探花直播 of Cambridge - natural disasters

Opinion: Droughts and floods: India鈥檚 water crises demand more than grand projects

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 16:17:48 +0000

India is facing one of its most serious droughts in recent memory 鈥� official estimates suggest that at least 330m people are likely to be affected by acute shortages of water. As the subcontinent awaits the imminent arrival of the monsoon rains, bringing relief to those who have suffered the long, dry and exceptionally warm summer, the crisis affecting India鈥檚 water resources is high on the public agenda.

Unprecedented drought demands unconventional responses, and there have been some fairly unusual attempts to address this year鈥檚 shortage. Perhaps most dramatic was the deployment of railway wagons to transport 500,000 litres of water per day across the Deccan plateau, with the train traversing more than 300km to provide relief to the district of Latur in Maharashtra state.

探花直播need to shift water on this scale sheds light on the key issue that makes water planning in the Indian subcontinent so challenging. While the region gets considerable precipitation most years from the annual monsoon, the rain tends to fall in particular places 鈥� and for only a short period of time (about three months). This water needs to be stored, and made to last for the entire year.

In most years, it also means that there is often too much water in some places, resulting in as much distress due to flooding as there currently is due to drought. So there is a spatial challenge as well 鈥� water from the surplus regions needs to reach those with a shortfall, and the water train deployed in Maharashtra is one attempt to achieve this.

Grand ambitions

探花直播current crisis has led the Indian government to announce that it hopes to resurrect an ambitious plan to try and link the major river basins of the country, under the Interlinking of Rivers (ILR) Project. 探花直播scale and magnitude of this exercise, both financial (it is estimated to cost more than 拢100 billion) and in engineering terms (involving the transfer of 174 billion cubic metres of water annually) is unprecedented.

Critics suggest that it is unlikely to work and is likely to create further ecological and social disruption, especially due to the uncertainties in weather and precipitation patterns due to climate change. There is a risk that other alternatives, perhaps less dramatic in their scope, might be neglected in the rush for the big headline-grabbing schemes.

A specific way forward might be to work more directly with natural processes to secure the regeneration of water sources at the local level. In the dry plains, this involves the revitalisation of aquifers and the replenishment of groundwater through recharge during the monsoon, as has been attempted already in some regions. In the hilly areas, there is considerable scope for investment in spring recharge and source sustainability, as has been undertaken on a significant scale in the Himalayan state of Sikkim.

Our current research is examining the need to invest in source protection and sustainability in detail, especially in the Himalayas, which have been described as the 鈥�Water Towers of Asia鈥�. Urbanisation trends in the region suggest that there will be a growing number of small towns and settlements that will need water infrastructure to meet their needs 鈥� and there is a critical need to secure these water sources.

Deforestation, land conversion and degradation, as well as urban encroachment due to illegal construction, pose major threats to the water bearing capacity of the Himalayan landscape. There is an urgent need to invest in the identification, protection and restoration of these 鈥渃ritical water zones鈥�.

Potential for conflict

探花直播Himalayan context also demonstrates the transboundary nature of the water issue. 探花直播Hindu Kush Himalayan region extends across eight countries, from Afghanistan to Myanmar, and supports ten major river systems, potentially affecting the lives of more than 1.5 billion people. Cooperation across political boundaries is vital to manage these fragile resources, further threatened by the uncertain impacts of climate change.

探花直播Hindu Kush Himalayan region is the source for ten major river systems in Asia. Author provided

聽

There is some hope, despite three major wars since independence, that India and Pakistan have managed to maintain some semblance of cooperation under the Indus Waters Treaty, which was negotiated in 1960. However, analysts suggest that regional conflict over water is going to worsen 鈥� and much depends on the role of China, which is the dominant upstream water controller in the region.

探花直播other key response is managing water demand 鈥� and making explicit choices over alternative uses. This year, the shifting of Indian Premier League cricket matches away from water-scarce Maharashtra was a high-profile, though somewhat symbolic, example of an explicit prioritisation of water use.

