Are Nuclear Plant Woes Bad Luck or Sign of the Times?
Last Updated on June 2, 2020 by
After three nuclear facilities came into serious risk even after the Fukushima reactor incident, it’s easy to ask why the sudden trend might suggest something big might be on the horizon. Are we looking at a major catastrophe on the horizon? To chart trends, it’s important to understand the outlying factors that might be having an effect on the world around us. Is 2011 just a very unlucky year, or is there another reason for these disasters that have been cropping up all over the world? As we examine the disasters of the past year, it becomes clear that many of them share a common thread.
First, it’s important to understand that at any moment in time chances are some minor nuclear incident is going on. But the term “incident” in this regard is more often than not defined as something extremely minor that sounds far worse than it really is. For example, in December of 2010 a steel beam fell into a nuclear waste cooling pool and remained there to this day. The incident was reported as extremely minor and failed to reach major media attention. Incidents like these often go unnoticed by a public interested in more dramatic world changing events. And public interest in nuclear catastrophes was fairly minor when compared to 2011’s post-Fukushima perceptions. And then the Fukushima catastrophe struck sending fears and rumors into the spotlight and causing the world to rethink its stance on nuclear power.
But what caused these more major incidents recently? None of the accidents appear to be directly manmade, instead stemming from unusually strong and yet unrelated natural catastrophes. The Fukushima incident, for example, came as a result of a major Earthquake sending a Tsunami to the plant which ultimately knocked out the generators used to pump cooling water around it. Similarly the wildfires near the Los Alamos base endangered the test and storage facility there. Particularly heavy rains endangered the Nebraska nuclear plant after water levels reached an all time high. What’s the common trend in these disasters?
It seems for the most part they are being caused by major changes in both weather and seismic activity. And though we cannot pin them all on one factor, it seems forecasts have been reaching new terrifying extremes. April’s storms in the United States were considered some of the worst in recorded history both in the number of tornadoes and the sheer force of destruction they brought with them. And since that time things have done anything but calm down. And these nuclear facilities were each designed to withstand the worst imaginable natural catastrophes. It seems 2011’s weather is worse than anything imagined prior to it with the record books still spinning each month with new all time records for weather. But of course the obvious question is, what is this mysterious trend causing the weather to behave in such an extreme way?
