Japan after the March 11, 2011 Deluge : Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao

Japan after the March 11, 2011 Deluge

A Report by NISS

Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao

None of the three Fukushima I reactors will be reparable. A combination of damage and radioactive contamination at units 4 through 6 will render those units un-repairable. It is also possible that other 12 nuclear plants, all of which went off-line following the earthquake will also be affected, and be either un-repairable or require lengthy repairs. These are the findings in an interim report prepared on March 17, 2011 by “Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability” (NISS) on the short and medium term impacts of the Reactor damage caused by the Japan Earth Quake and Tsunami. The evaluation focused on Japan’s electricity system, energy security, and the future of the nuclear power plants located in the earthquake and tsunami affected regions.

The Report emphasized the need for a massive international effort, perhaps mandated by the UN Security Council, to assist Japan in the huge task of dealing with multiple reactors and spent fuel ponds affected by the earthquake, explosions, meltdowns, and radioactive contamination. The report suggested that the “next steps” in the power sector response should include consideration of examining carefully the costs of establishing a nationally integrated “smart grid” that enables intermittent renewable to be scaled up alongside a massive program of fast, super-efficient end use efficiency in all sectors.

The report further dealt with the implications of the damage for electricity supply with reference to the nuclear and non-nuclear power stations in terms of demand and appraised how the two (Tokyo Electric Power Company-TEPCO and Tohoku Electric Power Company) power systems may evolve in future a best case, baseline case, and worst case scenario. The report also touched on the implications for the future use of nuclear power in East Asia in light of the disasters in Japan in the nuclear plants.

The Fukushima nuclear crisis has had an enormous impact on China. Given its geographical proximity to Japan and with a large Chinese population living and working in Japan, the Chinese government and a great many Chinese citizens have been keeping a close watch on the unfolding events. The team observed that, China’s State Council reportedly decided to halt its plan to build new nuclear power plants, ordered a re-examination of the safety risks of nuclear power stations currently under construction, and decided to enhance the management of safety aspects of a nuclear power stations currently in operation in China. In publicly released information first of its kind, on China’s nuclear industry and planning, the Chinese public is able to know about many of the new nuclear plants and their locations.

Domestically, the Japanese nuclear crisis provoked sharp division between the government and opposition political parties and civil society critics of South Korea’s nuclear power system. The Ministry of Knowledge Economy acknowledged the potential impact of the crisis in Japan on South Korea’s ambitious plan to increase the number of power plants from 21 at present to 38 by 2030. Opposition legislators called for reconsideration of the nuclear power building plan, and particularly called attention to the fact that Korean nuclear facilities are at present built only to resist an earthquake of 6.5 on the Richter scale.

From the day of the earthquake and tsunami, South Korean President pledged support for Japan, including emergency supplies. He also ordered renewed inspection of the safety of South Korea’s 21 nuclear power plants, as well as a wider focus on “earthquake-proof conditions of public buildings, early warning systems and overall contingency plans”.

It is unclear, at this early stage, to what extent the nuclear crisis in Japan might affect North Korea’s plans to move ahead with its planned program of domestic light-water reactor development. It is also possible that South Korea and the United States may take a very hard line indeed against an attempt by the North to complete and turn on a small light water reactor that is upwind and would be of highly dubious quality and reliability. On the other side of the equation, the experience in Japan would help to induce the international community to offer such assistance to North Korea.

Southeast Asian Government and industry proponents of the nuclear plants in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia dismissed suggestions that the Japanese nuclear crisis would have a negative influence on planning. Australia has a particular relationship to the Fukushima crisis: Critics of uranium mining emphasized the direct links of Australian uranium industry to the Japanese crisis through the flow of Australian uranium directly to the Fukushima reactors. Australian uranium plays a major role in the operations and planning of the Japanese nuclear power industry and TEPCO in particular. The Australian government made no public statement on uranium exports immediately following the onset of the Fukushima crisis.

While Russia is a major power in civil nuclear energy, there are very few reactors in the Russian Far East, and they are small. Following the earthquake, Russia announced offers of aid and expertise to Japan. The specter of a catastrophic failure of containment of the Fukushima I reactors brings echoes of the antagonism between the two countries after the fall of the Soviet Union when Russia clandestinely dumped reactors and spent nuclear fuel from decommissioned Soviet navy submarines in the Sea of Japan.