More generally, though, managing water demands has rarely been prioritised. Water-thirsty crops 鈥� sugarcane, for example 鈥� dominate the landscape in the dry regions of Marathwada and Vidarbha in Maharashtra. Farmers receive subsidies on energy, which allow them to pump dry the already-depleted aquifers in other parts of the country. And, there are important issues of distributional equity 鈥� the poor in many urban contexts pay significantly more per litre for erratic and unreliable water, while their richer neighbours luxuriate in swimming pools and spend weekends on plush golf greens.

Water is an issue that cuts across all aspects of social and economic life in India. Compartmentalised responses are unlikely to be adequate to address the current crises. There is a need for an integrated approach, which addresses source sustainability, land use management, agricultural strategies, demand management and the distribution and pricing of water. With growing pressures due to climate change, migration and population growth, creative and imaginative governance is needed to manage this precious resource.

Bhaskar Vira, Reader in Political Economy at the Department of Geography and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College; Director, 探花直播 of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute, 探花直播 of Cambridge

This article was originally published on 探花直播Conversation. Read the original article.

探花直播opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the 探花直播 of Cambridge.

Bhaskar Vira (Department of Geography and聽探花直播 of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute) discusses ways of dealing with聽the crisis affecting India鈥檚 water resources.

Rita Willaert

Brahmaputra - Assam

探花直播text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Unsafe havens? Health risks for refugees

jfp40 — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 09:33:04 +0000

As the humanitarian crisis in Syria continues to unfold, over two million people are thought to have crossed the borders into neighbouring countries. Desperate, empty-handed and facing an uncertain future, most of the refugees will seek aid and support in camps, where they will be exposed to yet another threat: infectious disease.

High population densities, malnutrition, poor sanitation, sexual violence and reduced access to healthcare following forced migration can create a 鈥榩erfect storm鈥� where communicable diseases become a major cause of mortality and morbidity. And it鈥檚 far from a recent problem.

Over 600,000 cases of cholera have been recorded in Haiti since the earthquake of 2010, which displaced up to 2.3 million people. Cholera was also responsible for some 50,000 deaths in 1994 among refugees of the Rwandan genocide. In 1949, the British Red Cross noted that malaria and dysentery were widespread among 30,000 Arab refugees living in huts, caves or ragged tents in Jordan.聽 In 1901, Boer War refugees were exposed to measles, pneumonia, dysentery, diarrhoea, bronchitis and enteric fever in the camps of the Transvaal.

鈥淪ince biblical times, mass migrations have followed conflict and crises,鈥� said Professor Andy Cliff. 鈥淭oday, humanitarian aid organisations perform an incredible job in taking care of refugees but this can take time to come into play, and the conditions that migrants find themselves in raises the spectre of epidemics. Diseases such as cholera, dysentery, measles and meningitis, for instance, have resulted in high mortality rates in relief camps in Africa, Asia and Central America.鈥�

Although the impact of forced migration on health is well known, no study has ever systematically linked the nature of displacement, its geographical location and the particular patterns of disease that occur: a triangulation that, if charted, could help authorities and aid agencies prepare as crises unfold.

"We call this the displacement鈥揹isease nexus,鈥� added Cliff. 鈥淯nderstanding it lies at the heart of preparing for future displacements, both for the welfare of the migrants and for the health and economy of the destination.鈥�

For the past year, Cliff from the Department of Geography and Professor Matthew Smallman-Raynor from the 探花直播 of Nottingham have been leading a project that is assembling the first ever database to link these types of information. And to do so, their team is looking back over 100 years of forced migrations, across the globe.

鈥� 探花直播research could scarcely be more timely,鈥� said Smallman-Raynor. 鈥� 探花直播most recent figures released by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimate up to 45.2 million people in situations of displacement for 2012, which is the highest figure in 20 years.鈥�

Cliff鈥檚 colleagues Dr Anna Barford and Heather Hooper have begun the task of hunting through the rich archives held by organisations such as the UNHCR, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations Office at Geneva and the World Health Organization, as well as searching through scientific journals dating back to 1901. A doctoral student, Anna-Meagan Fairley at the 探花直播 of Nottingham, is looking specifically at infectious disease among people displaced by natural disasters.

