Invisible Fallout: The Legacy of Chernobyl’s Deadly Air Pollution

An interesting new paper Political and economic determinants of nuclear energy: Evidence from Chernobyl Macarin, Chen, and Wang’s paper was recently presented at the NBER Political Economy Conference. The paper is nominally about how fossil fuel companies and coal miners in the US and UK successfully used the Chernobyl disaster to lobby against the construction of more nuclear power plants. The data collected here are impressive, but that’s how democracy works. I found the political economy section to be less interesting than some of the background material.

First, the Chernobyl accident halted the construction of nuclear power plants (NPPs) in the United States, the country with the most NPPs in the world (top left panel). Surprisingly, the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 (which was much less severe than Chernobyl) had little effect on construction. But the one-two punch with Chernobyl in 1986 certainly didn’t help. The same pattern is very clear across all countries and all democracies (top right panel). The two panels below show the same data, but look at new plants rather than cumulative totals. There was a sharp gap in 1986, and growth quickly converged to zero new plants per year.

If there had been fewer nuclear power plants, the likelihood of a disaster would have been lower. But there were also countervailing forces.

We document that the decline in new NPPs in democracies after Chernobyl occurred alongside an increase in the average age of in-service NPPs. To meet the growing demand for energy, reactors built before Chernobyl continued to operate past their originally scheduled decommissioning dates. Using data from NPP accident reports, we show that these plants are more likely to experience accidents. These data suggest that Chernobyl led to the continued operation of older and more dangerous NPPs in democracies.

In addition, as existing power plants age, their safety also declines.“The slowdown in new NPP construction has delayed the introduction of new, safe power plants.” This is a point about innovation that I have often emphasized (see also here).

Innovation is all about continuous improvement and refinement…. Learning by doing requires practice…. So when considering innovation today, it is essential to think not only about the current state of the technology, but also about the entire trajectory of its development. A treatment that is slightly better today may be much better tomorrow.

Regulation has driven up costs significantly.

The US NRC takes 6-7 years to approve an NPP. The total construction period after that can range from decades to indefinite. Construction often stalls after significant sunk costs due to cost overruns and regulatory changes during the construction process. This often forces investors to halt construction after billions of dollars have already been invested. Worldwide, companies have halted construction of 90 reactors since the 1980s. Of those, 40 were in the US alone. For example, in 2017, two utilities in South Carolina halted construction of two unfinished Westinghouse AP1000 reactors due to significant construction delays and cost overruns. At the time, two other US AP1000 reactors were under construction in Georgia. The original cost estimates for these two reactors had increased from $14 billion to $23 billion. Construction continued only when the US federal government pledged financial support. These were the first new reactors built in the US in decades. In contrast, China’s recent NPPs have lasted only 4-6 years and cost just $2 billion per reactor. When choosing whether to invest in nuclear or fossil fuel energy, keep in mind that a typical natural gas power plant takes about two years to build (Lovering et al., 2016).

Chernobyl was clearly a very costly disaster.

The initial emergency response and subsequent cleanup required more than 500,000 people and an estimated $68 billion (in 2019 dollars). Between 5 and 7 percent of Ukrainian government spending is still tied to Chernobyl. (Emphasis added, AT) In Belarus, Chernobyl-related costs fell from 22 percent of the state budget in 1991 to 6 percent in 2002.

The biggest safety benefit of the nuclear power plant shutdown was an increase in air pollution. Using satellite data on ambient particles, the authors show that when a new nuclear power plant is put into operation, pollution in surrounding cities decreases significantly. Second, they use the pollution reduction to create: In reserve Estimates of the health impacts of pollution:

According to our calculations, building additional nuclear power plants would save an average of 816,058 additional life years by reducing total suspended particulate matter (TSP) in the environment.

According to our baseline estimates (Table 1), over the past 38 years, Chernobyl has reduced the total number of NPPs worldwide by 389, almost entirely due to the slowdown in new construction in democratic countries. Thus, our calculations show that the post-Chernobyl decline in NPP growth in democratic countries has resulted in a loss of more than 318 million years of expected life worldwide.

The author uses the University of Chicago’s Air Quality Life Index, which I think is on the high side of the estimate. Nevertheless, as you know, I think the new air pollution literature is reliable (also here), so I think the conclusion is almost certainly correct. That is, Chernobyl many It is possible that there will be more deaths than the direct impact of reducing nuclear power plant construction and increasing air pollution, and while the impact is small, it is not negligible.

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