*Pressenza: Steven, How serious is this really? I mean, there are lots of unknowns and I understand that those close must be in terrible danger if they can’t bring it under control but are we on the edge of an extinction event?*

Steven Starr: I don’t think this is anything like a nuclear war “extinction event” that I have discussed in my writings. I do have concerns, however, that the cumulative effect of putting tons of Cs-137 and other vicious long-lived radioactive poisons into the ecosystems could over time have the equivalent of a “genetic extinction event” for complex forms of life. I will give you a long-winded explanation.

There is a huge amount of radioactivity at the 6 reactors in Fukushima Daiichi. Enough of it has gotten loose to make it impossible for the firemen and workers to get close enough to Reactor 4 and its cooling pond to put water back into the pond, or hook up power lines (if any are indeed there to hook up).

I think what will happen soon is a lot of people sacrificing their lives in a desperate effort to get water back into the spent fuel ponds and into the reactor cores. I believe that these efforts are unlikely to succeed. Last reports said there were 50 workers at the plant and normally there are 800 workers; all 800 couldn’t deal with one reactor melting down, and now there are 3 reactors in meltdown (2 reportedly with damaged containment vessels) and a spent fuel pond at Reactor 4 that has been on fire (and may still be on fire). What are the odds they will succeed?

Worst case scenario is if they have to eventually abandon attempts to save the reactors because the radiation levels rise to high for humans to be on site for more than a few minutes without collapsing. It may be that is already the case at Reactor 4, and perhaps Reactor 3 . . . my guess is that the radiation from the burning fuel rods in spent fuel pond at Reactor 4 have contaminated Reactor 3 which is next to it. Remember there are 6 nuclear power plants which are all lined up on the coast, I think there is about 2000 feet between the first and the last. So the explosions we have seen surely have had the ability to distribute high levels of radiation to nearby reactors.

If workers cannot reach these reactors (they don’t seem to be able to do so now), and they are unable to get the cooling systems back on line (which will require not only electricity, but also intact cooling systems and working pumps able to supply tens of thousands of gallons of water every day), then they won’t be able to cool either the spent fuel ponds (6 ponds, one above each reactor, each holding at least a couple thousand rods, and one large common pond at ground level which can hold 6800 rods), or the 6 reactor cores, which require more than just water to be dumped in them, if they have to deal with radioactive steam they don’t want to vent (of course, they have been venting these anyway). That is, they have to get water to 7 separate spent fuel ponds, which each require about 12,000 gallons of water a day to remain stable, and to 6 reactor cores (don’t know how much water that will take). And remember, there are 50 people on site.

Also note that there have been reports that the containment vessels of Reactors 2 and 3 have been damaged, so what does that mean? Can meltdowns and massive leaks be prevented under such circumstance? Also there are many reports that the spent fuel pond at Reactor 4 was damaged, which was why it went DRY, according to the testimony of the head of the NRC before the US Congress the other day. If the pond is damaged and can’t hold water, then that is a problem that they CANNOT fix, as far as I can tell. If that is the case, then the radiation could easily get worse and render the entire place unreachable and uninhabitable. If that is the case, I don’t see how they can possibly prevent all the other reactors and ponds from melting down.

If they can’t stop this horrible process, then all bets are off, and then surely there will be huge releases of radiation. But maybe they can dump sand and concrete on them? Would hovering over the plants in helicopters expose pilots and crews to deadly levels of radiation? Nothing would be simple at this point.
However, the situation at Fukushima is not the same as Chernobyl, which blew up at full power, and with such an explosion, the radioactive plume was sent all the way to the upper reaches of the troposphere, allowing it to easily traverse the entire northern hemisphere. I don’t think the spent fuel ponds would have anything like this sort of explosion, although I have read that if all the rods melt together, there is the potential to reach criticality, produce even more heat, and perhaps get some sort of explosion. If the reactors melt down, they could melt through the floor of the containment vessel and also produce an explosion. But this experiment hasn’t been done before. I don’t know how high the smoke/radioactive fumes could go without an explosion. The US Embassy has recommended an 80 km evacuation area, which I think tells you something.

This is not a nuclear war with thousands of nuclear detonations going off simultaneously all around the globe, so I don’t think you can compare Fukushima to such a apocalyptic scenario. I think doing so is a mistake, because it is quite clear that nuclear war could easily become a mass extinction event if even a relatively small fraction of the operational nuclear arsenals are detonated in conflict.

