Nuclear not just a method of producing electricity

October 31, 2013

EDITORIAL: Industry ministry wrong body to control nuclear policy

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/editorial/AJ201310310048

Broad national debate is essential in charting the overall direction of nuclear energy policy because the disaster that occurred in Fukushima Prefecture proved that nuclear energy poses a huge risk to the entire nation.

The policymaking process requires wide-ranging input from all sorts of experts, including scientists and humanities scholars who are not proponents of nuclear power generation.

But there are troubling signs that the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which is a strong supporter of nuclear power, could gain even greater influence over policymaking on this issue.

If nothing is done, nuclear power policy could fall under the control of the so-called nuclear power village, a close-knit community of experts who are bent on continuing to promote nuclear energy.

This concern was sparked by an outline of proposals released last week by a panel of experts tasked with reviewing the role and mission of the Atomic Energy Commission.

The advisory panel called for scrapping the “nuclear energy policy guidelines,” which have been crafted by the AEC. The panel proposed that nuclear energy policy should instead come under the purview of the Basic Energy Plan, which was mapped out by the industry ministry.

The nuclear energy policy guidelines generally are updated every five years or so, but the programs laid out in the document often failed to go as planned.

It certainly makes sense for the Basic Energy Plan to contain programs concerning nuclear power generation.

But debate from a purely energy policy perspective is hardly sufficient for making decisions with regard to fundamental issues like the appropriateness of using atomic energy, the scale of nuclear power generation and the nation’s nuclear future.

Nuclear power generation, as we have learned, can have catastrophic results. It cannot simply be viewed as a method of generating electricity.

Nuclear power generation is also different in nature from other power generation systems because its technology carries the risk of being used to develop nuclear weapons.

The Japanese archipelago is prone to frequent natural disasters. Are the people of this country really willing to accept nuclear power? What kind of policy is desirable from the viewpoint of nuclear nonproliferation?

All these questions require not just opinions of nuclear experts, but debate from all sorts of perspectives, which was precisely the AEC’s original mandate.

The AEC was established in 1956. Its original members included some prominent figures, such as Nobel-winning physicist Hideki Yukawa and Ichiro Ishikawa, the first chairman of Keidanren, which is today’s Japan Business Federation.

But the AEC became nothing more than a rubber-stamp body when the promotion of nuclear power generation was adopted as official policy of the government.

As a result, the commission has been failing to perform its core function of critically reviewing the government’s nuclear energy policy. It is hardly surprising that the AEC’s reason for being has been called into question.

Even so, entrusting the industry ministry with the development of nuclear energy policy would be a risky and simplistic response to the problem.

Where in this attitude can we see lessons gleaned from the Fukushima nuclear disaster?

After the Fukushima nuclear crisis unfolded, German Chancellor Angela Merkel set up an ethics committee comprising advisers who are not nuclear power experts. Sociologists were part of the group. The committee discussed topics independently of nuclear experts who considered technical issues. Based on the discussions at the ethics committee, Merkel made the landmark decision to phase out nuclear power generation in Germany.

Japan has every reason to establish a similar committee to undertake a fundamental review of its nuclear energy policy.

The way the government has been preoccupied with responding to individual problems is now in serious doubt.