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Why Japan will never be a nuclear-free zone

By David Pilling

Published: July 26 2007 03:00 | Last updated: July 26 2007 03:00

Many residents of Kariwa, a village in Niigata, the Japanese prefecture
jolted last week by an earthquake measuring a frightening 6.8 on the Richter
scale, have lost their homes. Some have even lost their relatives. Yet despite
such suffering, says Kazuyuki Takemoto, a former village legislator, many people
had only one thought moments after the earthquake hit: what was that giant plume
of black smoke doing pouring out of the neighbourhood nuclear power station?

Those scenes have shaken the whole of Japan. Although the four operating
reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, the world's biggest, shut down
automatically as designed, safety procedures in peripheral parts of the complex
were seriously wanting.

The plant's four firefighters could not put out the flames because water
pipes had - surprise, surprise - been damaged by the earthquake. The town's fire
brigade, busy with a full-scale rescue operation, did not arrive to extinguish
the blaze for nearly two hours. It emerged that none of Japan's 55 nuclear
plants, which supply nearly one-third of the country's electricity, is properly
equipped to handle fires. It turns out also that Kashiwazaki-Kariwa was not
built to withstand an earthquake of anything like the magnitude that struck. The
Unit 1 reactor was designed for a maximum 273 gals, a measure of ground
acceleration. The jolt measured 680 gals.

As a result, 63 separate things went wrong, including the leakage of
radioactive material into the sea and air. Both Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco),
which operates the plant, and government inspectors have assured the public that
these "infinitesimally small" leaks pose no risk to humans or the environment.
That may well be true. But the fact that Tepco at first denied there had been
any leak at all hardly inspires confidence.

Nor does the fact that Tepco had denied the plant was close to a fault line.
In the event, the earthquake's epicentre was 16km away, while aftershocks
suggested an active fault might run directly under the plant.

These revelations are a gift to campaigners who argue it is madness to build
nuclear power stations in one of the world's most active earthquake zones.
Katsuhiko Ishibashi, professor of urban safety at Kobe University and a
seismologist, says big earthquakes can strike Japan almost anywhere. The 1995
Kobe earthquake that killed 6,500 people hit a city previously thought to be at
minimal risk. He argues that Japan is in real danger of suffering an
earthquake-induced nuclear explosion that could kill millions of people.

You do not have to hate the idea of nuclear power to wonder about the wisdom
of cramming one-tenth of the planet's reactors on to one of its most
earthquake-prone islands. Nuclear regulators warn against over-reaction. They
say the lesson of the Niigata quake could be the opposite. The ground
accelerated at twice the speed for which Kashiwazaki was designed, yet the
reactors shut down as planned. Damage was to non-essential equipment. The
radiation leak into the air, we are told, represented a potential dose
one-millionth of that experienced during a round-trip flight from Tokyo to New
York.

There are two separate questions here. The first is about regulation. Private
sector operators have been allowed to cut corners on safety and to make
assumptions about the likelihood of an earthquake that fall well short of
reality. Given the Japanese industry's record of being thrifty with the truth,
only vigilant and aggressive regulation by the government will persuade the
public that everything is being done to mitigate possible accidents.

The second question is more fundamental: should Japan have a nuclear industry
at all? The problem is that Japan, which has no oil or gas to speak of, cannot
contemplate life without nuclear power. Japan's paranoia about being a
resource-poor country, arguably the biggest factor behind its disastrous
imperial adventures of the 1930s, is underestimated abroad. For example, while
free-trade advocates rail against Japan for its high agricultural tariffs, the
debate in Japan is shifting to how the country, which produces only 40 per cent
of its calorie requirements, can become more self-sufficient infood.

These intense fears are not as unreasonable as some make out. In a time of
crisis, Japan is indeed vulnerable to being cut off from food and energy. That
means that, while the government will now engage in a thorough review of how to
improve nuclear safety, the debate about whether Japan should have a nuclear
industry at all will never be held.

The writer is the FT's Tokyo bureau chief

Copyright The
Financial Times Limited 2007

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