But what are the consequences of letting loose enormous quantities of long-lived isotopes, like Cesium-137 and Plutonium? Cs-137 is what is making hundreds of thousands of children sick in Belarus and the Ukraine, it builds up in the food chains, and biomagnifies, poisoning the foodstuffs. We have absolutely no idea of what the long-term consequences would be if we let huge amounts of this stuff loose in the atmosphere, especially the long-term genetic consequences! This is where the worst deceptions have been going on; the ICRP radiation safety standards are rigged, they do not reflect current biological understandings of how radiation works in vivo, what radionuclides do to living cells when they make their way INSIDE living organisms, especially complex forms of life . . . like us.

So, perhaps if enough brave people sacrifice their health and lives, against all odds they will manage to get the situation under control at Fukushima Daiichi. If not, then we will have only seen the very beginning of huge releases of radioactivity, and large areas of northern Japan could be left uninhabitable for centuries.

If the worst case scenario takes place, then huge releases of radiation will occur. Then, will we monitor their effects? There were great efforts to avoid such studies at Chernobyl; hence the WHO report which says 9000 people died, and the NYAS report that says 980,000 people died. Seems to be a discrepancy there, don’t you think? I have read the NYAS book, and I think it provides powerful evidence, such as the 450,000 children now suffering from “Chernobyl AIDS”, and the research being done by Dr. Timothy Mousseau of the University of South Carolina. I hope for a more open debate, but if history tells us anything, we will see a huge smear campaign directed at anyone who attempts to defy nuclear experts who tell us that really the worst thing about all these accidents is the money they cost.

My own worst fears are that by continuing to dump huge amounts of long-lived radioisotopes into the ecosystems, we will slowly but surely insure that future generations will be less and less likely to live long and healthy lives, or eventually, to be born healthy . . . or to be born at all. Ever since we started blasting millions of tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere, we have been performing a radiological experiment on all living things, including ourselves.

To give you an idea of what I am talking about, I have attached a map of radioactive fallout in the US which resulted from the 104 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in Nevada (the precise number may be debatable, but the number was definitely at least 100, with the largest detonation being 74 kilotons). The US citizens certainly survived the fallout from these tests . . . but how did they affect human health? There is an assumption that all the thyroid cancers, leukaemia, etc have passed, but now we see one out of every three people getting cancer, with the total slowly moving towards one out of one. Putting endless amounts of dangerous mutagens into the environment only moves us closer to that endpoint.

Remember, I am an expert on nuclear weapons consequences, so when we get to nuclear reactors, it is different. And remember, nuclear weapons are designed to create worst case scenarios. I can confidently say that a nuclear war, as I have described it on my website (www.nuclearfamine.org) would indeed constitute a mass extinction event if thousands of strategic nuclear weapons are detonated in urban areas (and on nuclear power plants!).

Keep the attached fallout map in mind. You certainly won’t see everyone dropping dead from fallout from Fukushima, and so the nuclear industry will make sure to tell us that yes, it was a mistake, but we need clean, safe nuclear power, just as they continue to say that nothing really has happened here or at Chernobyl, that radiation is actually good for you, etc, etc.
I don’t think this is an “extinction event” in the sense that you would picture a nuclear war. But releasing tons of Cs-137 to the winds is surely something that at the very least will doom many future generations to death, disease and endless misery. And how many radioactive exclusion zones do we want to create? Just because most of the radiation has been blowing out to sea doesn’t mean nothing has happened. Ever eat seafood?

*Author’s note: The amount of spent fuel in the pools is understated in the article. The Union of Concerned Scientists state that there is a total of 800 tons of spent fuel located in the fuel ponds in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.*

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About the Author:
Steven Starr is a Senior Scientist with Physicians for Social Responsibility based at the University of Missouri.

He is leading world authority on the danger of nuclear winter and the nuclear launch-on-warning posture.

He has worked with the governments of Switzerland, Chile, New Zealand and Sweden in support of their efforts at the United Nations to eliminate thousands of high-alert, launch-ready nuclear weapons.

He has made presentations to ministry officials, parliamentarians, academics, citizens and students around the world, and specialises in making technical scientific information understandable to all audiences.