Fukushima–The Report (Updated)

by Matthew Payne on July 5, 20123 comments

UPDATE (7/7): Contra Mr. Vitruvius’ comment below, it seems all is not going so great in the “nuclear Renaissance.”  Kari Lundgren in Bloomberg Businessweek, that well-known ecological rag, reports that post-Fukushima,

World nuclear power production dropped by a record 4.3 percent last year as the global financial crisis and the Fukushima disaster in Japan prompted plant shutdowns and slowed construction of new sites.

In fact, though 59 plants are slated for construction, 18 have experienced multi-year delays and 9 have been being built for over twenty years.  A group of countries, Germany, Switzerland and Taiwan, have announced their withdrawal from nuclear energy, leading to an interesting statistic–in 2011 seven reactors began operation and 19 were shut down.  Moreover, a number of countries (Egypt, Italy and Kuwait among them) have decided to cancel construction of inaugural nuclear plants, while several electric companies in the UK, Bulgaria and Japan (of course!) have suspended plans for new construction, while numerous countries have delayed licensing to examine the implications of Fukushima.  It is interesting to note that not all of these cancellations or suspensions are being driven by safety concerns–the United Arab Emirates’ ambitious plans for nuclearification have been stymied by an inability to procure financing.  Capital markets have repeatedly balked at nuclear energy as too expensive and risky (which is why in the US the government must guarantee the loans).  As one expert quoted by Bloomberg notes,

“The situation is much worse for the industry than after Chernobyl,” said Mycle Schneider, co-author of the report, referring to the 1986 accident in Ukraine. “New projects have a very dull future, but it will put enormous pressure on extending lifetimes and that raises obvious safety issues.”

Yes, a number of countries are proceeding at full speed with a “what? me worry?” attitude–including China, Russia, South Korea,  the US and Canada–are going forward with their nuclear expansion but none of these countries (including Canada) are known for their tight regulatory regimes.   Bottom line, yeah, folks are building more nukes–but the energy produced by them is extremely dirty (plutonium is forever and nobody knows what to do with it), very expensive, and an antiquated technology.  Using the power that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki to boil water is, I would submit, quite a bit of overkill, especially when the natural gas boom (which as I mention in my comment below is quite problematic because of fracking), is likely to produce far cheaper energy per kilowatt hour than nuclear for the foreseeable future.

ORIGINAL STORY (7/5):  The Japanese Diet blue-ribbon report on the Fukushima nuclear disaster has been released and, after more than a year of investigation, the report should be a real headache for the present pro-nuclear administration of Prime Minister Noda and the pro-nuclear lobby in general.  One could call the tone and conclusions of the report, oh, perhaps, damning.  The BBC has excerpted some of the key quotes and one that will be appearing in my ledes comes from Kiyoshi Kurokawa, the commission’s chairman,

The earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011 were natural disasters of a magnitude that shocked the entire world. Although triggered by these cataclysmic events, the subsequent accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant cannot be regarded as a natural disaster. It was a profoundly manmade disaster – that could and should have been foreseen and prevented…


The report details the collusion between the nuclear industry and its regulators, the incompetence of TEPCo, the “what me worry?” attitude that prevailed in what can only be called faux emergency planning, and, probably most troubling, the culture of subservience to authority that permeates Japan’s nuclear industry and its government regulators.  To call this report “harsh” is a major understatement in the Japanese context.  In chairman Kurokawa’s official summary the fiasco is characterized as “Made in Japan” and can only be read as a withering critique of the Japanese establishment.  As the New York Times story on the report points out, the commission powerfully rebuts TEPCo’s and the government’s view that Fukushima was some sort of ”Black Swan Event” by noting that reactor number one, and quite possibly others, had their coolant systems likely compromised by the earthquake, not the tsunami.  While the March 2011 tsunami might have been an extraordinary event, earthquakes in Japan are not.  That means that other reactors in earthquake zones, such as the two recently restarted in Ohi, are vulnerable as well.    The Japanese public is already highly suspicious of the safety of nuclear reactors and have been protesting the Ohi restarts.  The  commission’s report should add fuel to that particular fire. 

While the comments in the report on Japan’s conformist culture will likely get the most press, the report’s findings on collusion between TEPCo and its regulators are particularly strong:

The Tepco Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and [private plant operator] Tepco, and the lack of governance by said parties. They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents. Therefore, we conclude that the accident was clearly “manmade”…

“They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents” is about as close to a charge of criminality as you are likely to find in a Japanese official report.  Indeed, Kurokawa while demurring on the issue of criminal prosecutions, did opine that such matters were not in the commission’s purview. 

But for all of its strong language and demand for massive changes in Japan’s political and corporate culture, the report represents a dodge.  It is not the culture of collusion and “regulatory capture” (or a specifically Japanese one, at any rate), as it is a crappy reactor design, on-site spent fuel storage and “what me worry?” arrogance afflicting far more countries than Japan at the root of Fukushima’s meltdowns.  As Joieau at DailyKos notes,

And don’t forget – the United States has 30 of these GE reactors in operation around the country, also guaranteed to blow in any accident involving melted fuel. It’s inevitable that such a disaster will occur somewhere during the 20-year extensions to operational licensing the NRC has been passing out willy-nilly to these and all other plants operated by the U.S. nuclear industry. Is there a nuke within 50 miles of you?

…and if so, what do you plan to do about it?

This is a provocative statement but an important one.  While I can’t share the certainty that a Fukushima-type disaster will occur at some time in the future from these GE reactors, it is hard to argue the point that such a disaster is almost inevitable if twenty-year extensions are granted in perpetuity for plants designed to last forty years.

 

BACK to margotbworldnews.com