected terrorists intended to sabotage one of Belgium’s aging
nuclear reactors, turning it into a weapon of mass destruction--a tactic our
government says the 9/11 attackers contemplated.
Or the suspected terrorists may have aimed to steal radioactive material for
a "dirty bomb," a conventional explosive that contaminates the area where it
detonates with radiation. Either way, they’ve raised the bar for
guaranteeing security at nuclear power plants.
Even before the attacks on Brussels and Prospero’s murder, Belgium was under
pressure from Germany, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg to address lapses at
the 11 aging nuclear reactors that generate half its electricity.
There were good reasons to be alarmed. The Belgian nuclear agency’s computer
system has been hacked, intruders have stolen and sabotaged equipment, and
two employees at a Belgian reactor joined ISIS after quitting their jobs.
Hundreds of thousands of Europeans had signed a petition calling for
independent inspections of Belgium’s worrisome reactors weeks by late
January. Their goal was to "avoid the next Chernobyl," based on reports of
leaks and cracks, along with assorted sabotage attempts.
Fifteen years after 9/11, how are reactor safety and security on our side of
the pond? Not so hot, as seven engineers employed by the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission recently made clear.
Upon finding the NRC unresponsive to their concerns about a dangerous design
flaw at all but one U.S. nuclear reactor, they filed a public complaint
using the same channels available to all private citizens.
It’s not clear who has the power to do something about this problem.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo apparently doesn’t. He wants the Indian Point
power plant located 30 miles north of the Bronx closed. That’s easier said
than done, even though its two active reactors--rife with security and
safety issues--are so near our country’s biggest city.
Plant operator Entergy downplayed one recent outage after blaming it on--get
this--bird droppings.
If the company can’t protect Indian Point’s equipment against natural
threats like avian excrement, how well would it handle terrorists?
Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit
national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies.
