"Nuclear safety myth raising its ugly head again"

December 24, 2013

EDITORIAL: Nuclear safety myth is raising its ugly head again

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/editorial/AJ201312240044

Electric power companies have filed formal applications with the Nuclear Regulation Authority for permission to restart 14 idled nuclear reactors on grounds the facilities meet new regulatory standards. The Abe administration is keen to allow utilities to bring their reactors back online.

But the grim reality is that efforts by local governments to develop emergency evacuation plans have not made satisfactory progress.

Before any of the offline reactors are restarted, a workable plan must be in place in preparation for a possible serious nuclear accident.

No matter what precautions are built into a safety system, a totally unexpected situation can occur at any time. That’s a bitter lesson to be gleaned from the 2011 disaster that crippled the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IN A BIND

The local governments that have been entrusted to work out evacuation plans are tearing their hair out in the face of the many tough challenges they are confronting.

Stunned by the scale of damage caused by the Fukushima accident, the central government decided that local governments within a 30-kilometer radius of nuclear power plants must have disaster response plans in place. Previously, this was limited to local entities within eight to 10 kilometers of nuclear power plants.

As a result, the number of cities, towns and villages that are subject to the requirement has risen sharply to 135 from 45. They have been under extreme pressure to craft evacuation plans on an unprecedented scale.

Nuclear disasters are quite unlike any natural catastrophe. Since radiation is invisible, residents in affected areas have no way of knowing what danger they are facing. The fallout from a severe nuclear accident affects a huge area.

In response to pleas for assistance from local governments, the government’s Nuclear Emergency Preparedness Council, which comprises all Cabinet ministers, ordered ministries and agencies this autumn to help local governments develop the evacuation plans. But there are many complicated and formidable challenges to be overcome.

In dealing with radiation, it is vital to ensure that accurate information is obtained and disseminated swiftly. During the Fukushima nuclear crisis, however, the government, for fear of causing a panic among the public, used many terms and phrases that didn’t reflect the reality. As a result, the risk of radiation exposure was not communicated effectively to local residents, causing many people to be exposed unnecessarily. Just ensuring that correct information will be provided in a timely manner to the public in a way that doesn’t cause a panic is itself a tricky task.

It is also difficult to secure evacuation routes. In the rural, depopulated areas where nuclear power plants are located, there aren’t many roads local residents can use to flee. The limited routes mean they will be clogged with traffic if tens of thousands of cars use them.

In situations where multiple disasters are taking place simultaneously, such as a massive earthquake and tsunami triggering a severe nuclear accident, local roads are likely to become impassable. In such cases, many people will be unable to use their cars, which are vital for quick evacuation.

It then becomes a tall order to figure out where and how people who can’t move or be moved easily, like hospitalized patients, should be evacuated. In the Fukushima disaster, there were many tragedies in which the condition of patients deteriorated sharply during the evacuation process, sometimes resulting in their deaths.

In addition, each nuclear power plant has its own unique geographical conditions.

SAFETY IGNORED

The Ikata nuclear power plant in Ehime Prefecture, one of the facilities preparing to restart idled reactors, is located near the root of the Sadamisaki Peninsula, which is long and narrow.

If a major accident occurs at the plant, some 5,000 people living in areas farther along the peninsula will be left isolated. The local government is considering a scenario in which they are evacuated by ship. But that might not be a workable idea given the danger of tsunami.

The Tokai No. 2 power plant in Ibaraki Prefecture, the nuclear power plant closest to the Tokyo area, is located in an area with a sizable daytime population. The daytime population within 30 kilometers of the plant is around 980,000. According to an estimate by the prefectural government, it would take 15 hours to evacuate 90 percent of the people within 5 kilometers of the plant. It would take twice as long if the Joban Expressway, a highway running through the region, becomes impassable.

Fukui Prefecture hosts 14 nuclear reactors, the largest number among prefectures. A major accident at any one of them could lead to a massive release of radioactive materials into the atmosphere. That would render other reactors around inaccessible. The situation could trigger a chain reaction of nuclear accidents.

The plight of these local governments underscores one fundamental problem with the locations of nuclear power plants in Japan: Many of them have been built at sites where there should be no nuclear reactor.

The guidelines for assessing and approving the proposed locations of nuclear power plants were established in 1964. They require that a radius of certain distance from a nuclear plant have no form of human habitation.

While testifying as an unsworn witness at a session of the Diet’s Fukushima accident investigation commission, however, Haruki Madarame, then chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission, expressed the view that the guidelines had been created to allow the construction of nuclear power plants.

In fact, the decisions on how large the radius of the uninhabitable zones should be for specific nuclear plants have been based on excessively optimistic assumptions concerning accidents. As a result, many plants were built in areas where a swift evacuation of local residents is effectively impossible.

Banking on the nuclear safety myth, the government has promoted a policy of locating nuclear plants mainly in depopulated areas suffering from a decline of the local industries.

LESSONS ALREADY FORGOTTEN?

In the United States, no nuclear reactor can be operated without a workable evacuation plan. In Japan, however, even the newly created regulatory standards don’t require an evacuation plan as a prerequisite for operating a reactor. The development of the plans has been entrusted to the local governments while there is no central government agency responsible for assessing the feasibility of the developed plans.

Now that the safety myth has been shattered, the government should quickly decide to decommission all reactors for which there is no practical evacuation plan.

Some of the local governments have no choice but to support the restarts of nuclear reactors because of the importance of the nuclear facilities for the local economy.

Some local government chiefs may approve the plant operators’ plans to bring offline reactors back on stream even if there is only a questionable, insufficient plan to deal with a crisis.

Will vital decisions concerning the safety of local residents be left to discretionary judgment of the local government chiefs? Will this nation move toward restarting nuclear reactors while there are huge differences in the preparedness for nuclear emergencies among the local communities? That would be like performing on the flying trapeze without a safety net.

Proponents of nuclear power generation argue that electricity charges will go up unless atomic energy is used to produce electricity. They also claim that keeping reactors offline would have a negative impact on the domestic economy. Even these people, however, wouldn’t say reactors should be restarted quickly even if there is no reliable system to protect the safety of local residents.

Five reactor meltdowns have occurred around the world in the past in 30 or so years. The government must not try to revive the safety myth by putting too much faith in the ability of humans to prevent nuclear disasters.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 24