Veteran nuclear experts regret Fukushima crisis, but still see need for reactors

Veteran nuclear experts regret Fukushima crisis, but still see need for reactors
January 26, 2012 (Mainichi Japan)


Shunichi Tanaka, center, former acting chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of Japan, announces proposals made by 16 veteran nuclear experts on April 1, 2011. At right is Shojiro Matsuura, former head of the Nuclear Safety Commission. (Mainichi)


Veteran nuclear experts who were involved in Japan's atomic energy policy for decades are lamenting the outbreak of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, but maintain that resource-poor Japan needs nuclear power to support its current standard of living in the future.



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In late March 2011, soon after the outbreak of the Fukushima nuclear crisis, an email was sent to about 30 leading figures in nuclear circles in Japan. Attached was a file titled: "Urgent proposals in connection with the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant," which began with the sentence: "As figures who have been promoting the peaceful use of nuclear power, we find this accident deeply regrettable, and at the same time we deeply apologize to the public."


The proposals were written mainly by three people -- Shojiro Matsuura, former head of the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC); Kenji Sumita, former acting NSC chief; and Shunichi Tanaka, former acting chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of Japan. Some nuclear experts rejected the proposals, asking why they had to apologize. But the proposals were eventually undersigned by 16 leading nuclear experts.


Frustrated over the slow response to the nuclear crisis by the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), which operates the damaged Fukushima plant, the nuclear experts pointed out that it was essential to gather knowledge and wisdom from society to come up with a comprehensive and strategic response. The rare proposals made by the experts were released at a news conference on April 1 -- the day when many Cabinet ministers shed their disaster working uniforms and once again wore suits to mark the start of full-fledged reconstruction work. In sharp contrast to the Prime Minister's Office, which was trying to appear and sound calm, Tanaka sternly commented: "Reactor cores have melted to a considerable extent. I never predicted that we would cause the public so much trouble. We are responsible for promoting nuclear power."


So, how did the 16 nuclear experts see the Fukushima nuclear crisis?


Sumita, who played a leading role in handling the JCO criticality accident in 1999, commented: "We have not applied the lessons learned from the JCO accident in the space of 10 years." He added impatiently, "We've heard utility companies saying, 'What that backcountry company did has nothing to do with us. If we took measures, we would also be seen as being irresponsible."


Shinzo Saito, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, stated: "There's a lack of communication between the actual site and top executives at the company headquarters. This is what you might call a 'big company disease.'"


Meanwhile, a former member of the Atomic Energy Commission of Japan said, "It's a world in which everyone understands each other and if someone says something, everything is understood. There have been no constructive discussions, and criticism has never been reflected in policy."


Nevertheless, none of the experts clearly stated that Japan could do without nuclear power.


Shoji Nagamiya, former chairman of the Physical Society of Japan, commented: "Nuclear technology is a major asset to human beings. It is a waste to renounce what we have obtained." Hideki Nariai, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, added, "Atomic power is so wonderful. The global competition for energy has started, so we can't talk about getting rid of nuclear power plants."


In the wake of the outbreak of the Fukushima nuclear crisis, the government set up an advisory council on the prevention of nuclear accidents and appointed Matsuura as head of the council. The advisory council compiled proposals in December aimed at preventing a recurrence of the nuclear disaster, and called for a tentatively titled "Nuclear Regulation Agency" to be set up in April to maintain independence from the nuclear-related companies and break away from Japan's "nuclear village" -- the name given to the nation's pro-nuclear collection of politicians, bureaucrats, academics and utilities.


Looking back over his 76 years, Matsuura said, "As a person who lived through an era of insufficient energy supply, I think that if we were to maintain the current standard of living in Japan with the current population, we would need to secure a source of atomic energy and use it to live while ensuring its safety."


These are the characteristics of the "nuclear village" that the veteran nuclear experts pointed out with deep regret in connection with the Fukushima nuclear crisis. The question remains as to whether these characteristics can be altered in the future.

