Playing Russian roulette with nuke power

MUNICH (DPA): The people of Japan currently have an opportunity to study just how risky it is to operate nuclear power plants in an earthquake zone.

After experiencing tremors measuring up to 6.1 on the Richter scale, the country has now announced its third disturbance at a nuclear plant.

Japan depends on nuclear energy because it has few natural resources. The country's 51 operating nuclear reactors meet 35 per cent of its total energy needs. That figure is 76 per cent in France; in the US it is 19 per cent. Russia gets 14 per cent of its energy from nuclear power.

Both Japan and Russia are planning to increase the amount of nuclear energy they produce -- Japan by 40 per cent within ten years, and Russia by 33 per cent within 20.

The Japanese nuclear industry works sloppily. Now -- after announcing three serious incidents at nuclear facilities -- the industry is recording losses for the first time in 19 years.

Russia is placing all its bets on nuclear energy while continuing to squander its natural resources at the same time. According to environmental lobby group Greenpeace, the country's ailing industry gobbles up six times more electricity than is needed by German industry, and three times more than the United States.

The Russians could get by entirely without nuclear power plants if they would fix the cracks in their oil and gas pipelines and waste just a little less energy.

But that is not to be. Instead, the country's older reactors -- all of them woefully ill-equipped with inadequate technical safety standards - are now to be kept on line 10 years longer than had originally been planned. Beyond that, Russia wants to build 30 new nuclear power stations in addition to the 29 it already has.

It seems that Russia's energy policymakers would rather export the country's crude oil and natural gas than put it to use domestically. And the Europeans are expected to buy any surpluses of electricity produced by nuclear power.

Japan and Russia are both cementing their dependence on a high-risk technology. There will be another nuclear accident, sooner or later.

Developing alternative sources of energy takes time, and at that point there will not be any left.