Finnish nuclear industry says Japan scenario unlikely in Finland

      Finnish electric utilities using nuclear energy insist that a nuclear accident such as the ones which threaten reactors in Japan after Friday’s earthquake would be very unlikely in Finland.
      In Sunday’s Helsingin Sanomat Minister of Economic Affairs Mauri Pekkarinen(Centre Party) said that he hopes that the companies involved would give a detailed and open public accounting of the preparations made in Loviisa and Olkiluoto, the two locations of Finland’s existing commercial nuclear reactors, for possible floods and problems in distribution of electricity. All of Finland’s four existing commercial nuclear reactors, and the fifth, which is now being built in Olkiluoto, are located by the sea.
      Jorma Aurela, chief engineer at the Ministry of Economic Affairs responsible for nuclear safety matters, says that the risks posed by natural disasters and terrorism have been taken into consideration.
     
TVO, which operates the two reactors currently at Olkiluoto, is building a third in the area, and has been granted permission for a fourth. TVO spokeswoman Anna Lehtiranta says that security at the Olkiluoto plant is “at a good level”.
      She says that numerous improvements have been made to the reactors there, even though “the waves on the Baltic Sea are more moderate than in the Pacific, and there are no strong earthquakes here”.
     
TVO nuclear safety director Risto Himanen says that the sea level would have to rise 3.5 metres for there to be a problem.
      “The possibility of a tsunami in the Baltic Sea has also been investigated. But the Baltic is too shallow for that. Even a landslide on the Swedish coast, for instance, would not cause a wave that would be big enough.”
     
Public Affairs Manager Peter Tuominen at the electric utility Fortum says that no surprises are in store at the company’s two reactors in Loviisa.
      “We are constantly making risk assessments, and the plants make preparations for the types of problems that are considered to be possible, such as storms and fires.”
     
TVO made its most recent calculations about earthquakes about 15 years ago.
      "Then the starting point was that the plant should withstand an earthquake on a scale that might take place in Finland once every 100,000 years at most”, Risto HImanen says.
      Such a quake would cause bottles to fall from shelves.
      “A nuclear power plant would withstand an earthquake like that. In practice, earthquakes are significantly smaller. About ten quakes a year take place in Finland. Most of them are so small that nobody feels them.”
     
None of Finland’s four reactors that are currently in use would withstand the "maximum credible accident " impact of a large aircraft.
      “The Olkiluoto 3 reactor will be the first in the world to have a protective cover that would withstand a direct hit by a large jumbo jet”, TVO’s Lehtiranta says.
      The reactors currently in use have been fortified, and they can now withstand the impact of a small plane.
     
The electricity supply to the plants themselves has been secured through a number of measures.
      The plants can feed electricity to each other, if necessary. They are linked to the national grid and to hydroelectric plants, for instance.
      They also have separate diesel-run cooling systems that operate independent of electricity.
     
Finnish Greenpeace energy spokesperson Jehki Härkönen feels that Finland’s nuclear industry does not give a sufficiently realistic picture of the risks of nuclear power plants.
      “They want to give the impression that it is very unlikely that anything could happen. In principle, the risk exists. If all reserve energy disappears, we would be in the same situation as in Japan. A basic characteristic of nuclear energy is that the risks are truly very big, although unlikely.”