Sendai not a good model for restart

November 8, 2014

EDITORIAL: Sendai nuclear plant should not be model for reactor restarts

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/editorial/AJ201411080035

Kagoshima Governor Yuichiro Ito agreed on Nov. 7 to allow Kyushu Electric Power Co. to restart operations at its Sendai nuclear power plant. Ito said his decision was based on the opinions of the Kagoshima prefectural assembly, the mayor and the municipal assembly of Satsuma-Sendai, where the plant is located.

The mayors of the eight municipalities located within 30 kilometers of the nuclear plant did not raise objections to the governor’s decision.

Local governments of areas hosting nuclear power plants have no legal power to approve or reject decisions on whether to bring reactors back online. However, the consent of the local communities is regarded as an essential procedure for a reactor restart.

The Kagoshima governor’s decision has effectively ensured that the Sendai plant will resume operations. It will be the first nuclear power plant to start running again under stricter safety standards set in the aftermath of the disaster that struck the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March 2011.

Currently, 18 reactors at 12 nuclear plants across the nation are undergoing safety assessments by the Nuclear Regulation Authority under the new standards.

The administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has pledged to restart all reactors that have passed the nuclear watchdog’s safety reviews. The Abe administration intends to use the case of the Sendai plant as the template for the restarts of other plants.

But the process leading to the reactivation of the idled reactors at the Sendai plant has raised serious doubts about the government’s approach to the issue. The government is moving toward restarting the Sendai plant’s reactors without making sufficient efforts to ensure the local communities are prepared for serious accidents.

SAFETY OF LOCAL RESIDENTS NOT ENSURED

First of all, the plan for emergency evacuations is grossly insufficient.

There is still no reliable plan for securing buses needed to evacuate local residents and dealing with expected traffic jams during emergencies, despite the fact that these issues have a direct bearing on the safety of local residents. The two problems were among the major factors that caused serious confusion in local communities during the Fukushima nuclear crisis, jeopardizing the safety of the residents.

The Fukushima meltdowns brought to the fore the fact that it is impossible to guarantee 100 percent safety of nuclear power generation, which entails risks that cannot be controlled.

If it is still necessary to operate nuclear reactors, authorities must take measures to minimize the risk for residents in host communities that would be affected by accidents and evaluate the sufficiency of those measures in ways that reassure the residents.

Six meetings were held since October to explain the reactor restart plan to local residents. But five of the meetings were focused exclusively on the technical and abstruse content of the safety assessment by the Nuclear Regulation Authority.

These meetings failed to ease the simple anxieties of residents about resuming operations at the Sendai plant. Nor were the meetings used to incorporate residents’ proposals into safety measures.

In a survey of participants conducted immediately after the meetings, 47 percent of the respondents said the talks were not helpful. In addition, 60 percent of the respondents said there was at least one issue they did not understand despite the explanations given at the meetings.

In the end, the prefectural governor, the mayors of the municipalities and the local assemblies all said the central government is ultimately responsible for safety measures and evacuation plans.

Local governments, such as prefectures and municipalities, are involved in the process of restarting reactors because the safety of their residents is at stake.

The central government acted in a similarly inadequate way. In response to requests from the prefectural government, the Abe administration dispatched government employees and senior officials to the prefecture.

In local assembly sessions and on other occasions, these officials repeatedly stressed that “the central government takes the responsibility” for ensuring the safety of local communities.

On Nov. 3, Yoichi Miyazawa, the minister of economy, trade and industry, traveled to the prefecture in Kyushu and spoke about the need to restart the plant.

UNCLEAR MEANING OF 'TAKING RESPONSIBILITY'

What exactly does it mean that the government “takes the responsibility?” We know nothing specific about the government’s promise.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster has created a raft of daunting challenges: rebuilding the livelihoods of victims; decommissioning the disabled reactors; dealing with a growing amount of radioactive water; decontaminating areas polluted with radiation; and disposing of radioactive waste. The government has not taken responsible actions in any of these formidable challenges.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. is directly responsible for the accident. Electricity consumers and taxpayers eventually have to pay the bills for compensation payments to victims and related government expenditures.

A severe accident at a nuclear power plant causes tremendous damage to the host communities, and the effects of the damage are felt for at least several decades. The government is incapable of taking the responsibility to deal with all the consequences of a major nuclear accident.

If the government says it will take the responsibility for the safety of local residents without paying attention to this reality, it is simply making an empty promise.

There is something else the government should do responsibly for the host communities: provide assistance to help end their financial dependence on nuclear power plants. The Abe administration has pledged to reduce the nation’s dependence on nuclear energy.

ENDING RELIANCE ON NUCLEAR POWER

Many local governments in areas hosting nuclear plants are willing to approve plans to restart offline reactors. That’s because they are generally underpopulated areas that cannot maintain their communities unless they accept nuclear plants to obtain related state subsidies and tax receipts.

To reduce their dependence on nuclear plants, it is vital to change the reality that forces them to accept such plants in the first place.

This is an immense challenge that the local governments cannot deal with on their own. That makes it all the more important to start taking steps to tackle this challenge now.

The government should take measures to promote recycling-oriented industries that make greater use of local resources and develop necessary human resources. It should also reorganize its energy policy budget, which has been focused on promoting nuclear power generation, and work out a new energy policy program featuring measures to reform the power supply system and promote the use of renewable energy sources. It is also the responsibility of the government to initiate debate on these issues involving areas that consume electricity.

In an Asahi Shimbun opinion poll conducted on Oct. 25 and 26, 55 percent of the respondents voiced opposition to the idea of resuming operations at nuclear plants. Similar polls carried out by other newspapers have also found a majority of the respondents cautious about the idea.

If the process of restarting the Sendai plant has become a model, the decision on whether to bring a reactor back online will be effectively left to the host communities. This will cause the will of the entire nation to become increasingly irrelevant. Would such a situation be acceptable?

There is a heap of problems concerning the nuclear power policy that could put the interests of the host communities at odds with those of the nation as a whole. They include, for example, how to store spent nuclear fuel and how to dispose of radioactive waste.

Debate on whether to start running the Sendai plant again has raised the question of how to harmonize the conflicting interests of the communities hosting nuclear plants and the nation as a whole.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 8