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information about Fukushima published in English in Japanese media info publiée en anglais dans la presse japonaise

Japan needs independent watchdog to gain public's trust

December 7, 2013

INTERVIEW/ Peter Bradford: Independent watchdog needed to monitor Fukushima work

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/opinion/AJ201312070014

 

By SHIRO NAMEKATA/ Correspondent


PERU, Vermont--An independent watchdog should oversee the daunting task of decommissioning the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and combating the contaminated water problem, a former member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.


Although Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government plans to increase its involvement in the efforts at the plant, outside experts are needed because plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. and members of the “nuclear village” have already lost the public’s confidence, said Peter Bradford, a nuclear expert with experience in dealing with the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.


In a recent interview with The Asahi Shimbun, Bradford also said an important task of Japan’s nuclear authority is to listen to the voices of those affected by the disaster and to get the public involved in the decision-making process.

Excerpts from the interview follow.


***

Question: How do you evaluate the contaminated water problem at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant?


Bradford: For anyone with a background in nuclear power and nuclear regulation, it is impossible not to be sympathetic, first toward the people in Japan, but also toward the officials and the people in TEPCO who are trying to deal with these conditions because there has been nothing like it in the nuclear industry elsewhere.


The Three Mile Island accident was just one reactor and did not involve substantial issues with the water. Chernobyl was a much worse accident but still just one reactor and did not present the kind of long-term cooling issues that Fukushima does.


There just aren’t the same kinds of groundwater issues. The situation in Japan is unique, and there aren’t a lot of easy answers.


One thing that seems to be different in Japan, from the way we would approach a serious nuclear accident in the U.S. system, is that much more has been left to TEPCO to do, whereas during the Three Mile Island accident--and I am sure it would be true in any other one as well--the Nuclear Regulatory Commission became very much involved in the accident management process.


The private company had to notify NRC with regard to any release of radioactivity and get permission for releases of radiation to the air or to the water.


NRC had representatives at the reactor site from the beginning of the accident, and then sent many more people afterward. It became the primary focus of the commission for two years after the accident.


My impression is that Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority is being asked to spend a lot of its time--maybe most of its time--on the question of reopening the other 50 reactors, and it has been less involved in the management of the accident.


Q: There is an argument in Japan that the NRA’s main task is to keep nuclear power plants safe, and that it should not deal with the contaminated water problem because it does not have enough expertise in such areas as hydrology or geology.


A: A nuclear regulatory authority does not normally expect to have to deal with these complicated hydrology or geology questions, but if this were in the United States, either NRC or the Department of Energy, they would hire the people that they needed for expertise.


Their expertise was being brought to bear on the problem, with some independence from the company responsible for the accident. That way they are not involved in issues relating to accident cost liability.


The public is inevitably going to be skeptical of TEPCO because it is the company that caused the accident. The same thing happened at Three Mile Island.


TEPCO has begun to bring in people from other countries, but these are still “nuclear village” people. They’re just international nuclear village instead of Japanese nuclear village.


Q: Did NRC provide technical assistance following the Three Mile Island accident?


A: Most of the technical assistance came either from the rest of the nuclear industry, which convened their own response centers, or from our national laboratories, which are technically part of the Department of Energy, because they have a much greater research capability.


But the decisions as to what the licensee--the plant owner--was permitted to do were made by NRC, drawing on the expertise of whoever we needed to have involved.


Also, the process of explaining to the public what was being done, and giving the public an opportunity to participate in decision-making through hearings, was all done by NRC.


If the public had a substantial concern about a proposed activity, they would take it to NRC, to be involved through the hearing process, and the committee could reflect it in whatever decisions we had to make.


After Three Mile Island, a number of groups were formed in the area that were concerned about the cleanup or were concerned about allowing the second nuclear plant to resume operations, and they raised a number of different types of concerns, ranging from technical issues to issues like psychological stress on residents.


NRC agreed to hold public hearings mostly on the subject of restarting the second unit. But some had to do with aspects of the cleanup of the damaged plant. These hearings became a vehicle for these groups to be able to continually raise their concerns about what was happening at the site.


In the three months after the accident, I probably went to the site or just to people’s homes in the area for about 10 times. I would just get in my car and drive 2-1/2 hours up to there from Washington, D.C.


Q: Was it a mission of NRC to explain the situation to the public?


A: Before the accident, NRC had assured the public that nuclear power was safe, and then we had an accident. It was most important just to go and hear what their feelings were. It seemed to make a lot of difference to these people, some of whom were very angry.


There was an evacuation that only lasted five days. It was nothing like what has happened in Fukushima, but it was very upsetting especially to parents with young children.


They wanted reassurance as to whether it was safe to go on living there. But mainly, they just wanted somebody from Washington to listen, just to feel that their views and their experiences mattered.


On one occasion, the licensee needed to release a quantity of radioactive krypton gas from the containment into the atmosphere two or three months after the accident.


The public, like the fishermen at Fukushima, did not want any more radiation. But it was necessary to get the radiation levels in the containment down enough so that workmen could begin to actually work on the reactor levels--the same kind of discussion you have now about the water.


We asked the nongovernmental organization Union of Concerned Scientists to review the activity and make a report of their own. They had credibility with the public that certainly the licensee company and probably the government did not have.


When the group said it was a reasonable thing to do, it was very helpful in reassuring the public that that release would be acceptable.


I don’t have the impression that anyone has asked independent groups to review any of the activities at the Fukushima plant. It might help to sort through which activities with the contaminated water are reasonable and which ones pose some danger.


And there is no reason to think that the public is going to be any more reassured by them than they would be by a TEPCO employee or a government employee. You really have to be willing to involve people who have been skeptical about nuclear power if you expect to expand the public credibility.


***

Peter Bradford, born in 1942, served as a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission between 1977 and 1982. He is currently an adjunct professor at Vermont Law School and senior fellow at the school’s Institute for Energy and the Environment.

By SHIRO NAMEKATA/ Correspondent

 

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