The Doozy by Sarkoozy: The EPR would conquer "irrational fear" of nuclear energy

When France launched its next generation nuclear reactor a few years back, French leaders were proudly touting their EPR project in glowing terms, claiming it heralded energy independence and the end of worries about global warming. This is what President Nicolas Sarkozy had to say in 2009:

… ladies and gentlemen presidents of EDF, Areva, Bouygues, Alstom, ladies and gentlemen. Since I have been president of the République I have wanted to come here, to Flamanville, to see the biggest construction site in Europe. Now I have come, and I regret that I didn’t come sooner. Flamanville, it’s a site that the whole world looks up to. It is the model for the world of the nuclear renaissance. Renaissance… The analogy with that glorious period of European history will undoubtedly provoke a few debates, but there are some points in common with the Renaissance: the questioning of old ways of thinking, the questioning of irrational fears, the faith in science, and the faith in technology which were the elements of the Renaissance. It is up to us to ensure that this rediscovery of nuclear energy will be an opportunity for the progress and cooperation for all humanity. Flamanville is a model suite for the third generation of nuclear technology. Flamanville is a facet of French excellence, technological excellence, industrial excellence—and “industry” is not a dirty word, by the way—and environmental excellence.

Nicolas Sarkozy, 2009/02/06

quoted in Nicolas Lambert, Avenir Radieux (Editions L’Echappée, 2012)

Well, that was then and this is now. This month even the mainstream media didn’t ignore the bad news out of France, probably because it was disastrous financial news that the global financial industry needed to know. Several reports have appeared like the one in The Wall Street Journal that outlined the sad tale of hubris, lost opportunities, and bad management that has left France’s nuclear industry battered, bruised and down for the count, perhaps to never again rise to its previous stature.

Areva, the company building the EPR, announced last year that it was failing financially because of the downturn in the uranium market since Fukushima, cost overruns and delays on EPR projects, and acquisitions gone bad. This month, Areva announced there was flawed steel in a crucial part of the nuclear reactor it is building in Flamanville, northern France. The regulator has shut down the project until further notice. Since the major parts have already been installed, serious questions are being raised about the viability of dismantling and starting over. A report in The Ecologist noted:

One problem is the pressure vessel's sheer size and the fact that it was already in place when the fault was detected. The vessel weighs 410 tonnes and cannot now be removed, and it is hard to see how it could be repaired or modified.

EPR projects in China and Finland are sure to be halted until questions are cleared up, and the UK is now wondering whether it should back out of a plan to have Areva build four EPRs there.

It is tragic to see France repeat its mistakes of the past with this pathetic replay of hubris and downfall involving grand plans for the next great thing in nuclear energy. This tale of the EPR looks too much like the history of the Superphénix breeder reactor that gave the nation twenty years of grief before it was finally shut down in 1996—and it is still undergoing its long dismantling process.

Nicolas Sarkozy has been out of power for a while, but lately he has been trying to resurrect himself. It remains to be seen whether he will grasp for some way to keep spinning the EPR as a glorious French achievement, trying to convince investors and the public that their doubts are just irrational fears lingering from the Middle Ages.

Demolition of the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant cooling tower, Oregon, USA, 2006.
There are several nuclear projects that came to an early demise after long
periods of costly and controversial construction followed by short lives in operation.  

Sources:

Inti Landauro, “Areva Finds Flaws in New Nuclear Reactor,” Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2015.

Paul Brown and Oliver Tickell, “Nuclear reactor flaws raise Hinkley C safety fears,” The Ecologist, April 14, 2015.

True Lies

There ought to be a word for the kind of truth that is really just an oft-repeated lie. This kind of truth starts off as a bald-faced lie, then goes through a tortuous digestive process in the national psyche, accompanied by lots of cramps and gaseous emanations until it finally emerges as what should be called a truthturd. It then sprouts some lovely turd blossoms that fool enough people into accepting its virtue.

Cases in point: the Tokyo gubernatorial election of February 10th, 2014, and the notion that Japan is doomed to economic failure without nuclear power.

http://www.claybennett.com/

The election was seen as a sort of referendum on nuclear energy in Japan, and the pro-nuclear candidate “won” with a voter turnout that was less than 50% and less than a majority of those votes. The two anti-nuclear candidates had an almost equal number of votes as the “winner.” In a truly democratic system, the result would be thrown out and the election redone until the turnout was high enough to be considered a real reflection of the will of citizens. You could say the citizens were lazy and got the government they deserve, but Tokyo had just been hit with its worst snowfall in decades the night before. In addition, an intelligently designed electoral system would require a runoff to decide a winner with a majority of votes.

After the election results were in, TEPCO coincidentally announced a few days later that its data on some of Fukushima Daiichi’s radioactive leaks had been underestimated by half. Then it turned out that data on 167 samples dated as long ago as 2011 were underestimated because the instruments used maxed out below the actual levels. As was the case with the 2012 national election and the IOC decision on the 2020 Olympics, TEPCO held the bad news so as to not influence political decisions that might have unwelcome consequences for the company.

Also coming right after the election result was known, the press was full of stories about how the national government is now going to press ahead with nuclear reactor restarts by next summer. Everyone, including the journalists regurgitating the government line, seems to have forgotten that Japan now has a new and improved nuclear regulator that is, supposedly, totally independent of politics. Thus, nothing can be restarted if the NRA objects to restarts, and no politician could possibly pass judgment on things like seismic safety, the reliability of old infrastructure, re-education of personnel, or evacuation plans. Right?

