We live in the Cape, and there is a well known nuclear power station that is in the area....Koeberg nuclear power station.
*Koeberg Cape Town*
Yesterday I was driving past the station with my 2 youngest kids, and we were discussing the station and what it was. Also I spoke to them about what would happen if the station exploded, and a nuclear disaster happened there.....it wasn't an ugly scary discussion BTW, more of an out-of-interest type of discussion.
So were we far enough away from the fallout area to not be affected by any major issues like in Japan? Especially considering the fact that should the world come to a halt, the plant would eventually without any constant attention, degrade and meltdown.
Especially after the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster that happened recently, which opened the eyes and minds of the modern world to the real possibilities of these power suppliers becoming unstable and experiencing a meltdown.
100's of millions of people live within the fallout areas of the reactors, and could be affected worldwide!
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Let's look quickly at what happened in Japan:
- A large earthquake created a tsunami in 2011
- Active reactors automatically shutdown their their fission reactions
- The generators that should have been used to operate the power feed for the cooling systems were also affected by the earthquake and so the cooling of the reactors didn't take place
- Insufficient cooling led to 3 meltdowns, explosions and release of nuclear material into the air
How quickly did that happen? In a country that is not known to be relaxed or lazy at all...in fact they are opposite. Now bring in nuclear power plants into places where the general populace are not as organised or effective as the Japanese and were a disaster waiting to happen.
Frankly the current South African government couldn't manage themselves through a game of checkers without ruining it, so the fear is real.
To give you a clue as to how many issues happen, in southern Washington, the plant there has been shutdown 23 times in the last decade over safety issues!
Add a natural disaster and suddenly, quickly, without warning, we have a possible total fallout!
OK, enough negativity, this was more about my discussion with the kids.
**So how far is safe?**
In a case like this, we need to look at the affect to natural resources as well as immediate risk to the explosions etc. for the water and natural resources would be negatively affected by the poisons put into the system by a fallout such as this.
Also wind can push the reach of those things to a far greater distance than would normally be the case.
When planning safety zones, they have a reference to the following, EPZ (emergency planning zones) that are followed in the case of a disaster.
Obviously these will vary somewhat in each area, but we're not looking for exacts here in this post.
1. 2 mile radius (3.2km) evacuation zone - all to be evacuated within this area
2. 5 mile radius (8km) downwind evacuation zone - those downwind from ground zero]
3. 10 mile radius (16km) plume exposure pathway - further shelter, evacuation or use of potassium iodide (protects the thyroid from poisoning) to those that may be affected by the exposure
4. 50 mile radius (80km) food ingestion protection - to keep those from ingesting affected water or food that may have been exposed
As you can see, this is not a guaranteed area that can be put down as at exposure risk. To give you an idea, the Japanese government set their safe zone at 30km radius from the affected area.
Although, can you imagine the life change that would be for someone that has their home within that radius? It is a change of everything for them! Schools, friends, home and perhaps even work. HECTIC.
And if you look at the above pic of where Koeberg is situated, you have a wonderful coastline filled with beauty. I'm sure there are a few paid for holiday homes within the radius just waiting to become 'food for worms'.
*Thankfully, we are 90km from the nuclear plant. So even with the worst case scenarios, I can tell my kids to sleep well at night knowing that we are far enough away from the plant to be affected by any sort of disaster that may happen there.*
I personally think in a resource rich country like South Africa, we should not need to run the power grid with nuclear or coal stations. In fact we have enough natural resources to run safely and cleanly for the foreseeable future.
I hope this helps those within the fallout areas in other places and countries around the world, to know what this safe zone in fact really is.
Cheers all
[Image and info credit is wikimapia.org, theconversation.com, quora.com, cravensworld.wordpress.com,