James Bay
Chernobyl: Could it happen here?
Sukatani

In the 1970s, Hydro-Quebec, a government-owned electric utility, began to divert rivers flowing into James Bay, flooding more than 10,000 square kilometers (4,000 square miles) of tundra and coastal wetlands along the eastern shore of Hudson Bay. If the whole project is ever finished, more than 600 dams and dikes will block nineteen large rivers and damage a pristine watershed area the size of Germany. Rivers as large as the Grand Canyon's Colorado will be dried up and diverted into new paths. The total cost may well be $100 billion.

The area affected is the traditional home of about 12,000 Crees and 6,000 Inuit Eskimos who live in hunting camps and small villages scattered across the rocky land. Under Phase I of this project, a series of reservoirs, dams and dikes diverted several rivers into the La Grande River. One of these was the Caniapiscau River, which used to flow east into the Atlantic but now flows west into James Bay. The 10,300 megawatts generated by this massive diversion is sent over high voltage transmission lines to homes and businesses in Quebec, New York, and the New England states. Phase I was expected to cost $1 billion, but overruns pushed the final total to more than 15 times that much.

Phase II, now under construction, is diverting the Little Whale and Nastapoca Rivers to feed hydroelectric plants on the Great Whale River. Phase III, if built, will divert the Nottaway and the Rupert Rivers into the Broadback River, storing the water in seven new reservoirs and transforming hundreds of kilometers of the diverted rivers into dry bedrock. The whole scheme would generate 26,400 megawatts of electrical power, three times more than all the electrical capacity now existing in Africa.

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This project already has had adverse cultural and environmental impacts. In September 1984, shortly after Phase I was completed, 10,000 caribou drowned while trying to follow their traditional migration route across the swollen Caniapiscau River, which was flooded by releases from an upstream reservoir. Even more threatening to native people is poisoning caused by mercury leached from newly flooded land. Bacteria change inorganic mercury to a soluble organic form that concentrates as it passes from plankton to fish to humans. In the Cree village of Chisasibi, scientists found that two thirds of the residents had mercury levels in their bodies higher than is considered safe by the World Health Organization. Changing their diet from locally caught fish to canned or frozen food has reduced people's mercury levels, but has disrupted their economy and culture.

The extensive coastal marshes and estuaries of James Bay provide breeding grounds and migration routes for millions of shorebirds and waterfowl. Few other areas provide the biological richness capable of feeding such a large population during the brief summer months. Changes in river hydrology already have begun to degrade this vital ecosystem. Eelgrass, one of the keystone species in this food web, has disappeared from large areas of once-fertile tide flats. Furthermore, dams and river diversions have blocked salmon and other anadromous species from reaching their spawning grounds.

A critical source of funding for the whole James Bay venture is long-range contracts with utilities and cities in the United States. Native groups and environmental organizations had little success trying to persuade the Quebec government to reconsider this massive project. Attempts to influence public opinion south of the border, however, have been much more effective. New York, Vermont, and Maine recently canceled $19 million in long-term contracts for electric power from Hydro-Quebec because of both cost and ethics.

When these contracts were negotiated twenty years ago, American utilities were projecting continued growth at a rate of 2 to 3 percent per year. Lower economic growth rates, however, coupled with greater than expected savings from conservation and an upsurge in non-utility generation have lowered demand forecasts. New England is unlikely to need new energy sources before the end of this century, and energy consumption in New York is expected to decline until sometime in the next century.

In the early morning hours of April 26, 1986, residents of the Ukrainian village of Pripyat saw a spectacular and terrifying sight. A glowing fountain of molten nuclear fuel and burning graphite was spewing into the dark sky through a gaping hole in the roof of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant only a few kilometers away. Although officials assured them that there was nothing to worry about in this "rapid fuel relocation," the villagers knew that something was terribly wrong. They were witnessing the worst possible nuclear power accident, a "meltdown" of the nuclear fuel and rupture of the containment facilities, releasing enormous amounts of radioactivity into the environment.

The accident was a result of a risky experiment undertaken late at night by the plant engineers in violation of a number of safety rules and operational procedures. They were testing whether the residual energy of a spinning turbine could provide enough power to run the plant in an emergency shutdown if off-site power were lost. Reactor number four had been slowed down to only 6 percent of its normal operating level. To conserve the small amount of electricity being generated, they then disconnected the emergency core-cooling pumps and other safety devices, unaware that the reactor was dangerously unstable under these conditions.

The heat level in the core began to rise, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. The operators tried to push the control rods into the core to slow the reaction, but the graphite pile had been deformed by the heat so that the rods wouldn't go in. In 4.5 seconds, the power level rose 2000-fold, far above the rated capacity of the cooling system. Chemical explosions (probably hydrogen gas released from the expanding core) ripped open the fuel rods and cooling tubes. Cooling water flashed into steam and blew off the 1000-ton-concrete cap on top of the reactor. Molten uranium fuel puddled in the bottom of the reactor, creating a critical mass that accelerated the nuclear fission reactions. The metal superstructure of the containment building was ripped apart and a column of burning graphite, molten uranium, and radioactive ashes billowed 1000 m (3000 ft) into the air.

