In late October 2004, nearly 200 people from around Japan
gathered at a public hearing in Osaka to discuss the future of nuclear power.
Sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission, which is responsible to the prime
minister, members of the "public" who were present included pronuclear power
utility company executives on one side of the room and antinuclear activists on
the other.
The Osaka meeting was the first since the AEC had said, just
a few days prior, that it wished to go ahead with plans to reprocess spent
nuclear fuel, despite revelations earlier in the year that the government had
suppressed a report compiled in the mid-1990s that concluded burying spent fuel
was cheaper than recycling it.
Such public hearings had long been
derided by antinuclear activists as a government-sponsored farce that never led
to real changes in Japan's pronuclear policies. But there was reason to believe
that the Osaka meeting would be different. In the audience were residents of
Mihama, Fukui Prefecture, who had come to express concern over an accident in
August that killed five people and showed that Kansai Electric Power Co., based
in Osaka and responsible for the plant where the accident occurred, was guilty
of gross negligence.
At 15:22 on August 9th, a fire alarm sounded within
the building at the Mihama No. 3 plant that housed the turbine. A pipe in the
secondary coolant system had ruptured, and an estimated 800 tons of scalding
water 140 degrees Celsius was released, scalding the five workers of Nihon Arm,
a KEPCO sub-contractor.
As it turned out, the pipe had never been
checked during the 28 years of the plant's operation. When originally
installed, it had been 10 mm thick. But after nearly three decades, it had worn
down to 1 mm. In the following days, it was learned that Nihon Arm had warned
KEPCO in April 2003 of potential problems with that particular section of pipe,
but these warnings had been ignored. While KEPCO President Fujii Yosaku bowed
deeply in apology to the families of those who were killed, he did not apologize
for KEPCO's failure to follow up on the Nihon Arm report. When quizzed by
antinuclear activists immediately following the accident, KEPCO officials
expressed regret and admitted they were ultimately responsible for the plant,
but said it was not possible to say who was responsible for the
accident.
Though KEPCO officials would not comment, antinuclear
activists and even many nuclear physicists who supported nuclear power pointed
to deregulation of the electric power market as one factor behind the accident.
By law, each nuclear power plant has to shut down once a year for inspection.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, plants shut down for three or four months
while thousands of workers from utility and related subcontractors conducted
inspections. But since then, the inspection times have gradually been
shortened, and currently a plant might shut down for only about six weeks.
Prior to the Mihama accident, KEPCO and the other utilities were pressuring the
government to lower the inspection time to just one month, in order to keep the
plants operating as much as possible in the new age of
deregulation.
Yet, even as the inspection time was shortened, the plants
were becoming older, requiring more maintenance and careful inspection. Back in
the early 1970s, experts thought that the life of a nuclear power plant was
about 30 years, perhaps 40. Now that the Mihama No. 3 plant and many others are
30 years old or more, and operating in a period where deregulation means added
pressures to cut costs, the utilities say that perhaps a plant's life can be
doubled to 60 years. Yet, at the same time, the utilities claim that in order
to continue to provide cheap electricity, it will be necessary to shorten the
length of inspection time on these aging plants to just one month.
So
the October meeting offered the chance not only to clarify further who was
responsible for the Mihama No. 3 accident, but also to engage in real debate
about basic issues related to nuclear power. But hopes for such discussion were
quickly dashed. Antinuclear activists and pronuclear supporters simply retreated
to long-held positions. "Japan is resource-poor. We need nuclear power," said
one of the pro-nuclear men in the audience, to scattered applause from those
around him. "Nuclear power is no good. No more nuclear power plants," said a
woman who is anti-nuclear activist, to murmurs of assent from those seated
around her.
It was clear that most Commission members were either
pro-nuclear or felt that to encourage spirited discussion of basic issues like
the necessity of nuclear power was not part of their mandate. After all, they
had a five-year plan for Japan's nuclear power industry that they had to compile
by late 2005, and since nuclear power was already providing about a third of the
nation's electric power needs overall, what was the point in arguing with people
who didn't want it? The result of the meeting was not a lighthearted farce, but
something that looked as rigged as a pro wrestling match.
And so it was.