Malaysia has been proceeding quite rapidly over the past year towards its announced goal of establishing a nuclear power plant in that country. Malaysian government was closely monitoring the Japanese situation, but would “implement what is the best” for the country. In Indonesia, the head of the National Nuclear Power Agency discounted the influence of the Japanese crisis on his country’s plans.

The incidents at the Fukushima plants are likely to have a chilling effect on the perception of nuclear power in many countries. Politicians and the public in several countries will be asking for additional certainty regarding the safety of nuclear power, with the likely result being at least delays in deployment of additional reactors, more rigorous safety studies for existing and to-be-built reactors, and possibly additional costs for safety modifications and as a result, construction delays.

The accident in Japan will cause some countries that do not yet have nuclear power, but are actively seeking it, to look more carefully at the technology and its implications. Indonesia and Philippines have a recent history of volcanism and earthquakes, and Japan’s experience may (and probably should) give them pause.

Ultimately, the additional scrutiny of nuclear power may lead to accelerated development and deployment of new reactor types that will be more robust under accident conditions. Indeed, the reactors being built today should be significantly more robust than the Fukushima I reactors, which are now 30 to over 40 years old. In the long term, safer reactors could be the result of the response to the accident at the Japanese plant, but it seems likely that additional development of nuclear power will be delayed in many countries as a result of this accident.

The huge challenge posed by the virtual destruction of the Fukushima I reactor complex also lead to far reaching adverse effects. Site stabilization and recovery of the damaged and contaminated sites will take years, possibly as long as a decade, and will cost far more than constructing the plants and the stabilization and recovery effort likely will require an international mobilization of necessary hardware, equipment, and trained personnel, and may need a UNSC mandate to establish authority and funding management for the cleanup.

Although the original massive 9.0 earthquake a large number of ongoing frequent and often powerful earthquakes bracketing the area immediately offshore from the plants have taken place. When the earthquake occurred there were 54 nuclear power stations in operation. Five sets of nuclear reactors were affected by the earthquake: Onagawa, Fukushima I, Fukushima II, Higashidori, and Tokai. When the earthquake hit, safety systems at the reactors automatically triggered control rods, which successfully shut down the nuclear chain reactions at the plants affected by the earthquake. The key to the subsequent developments at a number of the reactors in the affected zone was the ongoing generation of heat in reactors that had been shut down. The decay of radioactive atoms in the fuel in a reactor core continues even after the nuclear chain reactions are shut down, and this decay generates a lot of heat, which must be removed from the core. The account of the Fukushima I plant is complex, and highly uncertain.

The combined stock of radioactive materials in the reactors and spent fuel ponds at the Fukushima I reactor site is large. The exact quantities of fission products and other irradiated materials in the reactor and spent fuel ponds depends on how long fuel rods have been in the reactors, the degree of burn-up over time in the cores, and the age of spent fuel removed into storage ponds.

The three major implications of the reactor damage for the electricity system are very important. Power Requirements on the TEPCO and Tohoku Electric Power Company Systems are badly affected. There would be a mounting pressure on the existing and Operable TEPCO and Tohoku Supply-side Resources. Demand-side Resources for Power Companies are affected. Even if the reactor cores and spent fuel pools in the affected nuclear power plants are stabilized immediately, a number of questions remain, the answers to which will determine what the electricity supply system in Japan looks like for years to come. On the demand side, what fraction of the industrial, commercial, and residential infrastructure that was affected by the earthquake will be rebuilt, as opposed to moving elsewhere? At what level of energy efficiency will infrastructure be rebuilt?

In a Best Case scenario, nuclear generating capacity must be replaced or otherwise compensated for by supply- or demand-side resources. The “Best Case” scenario is necessarily preliminary and incomplete. In the Best Case scenario, assuming no significant damage is found in the review of the other nuclear and thermal plants that have been shut down, when those plants are restarted, in perhaps one to three years, much or all of the short-term electricity supply shortage in the area may be eliminated.

