The Naziism of Nuclear Disaster Cannot be Ignored

(originally published 10-13-1986 in the Ottumwa Courier)


The consensus is that its effects, over the long term, will cause the premature deaths of tens of thousands.

In spite of this, the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl is receding into the foggy past. The media no longer harp on it. The politicians are turning to other matters. The International Atomic Energy Commission and a few organizations still deal with the problem.

But, on the whole, the issue is taking a backseat until the next nuclear disaster once again will prod our short attention span into temporary awareness. Then, the cycle will start over again.

Regrettably, it will continue until an overwhelming nuclear disaster extracts a cost no one can measure. And, let there be no doubt, there will be other major nuclear accidents. That is 100 percent certain. That has historically always been 100 percent certain since the very beginning of nuclear power.

Why?

The answer resides, to a large extent, in the historical relationships between politics and the economics of nuclear power.

***

By 1928, Stalin, having defeated his rival Trotsky the advocate of global socialist revolutions, deserted international socialism. He proclaimed and enacted a policy of "socialism in one country."

In doing so, a form of national socialism was imposed on the Soviet Union. It meant the creation of a comprehensive, centralized, state economic planning machinery, the "Gosplan", which worked out a Five-Year Plan to guide national-socialist economic objectives. Ever since, the Soviets have had a Five-Year Plan.

The current one envisioned a doubling of the production of nuclear power. It provided the framework in which transpired the national socialism of nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. Market forces, in particular liability insurance premiums, which would have economically measured reactor safety and disseminated this crucial information, were not included in the Five-Year Plan. Politics, essentially, suppressed market safety signals.

A similar pattern in the relationship of politics and the economics of nuclear power evolved in Germany. Its version of national socialism (Naziism) tampered with the development of nuclear military power until the overwhelming defeat in World War II. The latter prompted a post-war self-denial of military nuclear power though civilian nuclear power was pushed substantially by a severely modified version of national nuclear socialism.

As was the case in the USSR, market forces, in particular liability insurance--the economic measurement of safety--were again deserted. In a qualified manner, the evolution of politics and the economics of nuclear power was even similar in Japan which suffered from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

***

Allied World War II victories enveloped allied governments within an aura of non-criticizability. This contributed to setting the stage for the national socialism of nuclear disasters in the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States.

From the wartime Manhattan Project, the U.S. pushed post-war civilian nuclear power. Wartime government control over the economy was retained to a certain degree during peacetime, in particular, in relation to nuclear power. The Atomic Energy Commission was created. From this emerged America's version of the national socialism of nuclear disasters.

As was the case in other countries, market safety signals were pushed aside to prod nuclear power along. Congress, in fact, passed several laws de-obligating corporations building nuclear reactors from having to assume full and true liability. This, in effect, removed the major hurdle which would have signaled corporations not to operate nuclear reactors until they are inherently safe.

In passing these laws, Congress laid the foundation of the national socialism of nuclear disasters. Among other consequences, the laws had the peculiar result of socializing the losses while privatizing the profits.

***

Meanwhile, in wartime Britain, several government White Papers concluded that if the economy under government control maximized war-related production, then peacetime government control over the economy could raise the living standards. British national socialism thusly expanded in spite of the fact that Britain had fought its German version.

Among the many results was a major government push for nuclear power. All signals to the contrary were again overridden. Moreover, as was the case with other nations which pushed both civilian and military nuclear power, safety was neglected even more.

In part for this reason, all three early nuclear military powers--the United States, the United Kingdom and the USSR--had the most serious nuclear accidents.

The British 1957 Windscale accident resulted in dozens of additional cancer cases. But the government covered them up for several decades. In the same year, a catastrophic nuclear accident in the Ural mountains permanently removed from the map some 30 villages and towns.
***

In the U.S. in 1961, an Idaho reactor accident was so eerie and gruesome that any major coverage would have seriously slowed down nuclear power and channeled it into a more responsible directions. Corrective measures may have postponed, if not prevented, the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.

But here, too, the government withheld information and dispensed it on a need-to-know basis in a typical manipulative, bureaucratic maneuver. The U.S. national socialism of nuclear disasters also denied the market access to accurate information which would maximize safety.

The August/September, 1986 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists devotes a full issue to Chernobyl and related matters. It also summarizes a brief account of the 1961 Idaho nuclear accident.

One of three workers, either accidentally or intentionally--possibly in a strange form of suicide--pulled a central control rod during routine maintenance work. The resulting heat surge "flashed the coolant to steam, shattering the core, blowing the control rods out of their channels and lifting the entire reactor vessel three meters, demolishing the floor above it."

