On
the 26 April, 1986 the number four reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear
Power Plant in Ukraine exploded.
The
following is from the Socialist Standard
Editorial, June 1986.
‘Among
the more obvious and immediate dangers of Chernobyl one which went
unpublicised was the possibility that the disaster will be regarded
as in some way exceptional and unique - the result of some human
fallibility or secretiveness by the Russian authorities. In fact,
there is more to be said about it.
The
Green lobby, as might have been expected, seized on the disaster as
ammunition for their attack on the policy of building nuclear power
stations. This attack is extremely effective, backed up with
impressive evidence, but it has one vital defect. It encourages the
belief that nuclear power stations, like other threats to the
environment, are peculiar acts of blind folly on the part of
governments. The conclusion from this is that if we change the
governments, or persuade them to change their policies, the problems
will disappear. We will still be able to breathe the air. eat
vegetables, drink milk, without going some of the way to committing
suicide. So the Greens campaign to keep capitalism in being, while
hoping to make it alter course in some respects.
The
facts are not encouraging to their case. There is nothing exceptional
or surprising about states acting in ways which are known to have
perils for human life. Every state, for example, has its armed forces
whose object is to destroy things and kill people. Every state is
responsible for assaults of pollution on the environment killing off
forests. lakes and seas, creating dust-bowls, wrecking scenic peace
with dams, power stations, motorways and the like. Governments press
on with these crimes in spite of the apparent cogency of the
environmentalist case against them.
This
is how it has been with nuclear power stations. These are not
confined to the big industrial powers, there are nearly 400 of them
in operation around the world, including Brazil, Argentina, South
Korea and India, and more are planned. Their existence is justified
by the governments concerned on the grounds that there is no real
choice. France gets 65 per cent of its energy from nuclear power.
Japan 26 per cent; in both cases the official line is that the lack
of any other resources makes reliance on nuclear plants unavoidable.
Russia draws 11 per cent of its power from atomic energy and plans
another 34 nuclear stations as part of a drive to build up the
economy into a stronger competitor - a policy spurred on because of
doubts about the extent of Russian oil resources. So the questions
are: why do governments argue that there is no alternative to nuclear
power stations and what is nuclear power essential for?
Some
answers to these questions are provided, in the case of Britain, by
extracts from the diary of Tony Benn. published in the Guardian on
3 May. Benn was, of course, once Minister of Technology and then of
Power in a Labour government, which made him not only a supporter of
nuclear power plants but also gave him an insight into the motivation
behind them. (On this, as on other issues, he has recently undergone
a somewhat tardy change of mind). In December 1969, worried about the
safety of the Magnox reactors, particularly the one at Bradwell in
Essex where there had been some ominous problems. Benn called two
officials from the Atomic Energy Authority and the Central
Electricity Generating Board to his office. Both men were reassuring
about the safety of the plant, where there had been corrosion of
bolts holding the core restraint, caused by high operating
temperatures. This was no minor problem for, according to Benn, it
threatened an incident (it could hardly have been called an accident)
which " . . . would kill many thousands of people in the area of
Bradwell and would send a radioactive cloud that might kill people in
London". That risk did not prevent Bradwell station raising its
operating temperature, and so increasing the danger - a gamble which
was taken "In view of the problem of the fuel situation this
winter and the fear of a strike and cold weather . . . " But
there was more to it than a concern to supply cheap power to British
industry and forestall a strike: "The thing that worried them
was the possibility that this might do damage to our nuclear exports
. . . "
This
concern for profits before people is perfectly acceptable, indeed
necessary, under capitalism. That is why there was such a determined
effort to suppress news of failures in British stations and to issue
soothing reassurances about their safety. A letter in The
Times of 5 May reveals:
In
my 25 years at, first, Windscale (now Sellafield) as a research and
development officer, then Harwell as a senior principal scientific
officer. it was more than anyone's career was worth to talk to the
Press or write a letter about what went on inside the nuclear
establishments. Radioactive spills and leaks did happen at times, but
they were hushed up. Every scientific paper declared for publication
had to be submitted to a most rigorous declassification rigmarole.
That is
why even now. with the mounting evidence from Chernobyl that nuclear
reactors are desperately dangerous, things which no social system
with any concern for human welfare would contemplate, the
spokespeople for the industry and the government continue to insist
that they are really good for us.
Nuclear
power could be safe. It menaces our life now because we live in a
society of class ownership of the means of production, in which
wealth is turned out for sale and profit. In this system human
interests have a very low priority; if something is profitable then
it happens, whatever the risk to people. The Greens attack this as if
it were a form of madness when by the standards of capitalism it has
a deadly sanity and logic. If anyone should doubt this, they might
ponder on a certain reaction to the speculation, soon after the
explosion at Chernobyl, that a total meltdown was imminent. If that
had happened, the consequences for the world would have been
incalculably horrific. For everyone, it seemed, this was dreadful
news. But not quite everyone. The prospect of the destruction of the
Ukraine sent grain and livestock prices soaring in Chicago. When
there is extra profit to be made, even out of human misery, the
capitalist class are keen to do so.
If
Chernobyl illuminated one thing it is that human society is at
present organised in the interests of a small minority and that,
short of dealing with that basic condition any efforts, however
sincere or thoughtful, are futile. Anyone who has been frightened by
nuclear "accidents" or who is concerned for what is
happening to our environment can now have no reason for standing
aside from the case for the abolition of capitalism and its
replacement by a social system where people are the priority,’
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