鈥淏ecause each set of circumstances is unique, we need to look at as many cases of displacement as possible, over a long time period,鈥� said Barford. 鈥淥nly then can we start to work out whether there are patterns that governments and aid agencies can learn from in preventing epidemics and delivering healthcare.鈥�

Epidemics of communicable diseases not only affect the health of migrants in camps, but also the health of those in areas the migrants pass through during their migration. 鈥淧erhaps one of the most significant examples relates to the First World War,鈥� said Cliff.聽鈥淐haos ensued in terms of preparedness for the end of the war 鈥� several million refugees were swilling around on borders between Russia and eastern Europe, and you could map the spread of typhus and cholera marching with the refugees as they crisscrossed Europe.鈥�

探花直播results will be used to establish global electronic databases of infectious disease events in relation to mass population movements since the beginning of the 20th century. 鈥淚t will be a fascinating resource,鈥� said Barford. 鈥淥ut of this we鈥檒l pick 50 events and look in detail at the short-, medium- and long-term geographical patterns and consequences of displacement-associated epidemics. 探花直播databases will be available to national and international organisations involved in health promotion and in the delivery of humanitarian assistance.鈥�

探花直播results will also be published by Oxford 探花直播 Press as one of a series of atlases; a previous volume in the series Atlas of Epidemic Britain: A Twentieth Century Picture authored by Cliff and Smallman-Raynor won the British Medical Association prize for Best Medical Book of the Year 2013.

探花直播results of this ambitious project, which is funded by the Leverhulme Trust, will also be of interest to countries such as the UK that eventually become home to refugees after they have left intermediary camps.聽鈥淭his so-called secondary migration has been the cause of much public and political debate, with the UK鈥檚 Department of Health launching a consultation into proposals for charging migrants to use the health system,鈥� added Cliff. 鈥淏y also looking at the long-term health consequences for secondary migrants, we hope to shed light on how best to prepare for their arrival and support their healthcare.鈥�

For further information about this story, please contact Louise Walsh at louise.walsh@admin.cam.ac.uk

Inset image:聽A Syrian woman near a fire at a refugee camp in Azaz, Syria, on December 17, 2012. Credit: Freedom House

A new study is looking at a century of mass migrations worldwide to understand the public health consequences when people are forced to flee from war, persecution and natural disaster.

Since biblical times, mass migrations have followed conflict and crises

Professor Andy Cliff

MM/JRS

Caption: A group of Sri Lankan refugees arrives in Tamil Nadu after a risky 30-mile boat ride across the Palk Straits

Migration and mental health

Infectious disease is not the only health threat that victims of forced migration face. Their mental health is also at risk.

Forced migrations are often the result of violent events or economic hardship, which can have profound psychological consequences. Migrants may be without their family support network and living in difficult conditions, while their left-behind families might find it equally hard to cope.

探花直播mental health of individuals after forced migration, as well as after their subsequent return migration, is an area that Dr Tine Van Bortel from the 探花直播鈥檚 Institute of Public Health describes as 鈥渙ne of the least explored areas of health research.鈥�

She has been involved in pilot projects that have looked at the quality of life, well-being and mental health of migrant domestic workers and their left-behind families in Singapore and Sri Lanka, and of Muslims forcibly resettled in 1990 by rebel fighters in Sri Lanka, working in collaboration with Dr Chesmal Siriwardhana and Sabrina Anjara at King鈥檚 College London and researchers at the Sri Lankan Institute of Research and Development (IRD).

鈥淚n terms of economic forced migration, we find that both labour-receiving countries and labour-sending countries have inadequate measures to provide the information, care and support that鈥檚 needed for migrant workers and their left-behind families,鈥� said Van Bortel. 鈥淪ome labour-receiving countries have health checks in place but these focus mainly on communicable diseases and not on mental health. Hard work, social isolation, abuse and missing their left-behind family members often lead to significant mental strain and sometimes suicide. In turn, the left-behind families often find it difficult to cope too."

鈥淲e are now broadening our research to look at possible interventions to raise awareness, psycho-educate and empower people to make more informed decisions about economic migration, to help migrant workers and their left-behind families cope more constructively with often challenging situations, and to address the psycho-social needs of displaced populations,鈥� added Van Bortel.

