Taxpayer money yes but on certain conditions

EDITORIAL: No-nukes road map needed before taxpayers made to pay for cleaning up TEPCO’s mess

 http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/editorial/AJ201311020038

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party has thrashed out plans to deal with the consequences of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and take care of affected areas, but many questions remain unanswered.

The most important feature of the LDP proposal calls for using money in state coffers to finance future decontamination work and the construction of interim storage facilities for contaminated soil and other radioactive materials.

The Abe administration is set to take responsibility for meeting this formidable challenge.

DON’T USE TAXPAYER MONEY TO BAIL OUT TEPCO

In our editorials, we have consistently pointed out that Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, cannot be expected to fully bear the costs of cleaning up the mess. Public funds will have to be used.

But the government’s financial commitment is not sufficient to ensure that the work to decommission the reactors at the plant will go smoothly. We cannot be optimistic, especially considering how the government has been responding to the leaks of contaminated water at the plant on an ad hoc basis.

The government should unveil, as soon as possible, a clear and convincing road map toward phasing out nuclear power generation, showing details about systems and procedures for decommissioning all nuclear reactors in Japan. This is vital for making sure that taxpayer money will not be used simply for bailing out TEPCO.

Under the LDP’s proposals, TEPCO will pay for the cost of decontamination work that has been done so far, estimated at between 1.3 trillion yen ($13.2 billion) and 1.5 trillion yen. The government will bear the cost of future decontamination work. The utility has also agreed to use its own money to pay compensation to victims.

The Fukushima meltdowns were a man-made disaster. The primary blame should be placed on TEPCO, which failed to implement the appropriate safety investments to make the plant less vulnerable to natural disasters. From this point of view, there is a compelling case for requiring the utility to bear all the costs of dealing with the consequences of the accident triggered by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.

But the amount needed to pay compensation, decontaminate polluted areas and decommission the reactors is simply too huge--more than 10 trillion yen according to one estimate--for a single company to cover. If TEPCO is required to pick up the entire tab, the utility could be tempted to take a reckless approach to its business operations in a bid to secure profits. By that, we mean that it must not cut corners on the issue of paying adequate compensation to victims and making the necessary capital investment for stable electricity supply.

TEPCO recently reported its first half-year profit since the accident flared. But the black ink figure is a product of accounting gimmicks to prevent compensation expenses from depressing the bottom line. The company also went to considerable lengths to put off booking repair expenses. The earnings results were engineered through creative accounting, so to speak.

TEPCO is eager to restart the idled reactors at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture, even though it is still struggling with the Fukushima cleanup. That is because it is under strong pressure to notch up profits.

If TEPCO bears all the cleanup costs, the money will have to come from higher electricity charges imposed on consumers in the Tokyo metropolitan area, which the utility serves.

The government is also partly responsible for the Fukushima accident because it has promoted nuclear power generation as a national policy and failed to tighten lax nuclear safety regulations.

For these reasons, we have been calling on the government to use tax money to deal with the consequences of the nuclear disaster.

LAY OUT A NUCLEAR-FREE FUTURE

But there are certain conditions that must be met before using the tax money.

For one thing, it must be made clear that TEPCO is effectively bankrupt. That is the only way to minimize the financial burden on taxpayers.

Under current law, there are some potential problems with TEPCO filing for bankruptcy, which requires that priority be placed on paying back the huge amount of debt the company owes to investors who bought its corporate bonds. That means financial relief to victims could be put on the back burner.

The overall cost of decontamination is estimated to be around 5 trillion yen. Any plan to put a financial burden of trillions of yen on taxpayers will not win public support unless TEPCO stakeholders, especially its creditor banks, are held strictly accountable for the problem.

The most important condition for using taxpayer money to sort out the situation, however, is that the government should take responsibility and announce a plan to wean the nation from its dependency on nuclear power.

The government must not be allowed to permit the restart of one offline reactor after another after establishing a precedent for tax financing of part of the cost of dealing with the aftermath of the nuclear accident.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe himself has pledged to reduce Japan’s dependence on nuclear power generation.

The government should start the process by announcing that older reactors and those that are unable to pass the safety inspections by the Nuclear Regulation Authority will be decommissioned as quickly as possible. The government should also promise not to permit the construction of any new nuclear power plant or the reconstruction of a reactor within an existing plant.

CREATE EFFECTIVE SYSTEM FOR DECOMMISSIONING REACTORS

The government should also pull the plug on the long-standing program to establish a nuclear fuel recycling system and scrap the Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor and the Rokkasho fuel reprocessing plant in Aomori Prefecture. That would free up the budgets for these projects as well as reserves set aside by electric utilities for them and allow the money to be used to finance measures to be taken at the Fukushima plant.

After that, the government should swiftly work out specific plans to build facilities for the final disposal of radioactive waste, and deal with the stockpiles of plutonium stored both in and outside Japan.

Another urgent task is the establishment of a dependable system to decommission reactors. The LDP’s proposals offer no decisive plan for decommissioning the reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 plant and tackling the problem of radioactive water, although the party mentioned some proposed ideas. These included setting up a special unit for these tasks within TEPCO, spinning off such a unit from the utility and turning the company into an independent administrative agency.

It is clearly necessary to consider creating an independent entity responsible for decommissioning reactors for all nuclear plant operators, including TEPCO. At the very least, the current situation in which TEPCO is seeking to restart the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant while grappling with the Fukushima cleanup must not be allowed to continue.

Trying to bring the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant back online to ease the financial burden on the public would be putting the cart before the horse.

Another priority task is to secure a safe working environment for workers at the Fukushima plant. With TEPCO’s ability to perform the necessary tasks on its own in doubt, the government should take responsibility for protecting the health and welfare of Fukushima workers and establish a system to provide necessary human and other resources for the tasks that need to be carried out at the plant.

There will be no true improvement in the situation if the government decides to dip into state coffers to cover the costs without making serious efforts to solve all these challenges

.

Japanese taxpayers are completely unwilling to pay for cleaning up TEPCO’s mess.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 2