Nuclear power boosters used climate change to ride to energy supremacy

Nuclear power boosters used climate change to ride to energy supremacy
January 25, 2012 (Mainichi Japan)


In 1997, in the midst of the international negotiations that would eventually result in the Kyoto Protocol, the Japanese delegation was pondering whether it could realistically accept the protocol's main point: a commitment to a 6 percent decrease in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels. They were also grappling with what such a commitment would mean for Japan's energy supplies.


Strangely enough, though the Japanese delegation was grappling with issues of carbon emissions and energy needs, there was not a single representative of the then Environment Agency on hand. Osamu Watanabe, vice minister at the former Ministry of International Trade and Industry at the time of the talks and now president of Japan Petroleum Exploration Co., sums up Japan's thinking like this:


"Taking nuclear power into account was a prerequisite for accepting the 6 percent reduction. Speaking for the industry ministry, we thought that the more nuclear power we had, the more we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions."



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Meanwhile, at the Environment Agency -- which became the Environment Ministry in 2001 -- there were many staff who took a more cautious attitude to the promotion of nuclear power. Their skepticism did not, however, often find effective expression.


"The industry ministry put up a lot of resistance to the Environment Agency getting involved in energy policy," a senior agency official from the time says. "We just couldn't get a word in."


The threat of climate change gained traction in the global imagination after the end of the Cold War. And as warming worries grew, nuclear power became an anti-emissions trump card in the eyes of many, fueling a reactor building spree. Another former Environment Ministry official with long experience in climate change policy told the Mainichi, "Government policy came to incorporate promotion of nuclear power. It was taboo for us to even make an issue of it."


Even after the Kyoto Protocol was agreed on, the Environment Agency and its successor ministry had a very rough road trying to defend climate change policies. The agency tried to organize domestic support for the protocol's ratification, but was met with fierce opposition from the governing party and business world figures who worried about the effects on industry and condemned the protocol as an "unequal treaty."


"We thought getting the protocol ratified was the greatest environmental policy measure we could take, but drawing on nuclear power never entered our minds," the former senior Environment Ministry official says. It was, however, on the minds of some people in government. When the government finalized its basic principles for climate change policy in March 2002, the document included a provision for "promotion of nuclear power," and set a goal of increasing nuclear power output by 30 percent by 2010.


The Environment Agency also came under direct pressure to fall in line behind nuclear power even before the rumblings around the Kyoto Protocol. Just after the 1992 U.N. Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, as the agency was undertaking revisions to laws providing capital to environmental NGOs, it was forced by the then ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to insert provisions banning funding to groups that were opposed to nuclear power. Many senior officials were also cornered by governing party lawmakers demanding the agency back nuclear power.


The push for nuclear power deepened when the Democratic Party of Japan came into power in 2009. In September that year, then Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama declared to the world that Japan would cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2020. Just after that announcement, speaking on the environmental assessment for the construction of a third reactor at Kyushu Electric Power Co.'s Sendai nuclear power plant, the environment minister stated that "to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to guarantee safety, steady promotion of nuclear power is necessary." This was the first time official pronouncements in favor of nuclear power were made over an environmental assessment.


Even leading Japanese climate scientists were given a part to play in nuclear power promotion. University of Tokyo professor emeritus Ryoichi Yamamoto -- a climate change policy advisor to both the Abe and Fukuda administrations -- put together a 2008 report calling for the expansion of nuclear power as a vital part of global warming strategy when he was chairman of an Atomic Energy Commission panel.


"I thought nuclear power would be a powerful tool," Yamamoto says of the report. "But it can't be controlled when there's an accident, so it can't really be called a 'technology.' I've come to understand that there are ethical considerations with destroying the lives of local residents. I regret that I could not point out those issues when I wrote the report."


Furthermore, "I think the government, which seemed to be blocked and drifting on how to get reactor construction moving and the problems of radioactive waste disposal, just latched onto the global warming issue when climate change countermeasures reached a critical juncture. We thought that the risks of global warming were far greater than those of nuclear power, but in this earthquake-prone nation of Japan, the opposite is true."