The Real Fallout: How Nuclear Got Its Bad Reputation

Part 2 of the Nuclear Mini-Series

This is part two of my mini-series on nuclear power and whether it could be the clean energy solution we’ve all been waiting for.

As I said before (and it bears repeating): fossil fuels kill about 8 million people every single year — more than the populations of Aotearoa and most of the Pacific Islands combined.

Despite that, nuclear power remains the energy source we fear the most. But should we?

In the last episode, we explored the science of nuclear — what it is, how it works, and why it’s not nearly as scary as it sounds. In this episode, we dive into its history — a sometimes horrifying, sometimes absurd, and often misunderstood timeline that shaped our collective anxiety around nuclear energy.

Transcript

Kia ora, kaitiaki, and welcome to Now That's What I Call Green. I'm your host, Brianne West—an environmentalist and entrepreneur trying to get you as excited about our planet as I am. I'm all about creating a scientific approach to making the world a better place, without the judgement, and making it fun.

And of course, we will be chatting about some of the most amazing creatures we share our planet with. So if you're looking to navigate through everything green—or not so green—you've come to the right place.

Fossil fuels kill 8 million people every single year, and yet we're all freaked out by nuclear energy.

Welcome back to part two in my series about nuclear power: is it the solution to climate change, or is it environmentally horrific and we should stay away from it?

Today I want to talk about the discovery, the history, and the horrific accidents that have coloured our understanding of nuclear energy.

If you missed the first episode and you want to know more about the technical side of particle physics—which is way, way more interesting than it sounds, I promise—but it's not super important for this.

Now we’re going to have a much more exciting look through the disasters and issues that have been the history of radiation.

There are some really brilliant books. I love the history of science, so if you find this interesting, I’ll pop some recommendations in the show notes.

And if there are any nuclear physicists out there listening, I'm really sorry. I hope I haven’t upset you with any of that description. I was trying to walk a very fine line.

Early Discoveries and Medical Horrors
Public anxiety about nuclear energy didn’t actually start with power stations, of course—because that’s not where we first started using nuclear energy.

The moment scientists realised that invisible rays could both heal—sort of—but also maim...

In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen—yes, that’s where we get the term—gave the world its first X-ray. And like the best discoveries, it was accidental.

Within weeks, newspapers were printing skeletal images of hands. For the first time ever, we saw inside ourselves. Can you imagine what that would have been like?

A year later, Henri Becquerel—another unit used in physics—discovered that uranium salts give off their own energy, without any wires attached. And suddenly, the line between miracle and potential menace got a little bit blurry.

The excitement dimmed even further with a pretty sad story: Thomas Edison’s glassblowing assistant—because they used glass tubes—Clarence Dally, unfortunately spent too many hours being tested on. His hand developed burns that never healed, despite medical treatment. The cancer spread, and he eventually died in 1904.

Edison’s blunt verdict thereafter was: “Don’t talk to me about X-rays. I’m frightened of them.”
Probably the smartest thing he ever said.

The Radium Craze
Then there were, of course, the Curies. Madame Curie and her husband Pierre isolated polonium and radium between 1898 and 1904.

They talked about the pale blue glow that they gave off—which would have been very pretty—but I’ve got to be honest: when something glows on its own, I’m a little wary of it. That would indicate an injury source. However, of course, there is bioluminescence, and it would have been fascinating.

Madame Curie went on to become the first and only person ever to win two Nobel Prizes in two different areas of science—Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911. She was bloody brilliant.

Of course, business then got involved—because money. And in the 1910s, radium was in everything from toothpaste to shampoo, cosmetics, even bottled water.

One of the most famous brands was called Radithor. You can Google this—some of the ads are out of the gate.

There was one bloke, Eben Byers, a socialite back then. He drank 1,400 bottles of it in just a few years. He maintained it gave him energy, a boost, and a healthy glow—probably with no irony intended.

But his horrific death culminated in what may be the greatest headline of all time:

“The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off.”
I cannot believe that’s an actual headline. Headlines now are boring in comparison.

The Radium Girls
Then, of course, came the Radium Girls.

They were young watch dial painters, and they used to paint watch faces with radium paint because it would glow in the dark. They were used a lot in the war.

To paint those fine numbers, they would sharpen the point of the brush between their lips and dip it in radium powder.

So, of course, they ingested a lot of radium.