鈥淗umanitarian agencies are increasingly aware of the psychological consequences of forced migration and have been campaigning for change. We hope that the results might be used by legislators and policy makers in countries affected by forced migration and internal displacement to improve policy and practice for the benefit of individuals, families and communities.鈥�

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Natural disasters, infrastructure and the 鈥渘ew normal鈥�

tdk25 — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 15:51:27 +0000

Some of the worst natural disasters of the last decade have radically changed the ways in which we strive to protect communities from similar, future tragedies, a leading engineer will explain this week.

Citing a roll-call that includes the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, the Canterbury earthquake and Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, Professor Tom O鈥橰ourke of Cornell 探花直播 will argue that these and other similarly devastating incidents have established a 鈥渘ew normal鈥� for the way in which we prepare ourselves for extreme events.

He will be speaking at the inaugural lecture of the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC). This marks the formal commencement of a multitude of new research projects on infrastructure, many of which are designed to enable society to protect critical infrastructure from the unexpected. 探花直播lecture will take place in the Department of Engineering, 探花直播 of Cambridge, on 17 January, at 6pm.

Researchers at the Centre are already developing and improving wireless technologies, fibre optics and other types of sensors, with a view to establishing them as the norm for the construction industry and those in asset management responsible for monitoring bridges, tunnels, roads, railways, and other types of infrastructure.

As Professor O鈥橰ourke will discuss, however, that norm is already being dramatically reshaped by the game-changing incidents of recent years. His talk 鈥� 鈥� 探花直播New Normal for Natural Disasters鈥� 鈥� will argue that these have forced a shift in the way in which the risks of natural disasters occurring are evaluated. In turn, that necessitates a different approach to the question of protecting critical infrastructure itself.

His talk will examine the threat posed by potential future earthquakes to the water supply of Southern California, or that of hurricanes to New York City. It will also propose a strategy for improving infrastructure resilience at a time when the financial resources sometimes available to governments wishing to do so are limited.

探花直播Centre鈥檚 inaugural lecture will be followed by a seminar, the following day, led by another specialist in the field, Professor Bill Spencer of the 探花直播 of Illinois, who will focus on the potential of new technology to continuously monitor the integrity of infrastructure in real-time. This will not only improve public safety, Spencer will argue, but also simultaneously reduce maintenance and inspection costs. His presentation will draw on the real-life example of a network of smart sensors which have been used on the Jindo Bridge, a structure in South Korea with a 344 metre main span.

Radio 4 listeners can also listen to Professor Robert Mair, Principal Investigator at the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction, on this week鈥檚 Life Scientific, where he discusses tunnel construction in busy cities and the novel application of sensors to the construction industry, among other subjects. 探花直播show was broadcast today (Tuesday, 15 January) at 9am, is repeated at 9.30pm, and is available on BBC iPlayer.

After a year of preparation following the Centre鈥檚 establishment in 2011, numerous research projects are now underway, focusing on its main mission, which is to develop and commercialise technologies which will change the way in which infrastructure is managed. In particular, researchers are examining new and innovative ways in which to use technologies in sensors and data management to monitor the day-to-day performance of bridges, tunnels, roads and more.

Doing so remotely is, as Friday鈥檚 seminar implies, particularly valuable where the infrastructure is hard for people to reach and monitor themselves. Finding ways in which sensors can harvest their own energy so that they can continue to operate without needing to be maintained is therefore particularly important. One breakthrough in this area is the recently reported development of a device which can convert the vibration of passing traffic into electricity, enabling a sensor to generate its own power, so that batteries are not required.

In addition, the Centre is concerned with the practical purpose of commercialising these technologies, and developing them to a stage where their use in industry is common practice. 探花直播research programmes have been developed in unison with construction companies and partners from the IT, electronics and materials sectors with the aim of developing tools that will be of practical use to industry once the research stage is complete. In the long term, it is hoped that this will lead to cradle-to-grave monitoring of infrastructure around the world, both in new and existing structures, vastly improving public safety when disaster next strikes.