In the Base Case scenario, the supply shortfall for the two companies is likely to last longer, perhaps several years longer (around five years total), and would need to be ameliorated by a combination of much more thermal generation, construction of new thermal generation plants (assuming availability of fuel), and probably a significant effort to curb net demand for both electrical energy and peak power. Curbing demand could take the form of rotating power cuts, agreements with industry to curtail consumption at peak times, aggressive energy efficiency programs as well as encouraging residents, businesses, and industries to develop on-site generation, including solar photovoltaic (PV) generation, and gas-fired combined heat and power systems.

The “Worst Case” scenario would extend the Base Case in that all of the nuclear power plants in the earthquake area are found to have significant seismic or other damage, leading to prolonged (more than 5 years) retrofit requirements, and some thermal plants are found to have been compromised to the point where they cannot be repaired, and must be replaced (requiring several years.

Depending on how these uncertainties play out, the earthquake-affected area of Japan could be short of electricity for many years observed the report.

The Nautilus Institute is a non-governmental organization that focuses on security and sustainability issues in Northeast Asia. By providing innovative research and analysis, the Institute addresses global issues such as nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula, U.S. nuclear policy, energy security, climate change adaptation, and the development of civil society. With branch offices in San Francisco, California, Melbourne, Australia, and Seoul, South Korea, Nautilus pursues its mission through a highly networked organization.

Japan’s Nuclear Crisis-TEPCO is at fault:Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao

Japan’s Nuclear Crisis-TEPCO is at fault

Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao

Following a severe earthquake and Tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011, the nation faced the worst nuclear emergency with explosions and leaks of radioactive gas in three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station that suffered partial meltdowns. The government ordered half the country’s active military force into relief roles-the largest mobilization in postwar Japan. Possibilities of Boric Acid powder spray through helicopters are also explored but in vain. American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier “Ronald Reagan” also arrived in Japan to help with refueling, supply and rescue duties. Polluted Radioactive air might pass through Russia and even reach California State in USA. Explosion after explosion was reported in one or the other nuclear reactor, as it became clear that radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months.

For the elderly, the destruction echoed memories of World War II.

American officials have publicly announced that the damage to crippled reactor was much more serious than Tokyo estimated. They advised Americans to stay much farther away from the plant than the perimeter established by Japanese authorities. The announcement may lead to a serious split between America and Japan at an especially delicate moment. If the American analysis is accurate and emergency crews at the plant have been unable to keep the spent fuel at that inoperative reactor properly cooled, it needs to remain covered with water at all times. The advice to Americans in Japan represents a graver assessment of the risk in the immediate vicinity of Daiichi than the warnings made by the Japanese themselves.

Japan has a history of complacent and bureaucratic reactions to crises. In 1995, after an earthquake hit the city of Kobe, officials were slow to respond. At one point of time, Japan Government did not permit for three days, doctors and nurses who had flown to Kobe from America to treat the affected people on the pretext that they had no Japan’s license. Ten years earlier when a Japan Airlines crashed into a mountain and only a handful of passengers survived, the government delayed getting to the site. However, the government this time has been much faster to allow in foreign aid and to get its own relief efforts into the field. But the inclination is still to limit information flow while asking the public to trust the government's leadership.

Once the dust settles in Fukushima and the details of the current emergency are understood, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Japanese government will have to answer why all that happened. TEPCO confidently built six nuclear reactors - the Fukushima complex - overlooking a fault zone, where earthquakes and tsunamis can happen. An impatient public-in Japan and elsewhere-will want to know why that was allowed to happen in the first place.

According to Mike Head (TEPCO-A history of nuclear disaster cover-ups in the World Socialist Website), TEPCO is the conglomerate at the centre of Japan’s nuclear radiation emergency at Fukushima. Its operations over the past several decades characterize the government-backed pursuit of corporate profit, at the direct expense of lives, health and safety. TEPCO is the fourth largest power company in the world, and the biggest in Asia, operating 17 nuclear reactors and supplying one-third of Japan’s electricity. It has a long, documented history of serious safety breaches, systemic cover-ups of potentially fatal disasters, harassment and suppression of popular opposition and use of its economic and advertising clout to silence criticism. Company has a record of committing more than 200 proven falsifications of safety measures.