Now, they were very young women, and radium is an alpha particle emitter. And what did I say about ingesting it? Massive harm.

Their jaws started to crumble, their teeth fell out, they had agonising pain—and eventually, the girls linked it to what they were doing.

But of course, industry being its usual self, denied all liability.

The book Radium Girls, about this story, is one of the most enraging, fascinating, horrifying books you’ll ever read—but I highly, highly recommend it.

Splitting the Atom
In 1917, Ernest Rutherford—yes, if you grew up in Aotearoa, you probably know that name—was born in Nelson and trained at Canterbury University.

He fired alpha particles into nitrogen and briefly produced oxygen.

Now, a lot of people say that this is splitting the atom. Technically not true. He isn’t actually the first person to split the atom. Technically, he created something called a transmutation.
Perhaps not as catchy though, really, is it?

And for the record—his Nobel Prize in 1908 wasn’t for that. He won the prize in Chemistry for effectively unravelling radioactivity.

(I know a few weeks ago Trump claimed that the US split the atom. They didn’t do it either.)

In 1938, at Christmas time, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann bombarded uranium with neutrons—and surprisingly, they detected barium, which was evidence they had cracked the nucleus in two.

They split the atom.

Later, the term fission was coined, and after some complicated calculations that I don’t ever want to see, they realised how much energy that splitting one atom released—and it’s unfathomable.

It’s millions of times more energy than a chemical reaction.

Seven years later, of course, we saw the deadly power of atomic energy over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where they killed well in excess of 100,000 people.

And nuclear energy got its hideous reputation before it had even powered a single light bulb.
Not really a strong start.

From Bombs to Boilers
US President Eisenhower tried to rebrand the atom with a super catchy speech in 1953 called Atoms for Peace.

Then some early power plants fired up—which proved you could boil water, not just cities.

But how does a nuclear reactor actually work?

You know how radiation works now. You have the fundamental understanding of particle physics.

But what happens inside a reactor?

Just to be very clear, I’m also talking fission here. There are two types of nuclear power: nuclear fission and nuclear fusion.

So if you imagine a giant steel thermos—for lack of a better term—it’s as big as a house and packed with bundles of slender metal tubes.

Inside those tubes are thumb-sized ceramic pellets of uranium.

To get the reaction started, there is something called a starter, which drips a few neutrons every second.

One of those neutrons will bump into a uranium nucleus. The uranium nucleus will split—that’s fission. Out comes heat, more neutrons, and gamma radiation.

Some of those neutrons go on to hit other uranium atoms, perpetuating the reaction.

Whether that reaction keeps going depends on a few things, like how tightly the fuel is packed.

If the rods are too far apart, most of those new electrons will just shoot off into the steel wall or the water that’s cooling the reactor.

If fewer than one neutron from each atom split hits another atom, the reaction is called subcritical, and it just peters out. No steam, no heat, no electricity.

If the rods are close enough together in water—that slows the neutrons (because remember, they have to be slow to hit that uranium nucleus)—the odds get better.

Now, on average, exactly one neutron from each nucleus split hits another nucleus. The chain becomes self-sustaining, and that is called criticality.

That’s the sweet spot—and that’s what a perfectly operational nuclear power plant wants.

(Doesn’t always go that way.)

Then, if you really pack that fuel in or yank out the safety gear—which are the control rods—suddenly more neutrons hit more nuclei, and you have a runaway chain reaction that produces a tremendously terrifying amount of heat and energy.

That’s called supercritical, and I can’t imagine anything scarier than seeing something like that in a control room.

Safety Systems & The Kettle Analogy
So keeping that reaction in the core balanced is the job of a few things:

Control rods are one of them. These are long blades of neutron-hungry metal alloys. They absorb or moderate the neutrons.

If you push them deeper into the core, they absorb the neutrons and the reaction calms down.

If you take them out, fewer neutrons are absorbed by the rods—the reaction speeds up.

Pretty simple. They’re like the accelerator and the brake all in one. Really clever. Simple, simple design, really.

While the chain reaction ticks over, it’s generating a lot of heat. The water that surrounds the core is sucking that heat up—to about 300 degrees.

And before you say “Water boils at 100 degrees!”—it absolutely does. But this water is under pressure, so it can’t boil.

That terrifyingly hot water is in contact with a heat exchanger—with a completely separate flow of water.