探花直播Japanese and Canterbury earthquakes, Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy and a host of other modern natural disasters have changed the game for those striving to protect our infrastructure from extreme events. 探花直播inaugural lecture at a Cambridge Centre dedicated to this cause will hear how.

探花直播talk will examine the threat posed by potential future earthquakes to the water supply of Southern California, or that of hurricanes to New York City.

NASA.

Hurricane Katrina makes landfall in the US. Speaking this week in Cambridge, engineer Tom O鈥橰ourke will describe such disasters as game-changers for those wishing to protect people from similar, future events.

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Scientists explain scale of Japanese tsunami

amb206 — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 09:35:54 +0000

Scientists at Cambridge 探花直播 have developed a model that may show why some tsunamis 鈥� including the one that devastated Japan in March 2011 鈥� are so much larger than expected. 探花直播Japanese tsunami baffled the world鈥檚 experts as it was far bigger than might have been anticipated from what is known about the deep sea earthquakes that create long waves out in the ocean.

In a paper published today (24 August 2012) in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Professors Dan McKenzie and James Jackson of Cambridge鈥檚 Department of Earth Sciences describe for the first time the added factor that may have made this tsunami so severe: a huge collapse of soft material on the sea bed resulted in a far greater movement of water than would have been caused by the earthquake alone.

Tsunamis occur when an earthquake rapidly changes the shape of the sea floor, displacing the water above it. 聽探花直播earthquake itself is the abrupt rupture of a fault surface separating rocks that have steadily been bending like a loaded spring, before suddenly overcoming friction and slipping, releasing the elastic energy.聽 In the case of the Japan earthquake, the fault is the plate boundary, allowing the Pacific sea floor to slide beneath Japan. 探花直播wave formed at the sea surface as the sea floor moves can cause untold damage when it hits shore.

鈥淎s the plates move against each other, the rocks on their boundaries slowly bend under the pressure, until they eventually crack and slide on faults.聽 When they do, there is an upwards and outwards movement that takes just a few seconds: a movement of 10 metres is a large earthquake and out at sea this causes a tsunami,鈥� said Professor Jackson.

鈥淏ut data from the Japanese earthquake show a movement of more than 60 metres. Rocks can bend - but they cannot bend to that extent and, anyway, the rocks that moved were sloppy sediments with little strength. This suggests that something else was taking place to increase the movement several fold. It was this massive movement that caused the tsunami that swamped the coast of Japan and beyond with such terrible consequences.鈥�

Important advances in technologies for monitoring movements on the sea bed, plus a huge investment by the Japanese government, mean that the world鈥檚 scientific community has access to an unprecedented level of data about what happened in March 2011 some seven km under the sea and around 70 km off the coast of Japan.

By interpreting data gathered in the lead-up to and aftermath of the Japanese tsunami, as well as during the event itself, the Cambridge scientists have shown that the squeezing together of two plates in the earth鈥檚 crust not only resulted in a fracture but also caused a massive collapse of the debris that had built up on the sea bed as tectonic movements scraped loose sediment into an unstable wedge.

鈥淲hen the wedge of material collapsed, the leading edge split off and shot forward a bit like a pip shooting out of a giant pair of tongs. In essence, what happened was a release of both the elastic energy stored in the rocks and the gravitational energy contained in the wedge-shaped build-up of debris,鈥� said Professor Jackson.

探花直播extra movement of the sea bed at the toe of the wedge enhanced the shape of the huge wave created at the surface of the sea, which travelled towards Japan.

探花直播research throws a light on other unusually large tsunamis that have long puzzled scientists, including those that struck Nicaragua in 1992, Sumatra in 2004, and Java in 2006. A comparison of data from these events with that from the recent Japanese tsunami reveals that they have much in common, strongly suggesting that these disasters too occurred as a result of the release of gravitational as well as elastic energy.

鈥淭hese events share a number of unusual features, including large displacements, suggesting that they resulted partly from the collapse of debris. We hope that our research represents a step forward in understanding how large tsunamis occur and in what circumstances they are likely to happen,鈥� said Professor Jackson.

