Nuclear power is the answer to both Putin and Net Zero

Everybody knows that nuclear radiation is terribly dangerous. Everybody knows that huge nuclear disasters, involving massive releases of radiation, occurred at Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Everybody knows that huge numbers of people survived the atomic bombs which struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only to die later from the effects of radiation. Everybody knows that major nuclear events like these create permanent death zones which remain terribly dangerous for centuries or millennia afterwards. Everybody knows that if a person receives a radiation dose many times the safe limit, that person will suffer terrible health consequences.

None of these things are true.

We live in a naturally radioactive world. Normal background radiation gives us several times the “safe level” every day of our lives. In various places around the world, such as Kerala in India, natural background levels are 50 times or more higher than the “maximum safe” dose level set for human-caused radiation, with no ill effects.

Fukushima and Three Mile Island were complete non-events in terms of radiation. No health effect to anyone from Fukushima radiation “is ever likely to be discernible” according to the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, and Three Mile Island was even less significant.

There were some radiation effects from Chernobyl, but they were small in the context of energy industry accidents. Twenty-eight firefighters died at the site after receiving massive radiation doses in short periods of time. Fifteen deaths from thyroid cancer can be linked to the event, though they could have been prevented if the Russian authorities had reacted properly.

This total all-time death toll of 43 people killed by nuclear power, compared to genuine disaster events caused by other kinds of power plant, is very small. Collapsing hydroelectric dams alone have killed thousands. Nuclear power is far and away the safest form of energy generation the human race has ever known.

Far from being turned into lethal radiation zones, Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been inhabited without a pause since they were struck by the atomic bombs. Both are thriving cities today. Those who survived the blasts and fires suffered only small health effects. Between 1950 and 2000, the cancer rate among survivors of the bombs was 11.98 per cent instead of the normal 11.64 per cent.

Evacuation following Three Mile Island lasted only weeks. A large exclusion zone remains around Chernobyl, though people live within it anyway and wildlife, famously, is thriving there. Japan is gradually opening up the area around Fukushima Daiichi, much more slowly than safety requires.

People receive doses many times the “maximum safe” level all the time, and it makes them healthier. During a course of radiotherapy, the healthy tissue close to a tumour receives a high dose – about 1,000 millisievert – every weekday for several weeks: a total dose of perhaps 30,000 millisievert. For context, a dose of 4,000 millisievert all at once is normally fatal. But by spreading the treatment over days, the patient’s healthy tissue can just recover, and these huge doses seldom cause a secondary cancer.

And yet the “maximum safe” dose level of radiation is set at just one millisievert a year for members of the public. Nuclear powerplant workers are permitted to sustain just 20 millisievert a year over time, less than half what residents of Kerala receive naturally. These absurdly low “safety” dose levels have enormous knock-on effects.

Most of us have heard of the placebo effect, where patients who are told they have received an effective treatment get better even when they have not. The nocebo effect, where people who are untruthfully told they have been harmed become ill for no physical reason, is just as real. Telling huge numbers of people that they have received dangerous radiation doses when they have not is a wildly irresponsible thing to do: but governments, health authorities and the media do it routinely in the aftermath of even the most trivial nuclear occurrences.

Media-pumped hysteria and needless government actions following Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima and many other even more insignificant incidents have caused colossal amounts of economic and health damage – enormously more than the incidents themselves. 

This spurious, hysterical fear effect, based on completely untrue “everybody knows” ideas, is a terrible barrier to the use and adoption of nuclear technology. Nuclear power is rendered hugely more expensive and difficult to implement than it would be if it were subject to rational levels of safety and scrutiny, the same ones that apply to fossil fuels or renewables – both of which have killed and harmed huge numbers of people (and in the case of renewables, done so without even generating much energy).

This matters, because energy matters. Humanity’s lot was hugely bettered perhaps 600,000 years ago when we learned to use fire. It improved again with the harnessing of sunshine and the weather, delivered by basic biofuels, windmills, watermills and sailing vessels. Nevertheless, these energy supplies were weak and notoriously unreliable. Additional energy was routinely provided by slave labour and teams of animals. Life for most people remained short and miserable.

The use of fossil fuels and the reliable engines they can power began in the 18th century, and displaced the use of intermittent sources. Life was transformed. Health, holidays, leisure and human rights flourished, all previously unavailable to most people.

At the moment the great majority of our energy still comes from burning fossil fuels. This results in unacceptable levels of greenhouse gas emissions, and as we have seen recently it gives far too much bargaining power and influence to Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin and other unsavoury regimes.

If the combustion of fossil fuels is to be run down, the world that our children inherit cannot go back to dependence on the weak and unreliable contributions of hydro, wind and solar. Secondary sources such as hydrogen, ammonia, batteries, electricity and synthetic fuels are beside the point, because they need to be generated from some primary source.

The safe and powerful output of nuclear is the primary energy source that mankind needs to replace fossil fuels and preserve our standards of living.

Young people need to appreciate this, unfettered by the irrational phobia that has deterred their elders for seventy years. Marie Curie, the great pioneer of nuclear medicine, said:

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

We must not allow today’s foolish fears to be passed on to the new generations: and there are signs of hope there. Both US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and climate campaigner Greta Thunberg have recently come to the realisation that nuclear energy is essential. Another young person with a platform is the current Miss America, Grace Stanke, a nuclear engineering student and passionate advocate for nuclear power.

Let us hope that other young people will see the light, and shake off the foolish fears of the old.

Wade Allison is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford