Japan's deadly game of nuclear roulette
By LEUREN MORET
Special to The Japan Times
Of all the places in all the world where no one in
their right mind would build scores of nuclear power plants, Japan would
be pretty near the top of the list.
An aerial view of the Hamaoka plant in Shizuoka Prefecture, "the most dangerous
nuclear power plant in Japan"
The Japanese archipelago is located on the so-called
Pacific Rim of Fire, a large active volcanic and tectonic zone ringing
North and South America, Asia and island arcs in Southeast Asia. The
major earthquakes and active volcanoes occurring there are caused by the
westward movement of the Pacific tectonic plate and other plates
leading to subduction under Asia.
Japan sits on top of four tectonic plates, at the edge
of the subduction zone, and is in one of the most tectonically active
regions of the world. It was extreme pressures and temperatures,
resulting from the violent plate movements beneath the seafloor, that
created the beautiful islands and volcanoes of Japan.
Nonetheless, like many countries around the world --
where General Electric and Westinghouse designs are used in 85 percent
of all commercial reactors -- Japan has turned to nuclear power as a
major energy source. In fact the three top nuclear-energy countries are
the United States, where the existence of 118 reactors was acknowledged
by the Department of Energy in 2000, France with 72 and Japan, where 52
active reactors were cited in a December 2003 Cabinet White Paper.
The 52 reactors in Japan -- which generate a little
over 30 percent of its electricity -- are located in an area the size of
California, many within 150 km of each other and almost all built along
the coast where seawater is available to cool them.
However, many of those reactors have been negligently
sited on active faults, particularly in the subduction zone along the
Pacific coast, where major earthquakes of magnitude 7-8 or more on the
Richter scale occur frequently. The periodicity of major earthquakes in
Japan is less than 10 years. There is almost no geologic setting in the
world more dangerous for nuclear power than Japan -- the third-ranked
country in the world for nuclear reactors.
"I think the situation right now is very scary," says
Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a seismologist and professor at Kobe University.
"It's like a kamikaze terrorist wrapped in bombs just waiting to
explode."
Last summer, I visited Hamaoka nuclear power plant in
Shizuoka Prefecture, at the request of citizens concerned about the
danger of a major earthquake. I spoke about my findings at press
conferences afterward.
A map of Japan annotated by the author, showing the tectonic
plates, areas of high ("observed region") and very high ("specially
observed") quake risk, and the sites of nuclear reactors
Because Hamaoka sits directly over the subduction zone
near the junction of two plates, and is overdue for a major earthquake,
it is considered to be the most dangerous nuclear power plant in Japan.
Together with local citizens, I spent the day walking
around the facility, collecting rocks, studying the soft sediments it
sits on and tracing the nearly vertical faults through the area --
evidence of violent tectonic movements.
The next day I was surprised to see so many reporters
attending the two press conferences held at Kakegawa City Hall and
Shizuoka Prefecture Hall. When I asked the reporters why they had come
so far from Tokyo to hear an American geoscientist, I was told it was
because no foreigner had ever come to tell them how dangerous Japan's
nuclear power plants are.
I told them that this is the power of gaiatsu
(foreign pressure), and because citizens in the United States with
similar concerns attract little media attention, we invite a Japanese to
speak for us when we want media coverage -- someone like the famous
seismologist Professor Ishibashi!
When the geologic evidence was presented confirming the
extreme danger at Hamaoka, the attending media were obviously shocked.
The aerial map, filed by Chubu Electric Company along with its
government application to build and operate the plant, showed major
faults going through Hamaoka, and revealed that the company recognized
the danger of an earthquake. They had carefully placed each reactor
between major fault lines.
"The structures of the nuclear plant are directly
rooted in the rock bed and can tolerate a quake of magnitude 8.5 on the
Richter scale," the utility claimed on its Web site.
>From my research and the investigation I conducted of
the rocks in the area, I found that that the sedimentary beds underlying
the plant were badly faulted. Some tiny faults I located were less than
1 cm apart.
When I held up samples of the rocks the plant was
sitting on, they crumbled like sugar in my fingers. "But the power
company told us these were really solid rocks!" the reporters said. I
asked, "Do you think these are really solid?' and they started laughing.
On July 7 last year, the same day of my visit to
Hamaoka, Ishibashi warned of the danger of an earthquake-induced nuclear
disaster, not only to Japan but globally, at an International Union of
Geodesy and Geophysics conference held in Sapporo. He said: "The seismic
designs of nuclear facilities are based on standards that are too old
from the viewpoint of modern seismology and are insufficient. The
authorities must admit the possibility that an earthquake-nuclear
disaster could happen and weigh the risks objectively."
After the greatest nuclear power plant disaster in
Japan's history at Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, in September 1999, large,
expensive Emergency Response Centers were built near nuclear power
plants to calm nearby residents.
After visiting the center a few kilometers from
Hamaoka, I realized that Japan has no real nuclear-disaster plan in the
event that an earthquake damaged a reactor's water-cooling system and
triggered a reactor meltdown.
Additionally, but not even mentioned by ERC officials,
there is an extreme danger of an earthquake causing a loss of water
coolant in the pools where spent fuel rods are kept. As reported last
year in the journal Science and Global Security, based on a 2001 study
by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, if the heat-removing function
of those pools is seriously compromised -- by, for example, the water
in them draining out -- and the fuel rods heat up enough to combust, the
radiation inside them will then be released into the atmosphere. This
may create a nuclear disaster even greater than Chernobyl.