Just a few weeks later, on November 12th, the Atomic Energy Commission released
an interim report on nuclear fuel recycling and concluded that it should go
forward. Virtually none of the facts presented by the anti-nuclear activists
were acknowledged. But when it comes to Japan's nuclear power industry,
inconvenient facts often do not matter.
Japan's Nuclear Power
Industry
In 2004, Japan had 53 nuclear power reactors (52 were in
operation), which made it third in terms of number of plants after the United
States (103) and France (57). Over the past quarter century, as many other
nations attempt to find alternate energy sources, nuclear power has gone from 17
percent of Japan's total electricity supply in 1990 to 34.6 percent of total
supply in 2004. Five more nuclear power plants are currently being built, and
the utilities want to increase the 34.6 figure to 40 percent by 2010, with other
fuel sources, like liquid natural gas and coal, comprising about 20 percent each
and the remainder being sources like hydroelectric power.
In the 2003
White Paper on Nuclear Power, the utilities' chart for which energy sources will
be in use for electric power generation by 2010 includes no mention of alternate
sources like wind, solar, or biomass. And when looking at the figures for total
energy sources consumed, as opposed to sources just for electricity generation,
nuclear power still plays a major role in Japan. In 2003, nuclear power
accounted for about 17 percent of Japan's total energy basket, as opposed to 8.9
percent for the U.S., 11 percent for the United Kingdom about 13 percent for
Germany. By contrast, an energy-hungry China, with plans to quadruple its
nuclear power by 2010, exceeds Japan and all others in aggressively promoting
nuclear power.
Clearly, despite official pronouncements by Ministry of
Economy, Trade and Industry officials that it will simply remain an important
part of Japan's overall energy mix, nuclear power will become the dominant
source of electricity if the utilities, and many pronuclear officials in the
government, have their way. If they do, it will be the realization of a dream
that began a half-century ago.
Atoms for Peace
Japan's nuclear
power history dates back to the mid-1950s, when a young nationalist politician
by the name of Nakasone Yasuhiro became one of the strongest political advocates
for a nuclear power program. In 1954, the United States began encouraging the
international development of nuclear power for peaceful purposes under the title
of "Atoms for Peace" and Nakasone saw nuclear power as the way to a realize a
dream Japan had nurtured since the Meiji period: a cheap and stable energy
supply that could reduce dependence on foreign oil.
In 1955, under
Nakasone's guidance, the Diet passed a budget which included funds for
researching nuclear power. Within two years, several government bodies devoted
to promoting nuclear power had been formed and plans for construction of nuclear
power plants commenced. By 1965, the first of what would eventually become 53
nuclear power plants nationwide had gone into operation.
In the early
years, the country's nuclear power program was advanced with little public
opposition. By the early 1970s, concern about environmental pollution was high
and public pressure over air pollution and the industrial pollution of rivers,
lakes, and streams had forced the Diet to pass a number of laws curbing
industrial excesses. The pronuclear lobby realized nuclear power could be
promoted as not only a cheap source of energy but also as an environmentally
friendly alternative to fossil fuels.
It was at this time that the great
drive to build nuclear power plants began. By 1979, there were 17 plants in
operation nationwide, concentrated mainly in Fukushima and Fukui Prefectures.
The Fukushima plants were operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. and supplied
power to Tokyo and the Kanto region, while the Fukui plants supplied power to
the Kansai region.
Then, in 1979, the accident at the Three Mile Island
nuclear power plant in America awakened many Japanese to the fact that nuclear
power plants were not as safe as advertised. While there had always been a very
small antinuclear movement, Three Mile Island jolted the national
consciousness. Six years later, the accident at Chernobyl not only reinforced
those fears but also spurred many ordinary Japanese to anti-nuclear
activism.
Of particular concern was Japan's determination to go ahead
with a fast-breeder reactor program despite a growing number of nuclear
physicists and economists who doubted their usefulness. Unlike conventional
nuclear power plants, fast-breeder reactors burn pure plutonium. During the
conversion to energy, more plutonium is actually produced and can be extracted
for later use -- an endless supply of fuel, at least theoretically.
FBR
programs had been initiated in the United States and were in operation in both
the U.S. and Europe in the 1970s, at a time when many experts predicted the
world's supply of uranium would soon be depleted. But that proved not to be the
case and this realization, combined with public unease over handling the world's
most dangerous substance, led the U.S. to abandon the FBR program by the early
1980s. European countries began to follow shortly afterwards.
Japan,
however, forged ahead with the controversial FBR program, building a prototype
reactor called Fugen and an experimental reactor called Monju, both in Fukui
Prefecture. This decision to continue with its FBR program after the Chernobyl
accident galvanized antinuclear activists in Japan and around the world, who
also worried that the FBR program was actually a nuclear weapons program in
disguise. Despite repeated denials that this was the case by those in the
nuclear power industry, Japanese leaders like Prime Minister Hata Tsutomu, in
1994, stated Japan could build a nuclear weapon in a matter of weeks, if
necessary, hinting that the fuel for the weapons could come from Japanese
nuclear power plants. In 2003, influential opposition leader Ozawa Ichiro would
make a similar comment.
By the early 1990s, the FBR program was moving
forward despite mounting concerns, even among some pronuclear groups, that they
were too dangerous and too expensive, when the whole program literally crashed
and burned. In December, 1995, a pipe leak and sodium fire occurred at the Monju
plant. The fire and subsequent investigations exposed a litany of problems not
only in Monju but throughout the nuclear power industry. Indifferent management,
lax safety precautions, and cover-ups by the bureaucrats responsible made
headlines and resulted in a major shake up in the nuclear industry as public
faith in nuclear power plummeted.
Realizing the odds of operating an FBR
anytime soon were now very much against them, the utilities and the nuclear
power industry, without abandoning their original goal of operating FBRs,
decided an interim solution would be to burn mixed plutonium-uranium fuel,
otherwise known as MOX. But this created new problems. Japan had no way to make
MOX. It had to be manufactured in England or France and then transported
halfway around the world.
Countries like New Zealand announced such
cargo would not be allowed to pass through their territorial waters, and many
Caribbean nations also voiced opposition. Would the ships receive a naval escort
all the way to Japan? What would happen if they ran into a typhoon or were
forced to make port? There were also worries, even in this pre September 11th
world, of terrorists or pirates in the Malacca Straits or the South China Sea
boarding the ships. Between 1995 and 1999, the argument raged, but Japan's
politicians, bureaucrats, and utility companies had only one message: MOX is
safe, the ships are safe from terrorist attacks, and the cargo will arrive
safely. As history was to show, MOX could be sent to Japan without incident, at
least en route. But after the fuel arrived, it was a different
story.
Nuclear Autumn
On the morning of September 30th, 1999, a
warm wind was blowing into the bay of Takahama, Fukui Prefecture. Days earlier,
two ships, each carrying MOX fuel had arrived in Japanese waters after a long
voyage from Sellafield, England. The fuel was to be the first of what Japan
hoped would be many shipments of MOX for its conventional nuclear
reactors.
The first ship had already delivered its cargo to a plant on
the Pacific Ocean side of Japan. Now, both vessels were heading north, planning
to go through the Tsugaru Straits that separate Hokkaido and Honshu islands, and
deliver the second cargo of MOX fuel to the Takahama nuclear power plant on the
Japan Sea, about 700 kilometers from the coast of North Korea. In preparation,
coast guard vessels made regular patrols of the inlets near Takahama and police
set up roadblocks and conducted security checks near the plant.
But it
was not the danger of North Korean saboteurs that most concerned those
protesting the shipment. The greater fear was that something might be wrong with
the fuel itself. Independent analysis of the quality control data related to the
manufacture of the fuel showed statistical anomalies that suggested somebody at
British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., which manufactured the fuel, had cut corners to cut
costs. Activists were not quite sure what the problem was, but requests to
Kansai Electric Power Company, which had ordered the fuel for use in its
Takahama plant, to hold off until answers could be found, fell on deaf ears.
KEPCO officials insisted that the fuel was safe.
Thus, on September
30th, the attention of those in Japan and abroad with an interest in the
country's nuclear power program was on the delivery of the fuel to Takahama.
KEPCO and national nuclear power officials, Japanese and international
antinuclear activists, townspeople and the media all were making plans be in
Takahama for what was expected to be one of the largest Japanese nuclear power
protests ever, directed against the arrival of the MOX-laden ship the next
day.
