AP: Will China, among others, learn Japan’s Nuclear Power Lesson?
Shenzhen nuc. power plant, China
At least 32 nuclear power plants in the western Pacific are at sites that tsunamis could reach from large undersea subduction zones, the AP reports this week. It is a team effort, with bylines on top from Robin McDowell and Margie Mason, plus a creditline at the end for Charles Hutzler, Muneeza Naqvi, and Mike Schneider‘s contributions.
The strength of the story is its sweep, and description of the geology that makes plants along the South China Sea including in mainland China and Taiwan plausibly vulnerable. It also mentions efforts in India to add safety guards. Indian nuclear facilities were already hit by the 2004 Sumatra quake’s tsunami (one that also flooded the construction site for a prototype 500 megawatt, sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor near Chennai, for a few details in The Hindu see this boosterish account).
However, readers are left wondering what if any modifications to the existing and planned plants are being undertaken – or should be. Are the reactors themselves indigenous, or French, Russian, US or other designs? Do they have passive cooling? Can their sea walls be built higher? How about putting the backup diesels in some sort of highly tsunami-resistant housings? No story of manageable size could answer all that (and might take months to write). But there is not any hint of the steps that might be taken, or are being taken, to prepare not just for the worst case natural or other disaster, but the worster ones as well.
This story is a commendable start. When one of the world’s largest news agencies gives the broader lesson of Fukushima Deiichi this kind of attention, perhaps politicians, the press, and the public in the region will pay attention, cancel a few of the most vulnerable facilities, beef up and slather a few more layers of redundant systems on the rest of them.
Dateline Question: Hey AP, does it always matter where the lead writer of a story was when it was written? This is datelined Jakarta, presumably where Robin McDowell was when it came together. The creditline says Margie Mason reported from Hanoi, Charles Hutzler from Beijing, Muneeza Naqvi from New Delhi, and Mike Schneider from Orlando. Jakarta is not even mentioned in the story and Indonesia only in a minor way. Why dateline it at all?
- Charlie Petit