The energy is transmitted through the heat exchanger, the water on the outside loop gets warm, the steam spins a turbine, the turbine spins a generator—and there you have electricity.

(Electricians are probably having a breakdown at that description.)

The steam eventually condenses back into water, and the loop carries on.

What About Nuclear Waste?
What’s left behind in the core is nuclear ash—fission byproducts. They stay hot and radioactive for decades.

This is nuclear waste.

You’ve all heard about the terrifying barrels of green goo stacked inside a mountain, just waiting to kill us all.

That’s a fear, not a fact.

The spent fuel rods cool in a pool of water for years before they’re moved into concrete and lead-lined containers.

And they’re either recycled or stored.

And yes—we can actually recycle them.

So: the atoms are split, the water boils, the turbines spin, and we have power.

If you keep the coolant flowing (that’s the water), the control rods responsive, then you really just have a very temperamental kettle.

But if you lose that cooling—or if the control rods aren’t well-engineered, as we’re about to explore—then you have some problems.

Three Mile Island
There were first some smaller incidents—like the Windscale fire, or a very secretive waste tank explosion in the USSR.

Then, of course, the big ones.

One you may not have heard of is Three Mile Island.

Just before 4 a.m. on Wednesday, 28 March 1979, in the control room of Unit 2, Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania—a minor glitch was about to get a lot worse.

Two feedwater pumps tripped, so the reactor’s turbine—and the reactor itself—shut off. All good—there are a lot of fail-safes in nuclear power plants.

But a relief valve, which bleeds out pressure, got stuck open.

First problem.

Now superhot coolant is streaming out—but the indicator light on the panel shows only that the signal to close the valve was sent, not that it actually closed.

Which was a silly oversight—but hindsight’s 20/20, right?

Operators, seeing that the pressure is dropping, don’t assume the valve is stuck. They assume they have too much water—so they start pumping it out.

Very quickly, the top of the core—which is supposed to always be submerged with water—is sticking out.

As a result: a partial meltdown.

This is the first time that word really becomes mainstream—because this was also around the time that TV became mainstream.

This was streamed live—constantly—across the world.

The problem was, no one had any idea what was going on. Because this isn’t the kind of thing anybody expected.

There were no manuals telling them how to handle it. Everyone was running around panicking.

It was assumed this was going to be a catastrophic disaster.

In the end—they solved the problem. And not a single death occurred.

There was not a single radiation death or injury. The public dose was less than a chest X-ray.

But the damage was done in terms of confidence.

You had news anchors talking about radioactive clouds of doom and mutant fish swimming around. (That’s a Simpsons reference.)

“Meltdown” becomes a word we now associate with nuclear power—not a good word.

And every single reactor incident since has been framed through those terms.

Chernobyl
The next one is obviously legend.

In 1986, on the 26th of April at about 1:00 a.m.—when you’re at your best—operators at reactor No. 4 in the Chernobyl power plant were running a safety test.

Ironically.

It was already riddled with errors and mistakes. And despite clear guidelines saying to stop—they didn’t.

They pulled too many control rods—those things that speed up or slow down a reaction.

They disabled automatic shutdown systems. They let the power drop to an unstable level.

The reactor was not in a good place. It was filled with waste products, which cause problems.

They started the test. The power skyrocketed—in seconds—to more than 100 times the reactor’s rating.

Superheated water flashed to steam. It exploded the 2,000-tonne biological shield off the reactor and shattered fuel channels.

There was a second explosion because of hydrogen. That tossed chunks of breathtakingly radioactive graphite onto the roof.

The graphite wasn’t just radioactive—it was also on fire.

And as the reactor had no separate containment building, all of those radioactive products were leaking straight into the atmosphere.

But they didn’t know that at the time.

If you’ve seen the miniseries, you’ll know: through a level of ego, bureaucracy, and ignorance, they refused to believe what had happened—because it was not supposed to be able to happen.

Fire crews arrived in just jeans and ordinary coats, with no idea that the stuff they were walking across was lethally radioactive.

Two men died in the explosions. 28 more died from radiation exposure.

In the days that followed, a plume of very radioactive isotopes—like iodine-131 and cesium-137—drifted across Europe.

That is where the global concern came from.

A very real worry that it could wipe out—or at least affect—most of Europe.

116,000 people were evacuated.