Then, disaster struck. Not in Takahama, but in Tokaimura, north of
Tokyo.
At 10:35 a.m., local media and residents began receiving the
first sketchy reports of radiation leaking at a Tokaimura fuel conversion
plant. It would later be learned that three workers in the plant had poured a
uranium mixture into a settling tank, an amount that far exceeded safety limits
and caused a nuclear chain reaction. But in the early hours, all was confusion.
Despite rumors to the contrary, police insisted no fire had broken
out.
Two hours later, police had blocked roads near the plant and were
preventing anyone from coming closer than 200 meters from the plant. By 3:30
p.m., as the extent of accident became clearer, 50 families living within a 350
meter radius of the plant were ordered to evacuate. By 5 p.m. the Japan Atomic
Research Institute was detecting two to four millisieverts of radiation per
hour, or between 10,000 and 20,000 times the normal level, around the site. A
radiation advisory to some 200,000 residents living within a 10 kilometer radius
of the plant was not issued by Ibaraki Pref. Gov. Hashimoto Masaru until 8 p.m.,
nine and a half hours after initial reports of a radiation leak. The day ended
with the Japanese government saying, in classic understatement, that
uncontrolled criticality at the plant was continuing and that a larger area than
was initially thought had been affected by radiation.
Two of the three
workers who caused the accident died shortly afterwards. The accident showed
there was something seriously wrong with the way the country's supposedly safe
nuclear power program was being run. The callous disregard for basic safety
procedures was not limited to those who had actually caused the Tokaimura
accident, but was now recognized as a symptom of a larger disease: a culture of
deceit, secrecy, and willful ignorance that permeated Japan's entire nuclear
power industry.
On October 1st Japan, and the world, watched as men in
"moon suits" moved through the quiet residential neighborhoods of Tokaimura with
Geiger counters. Meanwhile, the ship carrying the MOX fuel for the Takahama
plant was entering port, greeted by protestors from around the world. The ship
delivered its cargo and KEPCO announced plans to burn the fuel before the end of
the year, but the antinuclear activists had suddenly found a far more
sympathetic public hearing for their suspicions that something might be wrong
with the fuel.
Despite repeated KEPCO assurances that all was well with
the fuel, the antinuclear activists, led by Kyoto-based Aileen Mioko Smith, made
contact with antinuclear activists in and around the Sellafield plant and the
British media. After much prodding by the activists and the British media (the
Japanese media remaining virtually silent) the truth finally came out. Workers
at British Nuclear Fuels admitted to The London Independent newspaper that they
had had not done quality control checks properly, falsifying data in order to
complete the manufacture of the fuel on time.
Stung by these revelations
and BNFL's subsequent official admission that the fuel data had been forged,
KEPCO had no choice but to announce it would not burn the MOX. Yet KEPCO was
still stubbornly convinced the fuel was safe, saying the decision not to burn
the fuel had been reached not for technical reasons but in order to keep the
public from worrying. The company, it seemed, remained unable or unwilling to
take responsibility for it's past denials that all was well; those activists who
had breathed a sigh of relief when they forced KEPCO to not burn the MOX worried
that their victory was only temporary, and that KEPCO's corporate culture would
lead eventually lead to disaster.
The 1999 accident at Tokaimura and the
revelations that BNFL had falsified quality control data related to MOX fuel
dealt two hard, but not fatal, blows to Japan's nuclear power industry. Within
METI, which has control over the operation of nuclear power plants, both
incidents led to a growing rift between bureaucrats who still supported nuclear
power and those who were beginning to question it more aggressively. The
pronuclear power Atomic Energy Commission, bowing to public pressure and
internal debate within the government, eventually invited a member of the
antinuclear group Citizens Nuclear Information Center to serve as a commission
member.
