In the past, Mr. Buesseler has often been a voice of reason and moderation on these issues, but I have to say that this (biased) piece has cost him a great deal of respect in my eyes.
He says he's "frustrated with both sides" of the debate, but the only thing he offers as an example of excess or dishonesty on the anti-nuclear side are the patently absurd stories about Pacific die offs (or "the ocean dying") as a result of Fukushima. Seriously? Merely not believing that is a moderate position? Then he goes on to write an article that is seriously misleading about the significance of these releases.
He acknowledges that radioactivity levels in the Pacific (due to the release) at locations away from the reactor site are so low as to be barely measurable. The fact is that radioactivity is very easy to measure, even at concentrations many orders of magnitude below that required to have any effect on health. Given this, how can he suggest that, even at those concentrations, they are a potentially serious issue that warrants significant attention? My understanding is that the ocean's overall radioactivity level is something like 0.0001% higher, due to the Fukushima release. And radioactivity levels in fish from Fukushima isotopes are a tiny fraction of the activity level always present from naturally-occurring isotopes. Even in the immediate vicinity of the plant, 99% of the fish caught meet Japan's excessively strict limits (on man-made isotopes only....).
Fukushima is not "under control" because there is still some level of release, no matter how small that release is? A zero pollution standard, only for nuclear power, eh? Meanwhile, fossil (esp. coal) plants, like the ones Japan is now using in lieu of nuclear power, continuously release massive amounts of toxic pollution, through these things called smoke stacks. In terms of public health and environmental impact, the ongoing releases from Fukushima are probably less significant than those continually emitted by a single coal plant.
He goes on to advocate for increased monitoring of isotopes, from nuclear plants only, in all the world's bodies of water. The fact is the NRC requires all nuclear plants to perform extensive monitoring of the soil, water and air all around the plant. This monitoring confirms that no remotely significant amount of radioactivity is being released into the environment. Is there similar monitoring (of water bodies) for pollutants from the fossil industry (given their orders of magnitude larger releases of pollution, vs. nuclear)? Is Mr. Buesseler also proposing similar monitoring of the waters for all the toxic materials (such as rare earths, arsenic, cadmium, etc...) present in wind turbines and solar cells, just to make sure that none of those materials have *somehow* gotten into the water? Such a notion is no less plausible than that of significant radiological pollution from nuclear plants. This is a complete non-issue, and that "alphabet soup" of government agencies know it, hence their lack of interest. I can't shake the notion that this is about Mr Buesseler angling for more money.
Notions and attitudes like this can be very harmful, since they lead to things like public acceptance of fossil fuels, vs. nuclear, despite the fact that the public health risks and environmental impacts from fossil power generation are many orders of magnitude larger than any associated with nuclear (i.e., hundreds of thousands of annual deaths plus global warming from fossil plant pollution, vs. few if any deaths, and no global warming, from nuclear). Look what Japan did, i.e., shut down all its existing (built and paid for) nuclear plants and replaced their generation with coal and gas generation.
