Both Fukushima and Chornobyl feature prominently in the “Buffer Zone” and “Nuclear Spill” arguments always brandished to oppose nuclear power projects. However, the basis of such is misinformation. The closest town to the Chornobyl nuclear plant is Pripyat, three kilometers away. Considering the many other infrastructure projects in the world, this distance is rather standard. There is nothing nuclear about the runways at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), but there are no housing units within a defined “buffer zone” around them.
Siting of nuclear plants requires provisions for Emergency Planning Zones (EPZs), whose purpose is literally as their name suggests. In case of an emergency, it is easier to manage a few people than multitudes. As such, the number of people within a certain distance from the reactors needs to be carefully taken into account, and this has been the case for the sites identified around the country.
Are these people in the EPZ in that big a risk courtesy of this proximity to a nuclear plant? In 2019, Harvard Medical School tried to answer this by examining the Ukrainian Cancer Registry, looking for the thousands of cancers that had been promised following the events at Chornobyl 33 years earlier.
Compared to the national average, no systematic difference in cancer rates near Chornobyl was observed. In fact, breast cancer incidences tracked at or were below rates recorded in low-dose areas. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) answered the same question 2 years later, showing no excess radiation-related harm to the public in the decade since the Fukushima accident. This reiterated nuclear’s already stellar reputation of being as safe as windmills.
Also Read: Discourse on the Siaya Nuclear Power Plant Should Be Factual
As Tomas Lindahl has shown, evolution in an environment where thousands of DNA damage events affect living cells every single day, most of which arise from the chemistry of our own metabolism and natural radiation, has equipped life on Earth with elaborate cellular repair mechanisms. This discovery, which would subsequently win him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2015, contradicts the foundational premise of the Linear No Threshold (LNT) model of the effects of radiation, which won Herman Muller his Nobel Prize. LNT falsely states that every unit of radiation dose, regardless of size, produces proportional harm, implying there is no safe level.
Nuclear Energy buffer zones
However, even with the radiation boogieman amid the current crisis, Kenya’s energy poverty means factories meant to manufacture life-saving drugs, for example, are running below capacity. Energy poverty is thus more lethal.
France was in a structurally similar position during the fossil fuel embargo after the Yom Kippur War. France now operates 56 nuclear reactors and is Europe’s largest electricity exporter. The municipalities that host nuclear plants in France have turned “buffer zones” into parks and light industrial areas that employ locals. Property tax rates in Avoine, near the Chinon nuclear plant, for example, were 0.1% compared with a 12% regional average. Residents in Fessenheim paid 9% compared to their neighbors’ 13%.
These benefits are standard elsewhere. The 3000 acres adjacent to Koeberg are a wildlife sanctuary where springbok, penguins, and 290 endangered bird species thrive, and a leisure destination for Cape Town families. Out east, the plant at Wolseong is surrounded by the fishing community of South Korea, with domestic tourism from nearby Gyeongju City’s 250,000 residents, and Japan sustaining the restaurants on the beach right outside the nuclear plant, famous for their freshly caught fish.
UNESCO Heritage sites like The Tomb of King Munmu are in the shadows of the 4 CANDU Reactors that supply the South Korean grid with twice Kenya’s total installed capacity, contradicting the popular yet false dilemma pitting nuclear power against tourism.
Also Read: Nuclear Power in Kenya: Balancing Progress, Promises and Public Interest
Instead of hoary myths, these questionable characters imported to reinforce myths should tell us why their countries operate nuclear reactors and plan to build more.
One such organization hosts its annual award ceremonies at Cirkus, a 20-minute bus ride from the site of Sweden’s first nuclear reactor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. The now-decommissioned R1 reactor is 200 meters from the library, and its hall hosts PhD thesis defenses, among other academic gatherings. The cost of the real estate in the Valhallavagen area, right across the road from KTH, is one of the highest in all of Europe, and there are no cases whatsoever of babies being born with 3 eyes as preached to the residents of Siaya and Uyombo.