Unanswered Questions
Yet despite the grand plans of the
pro-nuclear lobby, Japan's nuclear power industry faces a host of questions and
problems that threaten its future development, and even survival. The main
issues are:
1) Reprocessing: Japan is scheduled to open the Rokkasho
reprocessing plant in July 2006, nearly a decade after it was originally
supposed to start, despite numerous safety concerns, against the advice of many
in the domestic and international antinuclear movement. Even many in the
nuclear power industry and central government are turning against the plant
because of its huge costs. Recent admissions that it is cheaper to bury fuel
than to recycle it have caused more heated debate, and a number of politicians
like the Liberal Democratic Party's Kono Taro have openly come out against
Rokkasho. Antinuclear groups in Japan received a boost in early January 2005,
when Mohamed El Baradai, director-general of the International Atomic Energy
Agency told the Asahi Shimbun that he favored a five year moratorium on
reprocessing facilities in order to help ensure nuclear materials don't fall
into the wrong hands.
2) Waste Disposal: In 2002, the central government
announced it was looking for localities around Japan to host nuclear waste
storage facilities. Officially, these would be "mid-term" facilities (i.e.
temporary facilities until the fuel can be taken to Rokkasho and reprocessed)
but nobody knows how long the fuel would have to remain in storage. Some local
governments, desperate for the central government subsidies that would come with
agreeing to host a site, have put their names forward, but several candidates,
notably Mihama, face strong local opposition.
3) Safety: Deregulation of
the industry is occurring just as many plants approach or enter their fourth
decade of operation and at a time when accidents, cover-ups, and safety abuses
have created great public unease. In an ever-more competitive atmosphere, where
cost-cutting in plants that are rapidly aging is becoming the norm, critics
point to last summer's fatal accident at Mihama as proof that safety issues are
now taking a back seat to providing power more cheaply.
3) Nuclear
weapons: Despite a stream of denials from officials that Japan will never use
its nuclear power plants as the basis for a nuclear weapons program, and despite
nuclear power industry bureaucrats and pro-nuclear academics who insist,
wrongly, that nuclear fuel in power plants cannot be used for a nuclear weapons'
program, domestic and international concern remains that Japan can, and would,
use such fuel for a weapons program if prodded to do so by either the United
States under the guise of a missile defense program, or if faced with an arms
race elsewhere in East Asia. Comments like those noted above by Ozawa Ichiro, as
well as past comments from far right politicians like Nishimura Shingo that
Japan should have nuclear weapons, are seen by many as representative of Japan's
true intentions.
4) The Future of Nuclear Power: Japanese officials
still say that nuclear power remains a very important part of Japan's overall
energy mix. While not always in tune of late, the pronuclear lobby has been
basically singing the same four-part harmony for decades: (a) Japan is a
resource-poor country; (b) Oil from the Middle East means attempting to secure a
finite resource from a politically unstable part of the world; (c) alternate
energy sources such as wind and solar power are too expensive and are not as
reliable as fossil fuel energy sources; therefore, (d) nuclear power offers
Japan a cheap, inexpensive (when you ignore construction, maintenance, and
environmental costs and focus only on the bare costs of generating electricity)
and reliable energy source.
Since the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997,
the pronuclear lobby has also rushed to add that nuclear power is needed by
Japan to meet its commitments to cut greenhouse gases. On the other hand, some
huge Japanese firms like Mitsubishi and Toshiba, which have traditionally
supplied much of the technology to Japan's nuclear power industry, are hedging
their bets that they can continue to do lots of business domestically. These
firms believe in the future potential for constructing, and selling equipment
for, nuclear reactors to China and other parts of Asia now choking from fumes of
cheap coal being burnt for fuel. They, therefore, back scientists, engineers,
and others in the international community who suggest that nuclear power for
China is a great way for the country to meet its growing energy needs and to
reduce air pollution and environmental damage caused by coal-burning
plants.
Over the past year, events ranging from the Nagoya High Court's
surprise decision to uphold a lower court ruling that will keep Monju closed
indefinitely (the decision is now being argued at the Supreme Court) to the
Mihama accident this past summer, to growing opposition to nuclear power among
many in the Diet, METI, and the utilities who have traditionally supported
nuclear power, have bolstered the confidence of the antinuclear
lobby.
