Last week, Nature published a hefty piece about populations that would be at risk in the event of a nuclear accident. In the article, the authors outline nuclear plants around the world that are close to large population centers. According to their analysis, two-thirds of the world’s 211 nuclear power plants have more people living within a 30-kilometer (18.6-mile) radius than the 172,000 people living within 30 kilometers of the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Uh oh. That doesn’t sound good.
And it gets worse. Twenty-one plants have populations larger than 1 million within that radius, and six have populations larger than 3 million, including two in China and one in Pakistan. Eek.
Here in the Northeast, our biggest nuclear plant in terms of population proximity is New York’s Entergy-owned Indian Point, which has 17 million people living within a 75-kilometer (46 miles) radius. Thanks to a nifty Google map accompanying the article, you can see exactly how Vermont Yankee stacks up against its nuclear brethren. While small by comparison, VY does have 150,000 people living within a 30-kilometer radius and 1.26 million people living within a 75-kilometer radius. Try evacuating that many people in the event of a meltdown. If that happens, I’m hightailing it to Bermuda where there are no nuclear reactors at all.
To check out a fun graphic illustrating our “nuclear neighbors,” click here.
Photo via nature.com.
This article appears in Apr 20-26, 2011.
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As even the briefest glance at the map accompanying this posting shows, VY barely registers in this study, and is completely overshadowed by many other plants. In fact, you can barely make out VY on this map. And when you click to the Nature article, again, the tiny dot showing VY is barely visible. To name this posting “Nifty Map Showing VT Yankee’s Potential Risk” is misleading, because you can’t discern any risk at all from VY on the map, whereas you can see large alleged risks from many other plants. Unless what you meant to say is “Nifty Map Showing VT Yankee’s Miniscule Potential Risk.” But that’s not what you wrote.Also, suggesting that no one will be able to evacuate in the event of a VY accident, but you’ll somehow be able to get to Bermuda, is nonsensical. By your own fearful logic, you should just leave now.Lastly, sorry, but there’s nothing “nifty” or “fun” about this posting, or the graphic you link to, or this topic in general.
More fear mongering. Ho hum. Let it go. When the odds of an event that would actually cause a core meltdown is 1 in 125000 who cares how many people are surrounding it. And how is it worse if there are more people around? Moreover, when you extend the range to include more people, how does that make it more difficult since the people living on the fringe could evacuate very easily by driving a short distance, those near could also evacuate very easily as there its a rural area. I am at a disbelief in the chicken little reaction that is going on. Just amazing, it’s a wonder some people are capable of dealing with daily life worrying about all the potential cataclysmic events that are remotely possible.
Why don’t you post a map showing how many people could be affected by a 45′ tsunami and 9.0 earthquake?
or they could show a map of how large the underwater aquifer is that Entergy so helpfully added tritium to
Better yet, we can put it in terms of the medical isotopes a doctor gave me about 6 months ago – 18.5 Billion Picocuries of Iodine-131 which has a biological half life about several times that of Tritium. Basically a Doctor, who took an oath to do no harm, gave me the radiological equivalent of drinking some 60,000 gallons of that VY tritium water in ONE sitting.Is there a map for that?