Russell Hoffman

Toshiba, known worldwide for its electronic products, plans to build “small” (room-sized), fully-automated nuclear reactors, a mere 1/5000th the size of existing boiling water reactors (BWRs) and pressurized water reactors (PWRs), which are old, massive and deteriorating. Did I also mention unsafe? Size notwithstanding, each of the new reactors will still contain enough lethal poison to wipe out a city. Toshiba plans to bring the first of the new reactors online in Japan this year, with Europe and America following in 2009.
It takes approximately 800 to a thousand people to operate one of today’s nuclear reactors, which, on average, produces one megawatt of electricity per employee. In startling contrast, Toshiba’s proposed reactors will supposedly be completely automatic. No one will operate them and no one will guard them.
According to the optimistic manufacturer, an apartment complex will be guaranteed steady power for up to 40 years. The cost, per reactor, is rumoured to be about $3.5 million. After 40 years, not only will the fuel have to be stored for millions of years, but the entire reactor will have to be isolated from humanity – on a finite planet with limited resources. In its press releases, Toshiba makes no mention of future plans for storage.
Even after 60 years, tens of billions of dollars and thousands of the world’s best scientific brains puzzling the matter, we are still no closer to knowing what to do with radioactive waste because it destroys any container it is stored in. Toshiba hasn’t solved that problem because the manufacturer can’t perform miracles. The nuclear waste problem is unsolvable at the atomic level, yet the nuclear industry continues to create more waste, with the false promise that a solution is just around the corner. It isn’t. In the US, Yucca Mountain isn’t a safe and proper solution and nothing else is even being considered.
The energy source used in the new Toshiba reactors is a uranium-based fuel used by most nuclear power plants, which, of course, should also all be closed down in favour of alternative energy sources. While renewable energy solutions are available, affordable and effective and could generate real profit for corporations, they don’t make millions for large utilities.
A properly thought-out, renewable energy system would rely upon thousands of small sources of energy, and could, therefore, be very reliable even if some of those sources shut off for parts of every day. It should be illegal for utilities to refuse to purchase renewable energy at fair prices. The Toshiba baby-nukes will rely on a closed-loop, liquid sodium primary coolant system, instead of water. The manufacturer claims that reservoirs of Lithium-6 are used to stop the reactor if necessary. Note: Sodium ignites when exposed to air.
Firefighters will have to treat a Toshiba pocket-reactor fire completely differently than how they have been trained or are capable of handling. Worse, the Toshiba reactors can be blown up by a bomb.
Worse still is the “terrorist” lurking in the structural quality of the materials used in these petite power generators, which contain enough radioactive uranium and various fission products and transuranics to cause cancer in tens of thousands of people, perhaps even millions, if the radioactive material were to be released because of an earthquake, tornado, tsunami, terrorist, poor workmanship, poor materials, poor design, etc.
In addition to these “baby nukes,” Toshiba also wants to introduce a line of midsize nukes, called the 4S series, which the manufacturer says is “Super, Safe, Small, Simple” with fuel-enriched to 19.9 percent U-235. (Highly enriched uranium, by convention, is enriched to 20.0 percent or more U-235.) The new 200-kilowatt nukes are said to be small versions of the 4S design.
Techno-nerds’ reactions to the new reactors on the Internet would make you think these were puppy dog friendly, could-never-harm-a-flea energy sources, but the articles are written by computer “geeks,” who know nothing about nuclear waste issues, terrorism or economics. They just love the idea of “unlimited” cheap power, but they need to look a little deeper under the hood before they endorse these things.
Toshiba is also involved, along with General Electric, in large BWRs. In October 2006, Toshiba purchased what used to be called Westinghouse from British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL) for about $5.4 billion, adding PWR manufacturing and support to its portfolio. Toshiba’s purchase of Westinghouse, of which only the nuclear division still existed, possibly prevented a perfectly appropriate bankruptcy of BNFL, which had bought the ailing Westinghouse in 1999 for about $1.1 billion.
Mainly through its new Westinghouse subsidiary, Toshiba now has half a dozen different reactor designs it is certifying with nuclear agencies around the world – with almost zero public scrutiny. Nuclear reactors and equipment for those reactors (and for other reactors) accounts for about 25 percent of Toshiba’s business. Toshiba’s nuclear ambitions will unfortunately mean more business for Toshiba’s Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance (MR) machines, which it sells to hospitals to diagnose the very diseases Toshiba’s new nuclear reactors will cause.
As the writer of this article, I ask readers to boycott Toshiba. Boycott Toshiba laptops, Toshiba camcorders, Toshiba hard drives, Toshiba telephone systems and Toshiba DVD players. Return Toshiba gifts you received. Remove Toshiba stock from your portfolio. Bankrupt the company if necessary. Stop its ability to produce and distribute mini nukes. Our health depends on it.

Russell Hoffman is an award-winning educational software developer. He has investigated nuclear power for more than three decades and frequently writes about the numerous hidden hazards of nuclear energy, and the potential benefits to humanity of a switch to renewable technologies in combination with a global energy grid. 760-720-7261,
rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com,
www.animatedsoftware.com