Tsunamis are caused by earthquakes under the seabed. Some tsunamis 鈥� including the disaster that hit Japan last year 鈥� are unexpectedly large. Cambridge scientists suggest that their severity is caused by a release of gravitational energy as well as elastic energy.

We hope that our research represents a step forward in understanding how large tsunamis occur.

Professor James Jackson

REUTERS/Mainichi Shimbun

A wave approaches Miyako City from the Heigawa estuary in Iwate Prefecture

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Tweeting disasters

ns480 — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:52:45 +0000

Professor John Preston, who is based at the 探花直播 of East London鈥檚 Cass School of Education, will tell the 鈥榁iolent Nature鈥� Research Councils UK聽 debate that Twitter and Facebook have been credited with being able to pick up advance signals of disasters. However, it is only in retrospect that the significance of the signals can be ascertained.

探花直播debate focuses on whether governments, scientists and aid agencies can manage the risks of living in potentially lethal locations. Other speakers include Professor James Jackson from the 探花直播 of Cambridge, Daniel Walden, policy adviser for disaster risk reduction at Save the Children UK and Dr Andrew Collins, reader and director of the Disaster and Development Centre at Northumbria 探花直播. It will be chaired by James Randerson, the Guardian's science and environment editor.

Professor Preston is the leader of a two-year cross-disciplinary research programme, supported by the the Research Councils UK Global Uncertainties Programme, which began in 2010 and seeks to uncover how the likes of Twitter and Facebook could save lives in the event of a national crisis such as a terrorist attack or natural disaster.

He says that where Twitter in particular works well is in correcting information and countering false rumours. 鈥淭here is an inherent self-correcting bias in Twitter which is like the scientific process. When someone posts it sifts the evidence for and against and the more current information countervails anything that came before,鈥� says Professor Preston, whose book Disaster Education is out early next year.

He adds: 鈥淪ocial networks can be used for malicious reasons to spread rumours by targeting false information at a few super-connected people. Information spread this way would take longer to correct.鈥�

Professor Preston says: 鈥淧art of the reason authorities are put off using social media to spread information during disasters is that it can appear quite uncontrollable since information sharing after disasters tends to be followed by a period of emotional reflection on what it means. Emotion is very important in social media. It's not just about information. People use it quite creatively which can make it a little bit uncontrollable.鈥�

探花直播research programme is looking at how to prepare the UK better for disasters, through, for instance, cell broadcasting and community education, and is looking at lessons that can be learnt from the past.

探花直播Violent Nature debate will take place at the McCrum Lecture Theatre, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge from 8-9.30pm on 25^th October.聽

Social networks like Twitter cannot help prevent disasters, but can quickly correct misinformation resulting from false rumours preventing possible further loss of lives, a leading researcher will tell a public debate on 25th October at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas.

Emotion is very important in social media. It's not just about information. People use it quite creatively which can make it a little bit uncontrollable.

Professor John Preston

DVIDSHUB from Flickr

Search and rescue

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Facing up to Fukushima

bjb42 — Fri, 20 May 2011 15:07:13 +0000

With daily media coverage of the earthquake aftermath focusing on Fukushima power plant and possible worst-case scenarios, the question of safety in nuclear energy has returned to the forefront of many people鈥檚 minds around the world. Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan recently announced that his government will be 鈥榮tarting from scratch鈥� with its energy plans and the country鈥檚 reliance on nuclear power following the crisis.

Tony Roulstone, course director of the nuclear energy graduate programme at Cambridge, argues that the Fukushima reactor may have long held the potential for an incident of this nature, being an old power plant with a flawed design, which doesn鈥檛 reflect contemporary nuclear capability.

鈥� 探花直播safety standards that these old reactors were built to are nothing like today鈥檚 standards. Fukushima is the second oldest Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) in the world, completed in 1971. Some of these early models have a weak design. At the very time you need the containment facility to protect you, when the core is overheating, you have to vent pressure and consequently possible radiation to prevent explosion.鈥�

鈥� 探花直播reactor and the radiation containment should last at least a week after an incident without external help; this is the way modern reactors are designed. Nuclear safety is very simple: Don鈥檛 damage the core, make the containment effective. But what do you do about these old reactors? We can use our ingenuity to try and fix them, or shut them down, but either way we need to address the problem.鈥�

探花直播earthquake didn鈥檛 damage the reactors themselves, but did take out mains electricity. 探花直播ensuing tsunami knocked out the diesel generators and other back-up systems that were used to pump water around the core, keeping it cool. Once that power failed, the core overheated and was critically damaged a mere 26 hours after the tidal wave hit.