The current crisis at Fukushima, caused by earthquake, is not the company’s first quake-related breakdown. In 2007, when a much smaller magnitude tremor occurred the company admitted that the plant had not been built to withstand such shocks. Successive Japanese governments over the past 40 years indirectly abetted TEPCO in the safety failures. With the backing of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), from 1955 to 2009, TEPCO aggressively pursued the construction of more than 50 nuclear plants over the objections of residents and environmentalists, in order to secure the energy needs of Japanese capitalism, despite the potential dangers of doing so in one of the world’s most earthquake-prone zones.

In the year 1995, an official falsification of the extent of a sodium leak and fire at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency’s fast-breeder reactor caused public outrage. In 1999, one of Japan’s worst nuclear accidents occurred at the Tokaimura uranium processing plant. Government officials later said safety equipment at the plant had been missing. Three years later, TEPCO was exposed as falsifying safety data, including at the ageing Fukushima Daiichi facility. The government pretends concern at these blatant safety breaches and sheds crocodile tears.

The July 2007 earthquake, caused subsidence of the main structure, ruptured water pipes, started a fire and triggered radioactive discharges into the atmosphere and sea. The company admitted that the quake had released radiation and had spilled radioactive water into the Sea of Japan. Had the epicenter been slightly nearer and magnitude little higher, Japan would have experienced a major emergency like the present one. Surprisingly no lessons were learnt from that.

Amid a public outcry, the government ordered closure of the center. TEPCO tasted the first ever losses and now it has reached to the current level of billions of dollars. The current meltdown and radiation emergency at Fukushima is the inevitable product of the protracted record of TEPCO-Government collaboration. The government’s fury is purely for public consumption. In addition it has stepped up a campaign to help TEPCO, to win contracts to build nuclear reactors overseas including in Vietnam, Thailand and USA. Within Japan, TEPCO is planning to open six more nuclear reactors, in 2014 and 2015 and in 2015 and 2018. Last month, residents of the areas where these are planned protested as the company commenced construction, in the dark of night, where a volcano burst this week. TEPCO has also been shielded by the media for decades.

A chain of events over a period transformed the Empire of Japan into an industrialized world power. After victories in the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, Japan gained control of Taiwan and Korea. World War I enabled Japan, to widen its influence and territorial holdings. It occupied Manchuria in 1931. Japan resigned from the League of Nations two years later. In 1936, Japan signed Pact with Nazi Germany and invaded other parts of China in 1937. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor and declared war on the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. This brought the US into World War II and, and after the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Japan agreed to an unconditional surrender on August 15. The war cost Japan millions of lives and left much of the nation's industry and infrastructure destroyed. In 1947, Japan adopted a new constitution emphasizing liberal democratic practices. Later, Japan was granted membership in the United Nations in 1956. Japan later achieved rapid growth to become the second-largest economy in the world. Unfortunately on March 11, 2011, Japan suffered the strongest earthquake in its recorded history.

The unfolding Japanese tragedy also should prompt Americans and to that matter other countries also to closely study their own plans. When such calamities could so badly hurt Japan, a technologically advanced nation, it is equally possible elsewhere also. It will be all the more important to reassess safety standards. It is said that about 30 American reactors have designs similar to the crippled reactors in Japan. They are also planned near geologic faults, in coastal areas reachable by tsunamis or in areas potentially vulnerable to flooding. The energy policy of many nations is not guided by fact. It is governed by fear and the irrational demand that any power source be free of risk or negative consequences. The idea that a substantial portion of energy needs can be derived from solar, wind, or bio-fuels is pure fantasy. What's more, each of these options contains considerable environmental impacts of their own, which are now becoming apparent.

What is missing in most discussions about nuclear energy is the distinction between safety and relative safety. Japan's nuclear facilities were deemed safe, based on an assumption that they were relatively safe under normal conditions and safe up to a point for certain unforeseen circumstances. Against this background the safety of the twenty nuclear power reactors in India that produce nearly 3% of the power requirement is of utmost importance. End