Panic and confusion ensued. Officials first denied that anything was wrong. The village of Pripyat was not evacuated for 36 hours. There was no public announcement for three days. The first international warning came, not from Soviet authorities, but from Swedish scientists 2,000 km away who detected unusually high levels of radioactive fallout and traced airflows back to the southern Soviet Union.

There were many acts of heroism during this emergency. Firefighters climbed to the roof of the burning reactor building to pour water into the blazing inferno. Engineers dived into the suppression pool beneath the burning core to open a drain to prevent another steam explosion. Helicopter pilots hovered over the gaping maw of the ruined building to drop lead shot, sand, clay, limestone, and boron carbide onto the burning nuclear core to smother the fire and suppress the nuclear fission reactions. More than 600,000 workers participated in putting out the fire and cleaning up contamination. Thousands who were exposed to high radiation doses already have died and many more have dim prospects for the future.

The amount of radioactive fallout varied from area to area, depending on wind patterns and rainfall. Some places had heavy doses while neighboring regions had very little. One band of fallout spread across Yugoslavia, France, and Italy. Another crossed Germany and Scandinavia. Small amounts of radiation even reached North America. Altogether, about 7 tons of fuel containing 50 to 100 million curies were released, roughly 5 percent of the reactor fuel.

For several years after the accident, the Soviet government tried to suppress information and deny the consequences. The dissolution of the USSR has allowed many of these secrets to come to light. It's difficult to separate the effects of Chernobyl from other causes of ill-health, but at least a half million people live in areas where radiation levels were high enough to be of concern. One clear effect is seen in children in Belarus, where thyroid cancers have increased a hundred-fold since 1986. Childhood leukemias and some autoimmune diseases also appear to be more prevalent in highly contaminated areas.

For the present, the damaged reactor has been entombed in a giant, steel-reinforced concrete "sarcophagus." Unfortunately, this containment structure was hastily built of inferior materials, and already has begun to deteriorate. Reconstruction started in 1999, but the Ukraine is demanding billions of dollars from other countries to finance this operation.

So far, more than 250,000 people have been relocated from the contaminated area. More than 70 villages have been destroyed and millions of hectares of the richest farmland in the Commonwealth of Independent States has been abandoned. The immediate direct costs were roughly $3 billion; total costs might be one hundred times that much.

Only one of the four Chernobyl reactors is still in operation. Many people would like to see all of them shut down but fuel shortages and a crippled economy make building replacement power plants prohibitively expensive. The United States, Canada, and the European Community are currently negotiating with Ukraine and Russia to close down all remaining Chernobyl-type reactors. What do you think the United States should contribute to help bring this about? How important is it to prevent further catastrophies?

(Note: Since this article was written, the last reactor at Chernobyl has been shut down. Many officials still deny that the plant was unsafe, but international pressure forced the shutdown.)

Until a few years ago, life in the remote village of Sukatani in western Java was not much different than it had been for centuries. As the sun went down in the evening, families gathered around flickering candles or smoky oil lamps to eat supper. The rusty pulley on the village well squeaked as someone drew a pail of water for the night. A few people walked home through the growing dusk as fireflies blinked above the rice paddies. Here on the equator, nights are 12 hours long year round--a long time to be in the dark. There wasn't much to do and not much money to spend on luxuries like batteries for a portable radio or a flashlight. Isolated by mountainous terrain and bumpy, unpaved roads, Sukatani wasn't likely to be hooked up to the national power grid or telecommunications system anytime soon.

Everything changed in 1989 when Sukatani was chosen as the first of fifty rural Indonesian villages to participate in an innovative renewable power program. Jointly designed and financed by a Dutch firm and the Indonesian government, this project demonstrates the promise of sustainable energy systems. Today, photovoltaic panels on tall utility poles convert sunshine into electricity. Homeowners pay only about $2.50 per month for power, less than they previously paid for kerosene, batteries, and battery charging.

"Compact fluorescent bulbs now provide light so that children can do homework after supper, and a new motorized pump on the village well provides a steady supply of water for better sanitation. Adults use evening hours sewing, weaving, or carving items to sell at the market A few households have a "warung" (shop) that now can be open after dark. The village even has a few television sets that provide evening entertainment and a window on the wider world. The village has joined the global telecommunications network decades earlier than was expected.

The project offers hope for how both developing and developed countries can benefit from sustainable energy. Nonrenewable sources (fossil fuels and nuclear power currently provide nearly 90 percent of all the commercial energy used worldwide. If the rest of the world were to use energy at the rate that those of us in the richer countries do, known fuel supplies wouldn't last long. Furthermore, our environment couldn't withstand the assault of extracting and burning all that fuel.

Fortunately, as Sukatani demonstrates, fossil fuels and nuclear power are not our only energy sources. A combination of energy conservation and renewables might reduce our dependence on coal and oil to about 15 percent of our energy supply rather than the 65 percent they now provide. By utilizing sustainable energy sources, developing countries may be able to provide a real increase in the standard of living for their residents while also helping to preserve our global environment.