The three workers died. Yet, for some time, the third could not be found. The control rod had grotesquely impaled him against the roof. It was a surrealistic and bizarre scene of the naziism of nuclear disaster of which more are likely to come. Very heavy radioactive contamination required all three victims to be buried in lead-lined coffins, presumably to prevent--if that is even possible--contamination of underground water.

No one knows how many others died of subsequent radiation-induced illnesses.

This eerie event would have caused liability premiums to skyrocket had its cover-up not prevented the dissemination of accurate information and if market forces had prevailed. Corporations would have been informed to stay away from nuclear reactors or to push for inherently safe ones, if possible. But the national nuclear socialist laws which de-obligated corporations dumped the costs onto the taxpayers or others who did not partake in the market. By 1977, the Atomic Energy Commission may have realized the futility of conventional nuclear power. It changed its name to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

***

In spite of these negative developments, the national socialism of nuclear disasters continues. The 1957 Urals catastrophe did not prevent the large one at Chernobyl. The gruesome 1961 Idaho accident did not prevent the economically more costly 1979 Three Mile Island disaster. Close to $ 2 billion have been absorbed in cleaning up the latter. Beyond that, the cost of storing safely all radioactive wastes was estimated as early as 10 years ago to be at least $ 20 billion (roughly $ 40 billion in 1986 dollars). Plenty of conventional energy could be bought for such sums.

***

Tranquility is the first duty of the citizens, declared a Prussian king during the grim days of being defeated by Napoleon.

Tranquility is also apparently the first duty of the citizens during the national socialism of nuclear disasters. There is no reason to panic; everything is under control; the situation is stabilized; there is no danger to the general public; radiation emissions are well within safe ranges; there is no need to worry; so the litany of governmental intonations go after nearly all nuclear accidents in the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain.

Hogwash, pure hogwash.

If nuclear reactors are safe, then corporations which build and operate them do not have to be de-obligated from assuming full and true liability insurance. This is precisely the historical political-economic relationship which leads any historical analyst to concluded that the chances of a major nuclear disaster have always been, and currently continue to be, exactly 100 percent. This assessment, however, was neglected or not fully understood by those nuclear advocates who believed in the Rasmussen report which calculated the presumed mathematical probability of a nuclear meltdown to be infinitesimally small, in fact, almost non-existing. Tranquility, therefore, could be assured mathematically.

Subsequently, "scientific" probability calculations pegged the chances of a meltdown to be one in about 10,000 years or so. Tranquility was still assured, but less so.

Recently, however, having come down from its deification of scientism, the NRC calculated the probability of a major nuclear accident within the next 20 years or so to be about 42 percent.

Having extracted a tuition cost of tens of billions, the NRC is becoming historically wise.

Tranquility, therefore, can no longer be scientifically assured. It is no longer the first duty of the citizens.

***

Despite all mathematical calculations the fact remains that politically-inspired nuclear disasters have a 100 percent probability insofar as politically-inspired policies--be they nuclear or otherwise--have historically rarely retreated until confronted by an overwhelming event. But, an overwhelming event in the arena of nuclear disasters does monstrous harm to mankind's genetic and environmental structures. For this reason, it must be prevented.

After Chernobyl, the Soviets vowed to continue their nuclear programs. France, a relative late-comer to military nuclear power, has pushed civilian nuclear power so far that about 70 percent of its electricity is currently produced by nuclear reactors. One can safely assume that if it were not for the French nuclear national socialism, the operators of the reactors, after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, would go bankrupt.

Other nations, after some hesitation, after a bit of political soul-searching, are either continuing or only slowing down their nuclear programs. Only Sweden is planning to phase out nuclear power of the current conventional type by the end of the century.

***

Apparently, the immediate victims of Chernobyl and the thousands of future cancer cases that will be so dispersed as to be hardly attributable to Chernobyl have not prompted a fundamental policy change toward inherently safe reactors or an end to conventional nuclear power.

The event was not sufficiently overwhelming, just like Windscale and the Urals in 1957, and Idaho in 1961, and Three Mile Island in 1979 did not force a crucial change. They, too, were not sufficiently overwhelming.

And so in Chernobyl's wake, radiation is doing its invisible and insidious damage to human physiology and genetics while reindeer in Lappland and sheep in Scotland have been destroyed.

To ponder it all means that tranquility in the face of the naziism of nuclear disaster is now definitely the last duty of the citizens.