Roulstone calls this 鈥榗ommon cause 鈥�, where the initiating event triggers a domino effect that inevitably leads to core damage. In this case: tsunami hits, grid goes down, batteries fail, cooling pump stops, core damage results. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 have a reactor which destroys itself within 26 hours when all you need to do is pump water in 鈥� this is unacceptable. More batteries, more diverse pumping systems, whatever the cost. If all you have to do is get water into the reactor and heat out, then that鈥檚 what you鈥檝e got to do!鈥�

Nuclear engineering has come a long way since the construction of the Fukushima plant. Modern reactor design has focused on the threat from 鈥榚xternal hazards鈥� during the last 20 years: Earthquake, terrorism, plane crash, flooding, and so on. Safety systems, such as the pump and generators that went down at Fukushima, are now built to the same robust standards as the reactors, preventing the potential for a 鈥榗ommon cause鈥� cascade of failure.

When the Fukushima plant was built forty years ago, core damage frequency was predicted as once in every 1,000 reactor years. Following the meltdown at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979, reactors were modified to reduce the likelihood of core damage to at least one in 10,000 years.

According to Roulstone, the trend has continued to increase dramatically: 鈥淧lants from the 80鈥檚 and 90鈥檚 such as Sizewell in the UK have an expected core damage of once every 100,000 years, and the new generation of nuclear plants are being built to once every 1 million years, as good as we can do.鈥� In fact, Japan itself is home to the first (3rd generation) advanced reactors, which have been operating since 1996.

But this still leaves the question of what to do with old reactors such as Fukushima, and how to address the worldwide perception of nuclear power following coverage of such disasters in a media-saturated age, which tap into the public fear of nuclear radiation still prevalent from the Cold War and tragedies like Chernobyl.

For Japan, a heavily industrialised island nation with very little natural energy resources, there are no easy answers. 鈥� 探花直播Japanese committed to nuclear power because they had no other option,鈥� says Roulstone. 鈥淧ost-Fukushima, all they can do in the short term is import gas and fossil fuels. 探花直播only way they鈥檒l reassure the public about nuclear energy is by saying: 鈥榳e don鈥檛 care about past energy policy, we need to look at everything on its merits right now as they stand鈥�.鈥�

This openness in communication to the public from governments and the nuclear industry is something that Roulstone sees as crucial, on a local and global level. 鈥淚n nuclear, what happens in one country affects everyone else. 探花直播Japanese haven鈥檛 yet been open enough with the global community; they need to get more international people involved. 探花直播industry needs to be seen to be learning from this, the only way we can progress effectively is by being open and responsive.鈥�

For Roulstone, the question of how to deal with ageing reactors such as Fukushima is a thorny one, but this is not the time to shy away from these issues. 鈥淎s an industry, we need to learn from this and make things substantially better, not just a little bit better. We learned a hell of a lot about operating and designing reactors from Three Mile Island鈥� the game is to learn from accidents 鈥� making these so remote that the public can trust nuclear to generate the energy we need鈥�

鈥淵ou don鈥檛 live without risk; the question is what you do about it in these situations. You either give up or you tackle things and make progress.鈥�

Tony Roulstone will be giving a public lecture on events in Japan entitled Fukushima - New wine in old wineskins? on Tuesday 24 May at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London.

In the wake of the disaster at the Fukushima reactor, Japan and other nations are re-evaluating their attitude to nuclear energy. Cambridge academic Tony Roulstone believes it is vital for governments and industry to proactively and openly develop nuclear strategy in light of this incident.

探花直播industry needs to be seen to be learning from this, the only way we can progress effectively is by being open and responsive.

Tony Roulstone

Thierry Ehrmann from Flickr

Japan of the apocalypse

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