Yet even with the victory in the courts over Monju and all of the
accidents and scandals that have plagued the nuclear power industry, antinuclear
forces have not yet been able to turn public unease and anger into an effective
movement to stop nuclear power. This is partially because, despite the scandals
and problems, nuclear power has come to be seen, even among many Japanese who
don't like it, as a necessary evil. All the utilities, or the government, has to
do is remind everyone that Japan is a resource-poor nation, or warn that, unlike
nuclear power, oil and gas come from parts of the world that are politically
unstable and that there is a danger of a cutoff of vital energy sources.
Despite the specious logic of such arguments (uranium yellowcake also has to be
imported for Japan's nuclear power plants, but nobody in the pronuclear lobby
seems too concerned about a disruption in shipments or seizure by terrorists),
they resonate with the public, especially those old enough to remember the panic
that ensued during the oil shocks of the mid-1970s.
Nor can the small,
mostly volunteer antinuclear lobby compete financially with the huge,
well-organized and well-financed pronuclear lobby for public and political
attention. But antinuclear Davids have won major battles, indeed have virtually
defeated the pronuclear Goliaths in many other countries. There are other more
complex reasons for the failure of Japan's antinuclear lobby to make a strong
political difference or even win widespread public admiration.
The
reasons begin with many in the antinuclear lobby itself. While fiercely
dedicated to their cause and often very well informed, antinuclear groups tend
to be organized in small, tight-knit cliques. Each clique has its own area of
specialty and has spent all of its energy and effort fighting for that one
cause. Activists in Mihama often have little time or, sadly, inclination, to
worry about what is happening in Rokkasho or Tokaimura.
The result is a
movement that is extremely localized and often insular. Furthermore, many in
the antinuclear movement are sixties leftovers, old supporters of various
leftist causes who are often doctrinaire in their thinking and impervious to new
ideas. They are unable, or unwilling, to reach out to people who are much
younger than themselves, or to the broader public, including many in the
government and in private industry, who agree nuclear power is a bad idea but do
not necessarily want to hear about the evils of the Self-Defense Forces or U.S.
imperialism. Nor do most Japanese feel comfortable standing outside a utility
company, raising their fists, and shouting "Stop Nuclear Power!" These are the
tactics that many in the antinuclear lobby continue to believe, wrongly, are
necessary to stop nuclear power. However, they are precisely the tactics that
turn off many potential allies.
So, as the Osaka meeting last October
showed, the pro and antinuclear groups continue to snipe at each other and hold
their positions with little regard to public energy needs. In a land where
consensus, harmony, and cooperation are supposedly more innate than in many
other cultures, the nuclear power debate is remarkable for bitter, entrenched
emotions and grudges on both sides that are now decades old.
This is a
tragedy. For Japan desperately needs a serious and wide-reaching national debate
on how it plans to meet its energy needs in the 21st century, and whether
nuclear power should be part of that energy mix. The announcement on November
12th by the Atomic Energy Commission that it wanted to continue with its plans
for reprocessing has done nothing to advance the debate.
To date,
nuclear power decisions have been made piecemeal by bureaucrats and politicians
who were, or are, often under the influence of the utilities and nuclear power
industry. Local governments that host nuclear power facilities, especially on
the Japan Seat Coast, are now far too heavily dependent on central government
subsidies and "gratitude money" from utility companies used to pay for mammoth
train stations, elaborate fountains and statues, and ultra-modern theaters, like
the 3-D movie theater in Tsuruga. Anti-nuclear activists have even charged that
the utilities sponsored free "study trips" to France for Fukui residents,
ostensibly to study the French nuclear power industry, but scheduled with plenty
of time for a shopping trip to Paris.
Later this year, Japan will
conclude its next five-year long-term plan for nuclear power. Over the following
months, both sides will continue to argue their case and we are sure to see
reams of statistics and pages of Op-Ed pieces arguing for or against nuclear
power. Japan once had a dream that nuclear power would save a country poor in
fossil fuel resources. Japan's pro-nuclear lobby still clings to that dream. But
the history of Japan's nuclear industry demonstrates only too clearly that their
dream has turned into a nightmare not only for Japan but also the
world.
Eric Johnston is Deputy Editor of The Japan Times and is
based in Osaka. He has followed Japan's nuclear power industry since 1995. His
book, "Japan's Nuclear Nightmare: Power to the People?" will be published by
Parlor Press in the United States later this year. Eric can be reached at
japantimes-osa@sannet.ne.jp