The Soviets stayed quiet until they could no longer contain the disaster.

The rest is largely history.

Long-Term Impacts
Now, this is where the idea of deaths due to radiation gets a bit grey.

The long-term cancer toll is massively debated, and there’s no single definitive number.

But even if you look at the highest possible number—it’s about 200,000.

And that is still significantly lower than the 8 million per year I mentioned at the beginning of this episode.

200,000 is horrific—if that's true, if that’s the real number.

But cancer is one of those things we are so frightened of that it seems worse than the idea of air pollution.

That psychological scar was massive.

It obviously led to a lot of change in the industry—which was well overdue—but it also totally tainted public perception of nuclear energy.

Fukushima
Finally, the one that—honestly—I think eroded the most confidence: Fukushima.

It happened on 11 March 2011—not that long ago.

There was a massive earthquake—a 9.0.

I’m an unorthodox Christchurch resident—I was here for an earthquake that almost levelled my city. That was a six-point-something.

I can’t even fathom a nine.

At the Fukushima Daiichi plant, they had three operating reactors.

The earthquake hit—they shut down, as they were supposed to. Great safeguards.

40 minutes later: a 14-metre tsunami—twice as high as the tsunami walls.

Because of course, you never know how bad something could be until it happens.

The tsunami slammed into the power plant. It swamped the electrical switchgear.

All the cooling pumps shut down.

That’s very bad—because the biggest issue with nuclear reactors is: you’ve got to keep them cool.

The fuel rods overheated. The cladding reacted with steam—that created hydrogen.

Hydrogen, of course, is explosive.

Over the next three days, those three reactor buildings exploded—in quite spectacular fashion—all over global news.

Crews had no choice but to vent radioactive steam into the atmosphere.

They also, more recently, disposed of radioactive wastewater into the ocean—which was met with the reaction you’d expect.

But: dilution. It is not a concern.

Eventually, they got everything under control.

But they had to evacuate 150,000 residents.

Officials later traced 51 deaths to the chaotic evacuation itself—not radiation.

And so far, they have confirmed one fatal cancer due to radiation exposure.

But those images of explosions, the blue-lit fuel pools—again, what an evocative image.

Hazmat suits. Contaminated soil. Cancer. Death. Destruction. Creepy green glows.

The Psychological Impact
The reason I think this was one of the most impactful for us psychologically is:

It was driven by a natural disaster—something we cannot plan for.

And people have a lot of faith in Japanese engineering and safety standards.

This happened in one of the places people considered nuclear energy the safest, despite the earthquake risk.

Showing that perhaps, actually, nuclear energy is not to be trusted.

Which is not the truth.

Tease for Part Three
Radiation is equal parts fascinating and horrifying.

But—is it actually that horrifying?

Because what I’ve talked through just now isn’t super fun bedtime reading.

But is the risk actually that high?

I’m gonna spoil next week’s episode—because the answer is no.

And next week, I’m going to be going over why.

I’m going to answer the big questions like:

How big is the radioactive waste mountain?

Is it all barrels of green goo seeping into the ground and creating mutant fish?

Can we have mini reactors—like lunchbox-sized ones—that power homes or villages?

What the hell is thorium salt? (That’s what I alluded to with China’s breakthrough—it’s very interesting.)

What is fusion? Are we any closer to cracking it? (Because that’s the ultimate in green energy. Not hydrogen.)

And of course, the biggest of all: do we truly need it to prevent further climate change?

That’s an ongoing debate in Australia right now, and there’s still the odd person who thinks Aotearoa should have nuclear power.

To be clear—while I am pro-nuclear power—I am not pro us having it here, for a few reasons.

But I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait till next week to understand why.

I hope that was interesting. I hope it wasn’t too confusing.

Please do give me some feedback on this more technical stuff—if there are any teachers out there to teach me how to teach.

(My mum will tell you I’m the least patient person on Earth, but I don’t think I did too badly today.)

Thanks for hanging out with me.

See you next week. Mā te wā.

And there you go.

I hope you learned something and realised that being green isn’t about everything in your pantry matching with those silly glass jars or living in a commune.

If that’s your jam—fabulous.

But sustainability, at its heart, is just using what you need.

If you enjoyed this episode, please don’t keep it to yourself—feel free to drop me a rating and hit the subscribe button.

Kia ora, and I’ll see you next week.

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