If a nuclear disaster occurred, power-plant workers as
well as emergency-response personnel in the Hamaoka ERC would
immediately be exposed to lethal radiation. During my visit, ERC
engineers showed us a tiny shower at the center, which they said would
be used for "decontamination' of personnel. However, it would be useless
for internally exposed emergency-response workers who inhaled
radiation.
When I asked ERC officials how they planned to evacuate
millions of people from Shizuoka Prefecture and beyond after a
Kobe-magnitude earthquake (Kobe is on the same subduction zone as
Hamaoka) destroyed communication lines, roads, railroads, drinking-water
supplies and sewage lines, they had no answer.
Last year, James Lee Witt, former director of the U.S.
Federal Emergency Management Agency, was hired by New York citizens to
assess the U.S. government's emergency-response plan for a nuclear power
plant disaster. Citizens were shocked to learn that there was no
government plan adequate to respond to a disaster at the Indian Point
nuclear reactor, just 80 km from New York City.
The Japanese government is no better prepared, because
there is no adequate response possible to contain or deal with such a
disaster. Prevention is really the only effective measure to consider.
In 1998, Kei Sugaoka, 51, a Japanese-American senior
field engineer who worked for General Electric in the United States from
1980 until being dismissed in 1998 for whistle-blowing there, alerted
Japanese nuclear regulators to a 1989 reactor inspection problem he
claimed had been withheld by GE from their customer, Tokyo Electric
Power Company. This led to nuclear-plant shutdowns and reforms of
Japan's power industry.
Later it was revealed from GE documents that they had
in fact informed TEPCO -- but that company did not notify government
regulators of the hazards.
Yoichi Kikuchi, a Japanese nuclear engineer who also
became a whistle-blower, has told me personally of many safety problems
at Japan's nuclear power plants, such as cracks in pipes in the cooling
system from vibrations in the reactor. He said the electric companies
are "gambling in a dangerous game to increase profits and decrease
government oversight."
Sugaoka agreed, saying, "The scariest thing, on top of
all the other problems, is that all nuclear power plants are aging,
causing a deterioration of piping and joints which are always exposed to
strong radiation and heat."
Like most whistle-blowers, Sugaoka and Kikuchi are citizen heroes, but are now
unemployed.
The Radiation and Public Health Project, a group of
independent U.S. scientists, has collected 4,000 baby teeth from
children living around nuclear power plants. These teeth were then
tested to determine their level of Strontium-90, a radioactive fission
product that escapes in nuclear power plant emissions.
Unborn children may be exposed to Strontium-90 through
drinking water and the diet of the mother. Anyone living near nuclear
power plants is internally exposed to chronically low levels of
radiation contaminating food and drinking water. Increased rates of
cancer, infant mortality and low birth weights leading to cognitive
impairment have been linked to radiation exposure for decades.
However, a recent independent report on low-level
radiation by the European Committee on Radiation Risk, released for the
European Parliament in January 2003, established that the ongoing U.S.
Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Studies conducted in Japan by the U.S.
government since 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors underestimated
the risk of radiation exposure as much as 1,000 times.
Additionally, on March 26 this year -- the eve of the
25th anniversary of the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history, at the
Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania -- the Radiation and Public
Health Project released new data on the effects of that event. This
showed rises in infant deaths up to 53 percent, and in thyroid cancer of
more than 70 percent in downwind counties -- data which, like all that
concerning both the short- and long-term health effects, has never been
forthcoming from the U.S. government.
It is not a question of whether or not a nuclear disaster will occur in Japan;
it is a question of when it will occur.
Like the former Soviet Union after Chernobyl, Japan
will become a country suffering from radiation sickness destroying
future generations, and widespread contamination of agricultural areas
will ensure a public-health disaster. Its economy may never recover.
Considering the extreme danger of major earthquakes,
the many serious safety and waste-disposal issues, it is timely and
urgent -- with about half its reactors currently shut down -- for Japan
to convert nuclear power plants to fossil fuels such as natural gas.
This process is less expensive than building new power plants and, with
political and other hurdles overcome, natural gas from the huge Siberian
reserves could be piped in at relatively low cost. Several U.S. nuclear
plants have been converted to natural gas after citizen pressure forced
energy companies to make changeovers.
Commenting on this way out of the nuclear trap, Ernest
Sternglass, a renowned U.S. scientist who helped to stop atmospheric
testing in America, notes that, 'Most recently the Fort St. Vrain
reactor in Colorado was converted to fossil fuel, actually natural gas,
after repeated problems with the reactor. An earlier reactor was the
Zimmer Power Plant in Cincinnati, which was originally designed as a
nuclear plant but it was converted to natural gas before it began
operating. This conversion can be done on any plant at a small fraction
[20-30 percent] of the cost of building a new plant. Existing turbines,
transmission facilities and land can be used."
After converting to natural gas, the Fort St. Vrain
plant produced twice as much electricity much more efficiently and
cheaply than from nuclear energy -- with no nuclear hazard at all, of
course.
It is time to make the changeover from nuclear fuel to
fossil fuels in order to save future generations and the economy of
Japan.
Leuren Moret is a geoscientist who worked at the Lawrence
Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory on the Yucca Mountain Project, and
became a whistle-blower in 1991 by reporting science fraud on the
project and at Livermore. She is an independent and international
radiation specialist, and the Environmental Commissioner in the city of
Berkeley, Calif. She has visited Japan four times to work with Japanese
citizens, scientists and elected officials on radiation and peace
issues. She can be contacted at [email protected]
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20040523x2.html
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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