Hello and welcome to CHI – the Contemporary History Intervention
this week's edition is about one of the favourite pastimes
of academic historians - myth busting this video will go online on April 26
2021 that will be to the day 35 years after
the explosion of reactor 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power station
in what was then the Soviet Union and what is nowadays
Ukraine Chernobyl means different things to different people it is an ongoing
clean-up job it is a tourist destination it's
background for a computer game STALKER but it's also an event that is cited by
critics of nuclear power very frequently and that is what we'll
talk about the myth of Chernobyl and the myth of the nuclear
disaster Chernobyl is part of a triad of nuclear disasters that are
cited ad nauseum by critics of nuclear power there is
Harrisburg in the United States in 1979 there's Chernobyl in
1986 and there is Fukushima Japan in 2011.
that is the myth that I will untangle in this
broadcast does it hold up to scrutiny is this the event
that told the world that nuclear power is too dangerous too risky
and should be discontinued well there is an
element in this myth that escapes academic scrutiny and that is the
element of wishful thinking this myth is
cited most frequently by people who are critical
of nuclear power who think that nuclear that Chernobyl should be
the event that ends nuclear power for all because it flags
the dangers that it has now whether you subscribe to this view depends on your
view of nuclear radiation your opinion on
technological risks and maybe your view of available
alternatives historians cannot tell you whether nuclear power is acceptable or
not but historians can tell you whether this
has actually worked in the past did disasters change the course
of nuclear history well there is if you want a one sentence summary
in this age of sound bites my summary is disasters are overrated
let's look at Harrisburg first in 1979 there is a myth
even supported by some academic historians that
Harrisburg ended the boom of nuclear power in the united states in a nutshell
no that's not the case cost overruns and delay had done the
jobs in the year before 1979 it was just too expensive to
unattractive utilities grew cold on nuclear power and
actually there were nuclear power plants that were switched
to fossil fuels as the last moment out of sheer
economics the picture is similar for Chernobyl
Chernobyl happened in 1986 and at that time
the pace of reactor construction was already
down considerably all over western Europe
in West Germany the last reactor was ordered
in 1982 four years before the Chernobyl disaster
even in France the nuclear nation power excellence in
Europe the pace of construction had already
slowed down considerably France was building nuclear reactors as if in a
frenzy
in the 70s it became slower in the 80s and then it petered out
in the 90s there was a referendum in Italy in 1987 where the Chernobyl
disaster did play a role the Italian electorate
voted against nuclear power in that referendum and that had consequences for
nuclear development but if you look at the big picture it is
quite clear that Italy had already missed the bus on nuclear power
at that time there was no way in which Italy
would have become a nuclear nation on a par with other
European countries France West Germany Belgium
Sweden the United Kingdom those countries were
way ahead and there was no way that Italy would have built anything
on a par and if we look at Russia well Russia kept
building reactors in fact it even started another reactor of the rbmk
type that is the type that exploded in Chernobyl and some of its design
features played a role in that explosion
nonetheless Russia the soviet union started the ignolina
nuclear power plant unit 2 with this type that came to be
situated in the European union because the
it was in Lithuania Lithuania became part of the European union it is now
off the grid because that was one of the conditions of the European union
when Lithuania became a member state but Russia itself is still
committed to nuclear power and it still has rbmk uh
reactors operating and if we look at Fukushima
well, there is Germany Angela Merkel reversed her stance on
nuclear power and that paved the way for the
consensual phase out of nuclear power in Germany which is
bound to conclude at the end of next year
but then this was the catalyst something that played a role
in a long farewell to nuclear power in Germany basically the last step
in that long farewell if you look at Japan well Japan still banks on nuclear
power Japan switched off all nuclear reactors
in the aftermath of Fukushima and is now busy getting them on the grid
again at this moment nine reactors are operational in Japan
the government would wish to be more but Fukushima did
jeopardize the relations between the nuclear watchdogs and the utilities
which were pretty cosy previously so the return to nuclear
business as usual is rather hobbled in Japan
so nuclear disasters do matter they do have consequences
but they're not that moment of reckoning that
changes everything that is because nuclear power
is not really first and foremost about the wishes of people and that has never
been nuclear power is about a huge complex
of technological artifacts expertise
and a political context that allows the operation
of these reactors this complex has tremendous resources
and it has tremendous momentum if it is gets moving into one direction it's not
stopped and certainly not by something as ephemeral as a disaster
nonetheless we see a decline of nuclear power
all over Europe if we include exclude Russia here for a moment there are
exactly three active nuclear construction projects in
all of Europe one in Finland Oklahoma one in France
slomoville and one in this country English point
c that is it and it is all that certain that nuclear power
will continue its downward trajectory over the next year
simply because we are not building new reactors and old ones are going off the
grid but that is not due to disasters it's
certainly not due to popular fears it is the result of pure
economics nuclear power is just too expensive
to be competitive on a free market and that was the case
long before the recent boom of renewable energy
there's a place to look into this economic history that
is in the shadow of the myth of Chernobyl Harrisburg
Fukushima there's a place to study this demise of nuclear power and that
place is of all places Harrisburg Pennsylvania USA I’m talking
about the three-mile island nuclear power plant where the disaster
happened in 1979 a partial meltdown that required a
clean-up over many years that cost somewhere around 1 billion us dollars
and some of the elders would remember that was a time when a billion us
dollars was a lot of money but the three-mile island
nuclear power complex consisted of two reactors and the second reactor
um worked rather well it had a license to operate that ran until
2014 in 20 2008 the utility applied for an extension
it wanted to run for another 20 years um this extension was granted which is
pretty normal for US reactors nowadays the default lifespan of civil
nuclear reactors in the US is now at 60 years
there are even some reactors that have a license for 80 years
now so it's not unexpected that three mile island would get an extension for
20 years what is noteworthy though is that this
extension was granted without a hearing because
nobody requested a hearing so much for the shock of the disaster nobody was
there around the three-mile island nuclear power
plant that thought maybe we should talk about this
though there is something to talk about that there are serious risks
involved in extending the lifespan of nuclear reactors we do not know
whether you can safely operate a nuclear reactor after 60 years simply because
we've never tried that there's not a single reactor anywhere in the world
that has run for 60 years so there is a safety issue here that we will need to
talk about and hopefully talk about beyond expert circles but three
mile island is no longer a danger in this respect
because if you switch off this off the grid
now the utility applied for subsidies with the Pennsylvania
legislature a few years ago it did not get those subsidies the
legislature did not act and as a result the utility decided to
switch off the last remaining record at the
three-mile anacoma and then enter the lengthy process of
decommissioning which will take decades but the reactor is off the grid
since September 2019. so maybe
I should amend my sound bite from earlier in this video
disasters are overrated but economics still matters