The Yomiuri Shimbun ran a story that might as well have been a government press release. It reported, “The government aims to resume operations of nuclear power plants under the plan, after [NOT IF] their safety is confirmed by the ongoing screenings of the Nuclear Regulation Authority.” It is reported like a fait accompli, with the NRA and local prefectural approval assumed as a sure thing.

It must be kept in mind that the Yomiuri was the propaganda arm of the Japanese and American government in the 1950s when President Eisenhower was pushing “atoms for peace” and exports of American nuclear power technology. Nothing has changed. The Yomiuri report was bad enough, but that is not to say that it was much different than others. The New York Times went along for the ride as well.

The media, domestic and foreign, has dutifully reported the lie that Japan’s economy is getting hammered by the extra fossil fuel that electric utilities have to import now that their reactors are off. They fail to report that in the past nuclear accounted for only 20-30% of electricity production, and that the majority of fossil fuel imported is used for other purposes besides generating electricity (transport, industrial uses, heating, cooking). The data shows that the jump in total fossil fuel imports after the nuclear shutdown was about 10-15%, and this is an amount that could be cut with conservation, efficiency gains, and investment in renewables. Furthermore, because of demographics, the loss of dominance in technology exports, and jobs moving to cheaper countries, the economy was moving in a bad direction a long time before the 2011 disaster. It is disingenuous to now blame everything on the loss of nuclear power.

The mainstream view also talks about uranium as if it were a free domestic resource. If we consider energy created by unit of cost, uranium does have an advantage over fossil fuel. However, it still has a significant cost and it has to be imported, which means it doesn’t provide energy security, and it hurts the balance of trade just like fossil fuel imports. Besides the cost of uranium, nuclear energy has huge costs arising from construction, de-construction, insurance, security, and safety assurance. Building and operating a gas power plant amounts a fraction of the cost. Even though the continual cost of importing fuel is a burden, it is at least a cost that is born in the present and not foisted on future generations.

Consumers and businesses are supposed to be begging for the reactors to be turned back on because electric utilities are going to charge 20% more now, and this, apparently, is all because of the nuclear shutdown. Curiously, the 20% matches the 20% devaluation of the yen since Shinzo Abe introduced his “Abenomics,” which of course made imported fuel that much more expensive. And really, is the public supposed to believe that electricity cost is going to come down again after the nuclear reactors are switched back on? Is the Abe government that stupid? Do they think the public is that stupid? Or is the public really that stupid?

The cost of fossil fuel is actually only one of the many daunting costs that electric utilities are faced with. All of the nuclear power plants are being forced to meet new safety requirements. The upgrades are costly, and for some power plants they will be too costly, so safe operation will be deemed impossible. The Hamaoka NPP has built a new seawall as defense against tsunamis at a cost of $1.8 billion, yet there is still the possibility that the regulator will refuse to allow its restart. When the NRA or local governments refuse to allow restarts, utilities will have to pay for decommissioning costs. Then of course, there is Fukushima Daiichi, where the cleanup and compensation costs are growing all the time. Nuclear waste disposal, and the cost of future accidents are not even put into the calculation.

The government and the utilities are being utterly deceptive in failing to disclose how these costs make nuclear-generated electricity much more expensive than what consumers pay now in their utility bills, even with the rate increase included. It seems to be assumed that the government has paid and will always pay for the devastating costs of nuclear energy through general revenue. And general revenue is 50% borrowed money these days, so there's not much difference from the attitude toward nuclear waste. It only looks cheap because the deciders who are alive now will be dead in twenty years and not have to pay the price. The true costs–financial, ecological and moral–have been completely obscured.

The blog Peace and Freedom has some insightful quotes from Japanese officials who are propagating the fear of a nuclear shutdown, but the author failed to critically analyze the assumptions behind them. According to the Institute of Energy Economics in Japan, “… fossil-fuel imports would cause an outflow of national wealth equivalent to 0.6 percent of Japan’s gross domestic product.” The question to ask is how this tiny figure is supposed to be catastrophic, when it is well understood that energy consumption is an indicator of domestic economic activity and resources being turned into value-added goods that are exported. Fossil fuel imports have been the very basis of Japan’s economic miracle. If Japan can no longer work its manufacturing and exporting magic, it’s a sign of a deeper problem with creativity, innovation and competitiveness. It has nothing to do with nuclear energy.

Elsewhere in the article, Hirohide Hirai, director of policy evaluation and public relations at the Economy, Trade, and Industry Ministry, is quoted as saying, “The reliance on the hydrocarbons makes Japan vulnerable from the energy-security perspective. You have to pay a lot, a lot, a lot for LNG imports. If something happens in the Strait of Hormuz today, that makes—oh, I don’t want to think about it.”

Yes, indeed, the world is a scary place. Why not repeat “a lot” just a few more times for us? Mr. Hirai’s horror story could give us all chills on a summer night and lessen the need of air conditioners. One can shudder and get scared about various man-made and natural disasters that would leave populations freezing in the dark, but invoking this “Strait of Hormuz” bogey man is an absurd way to debate energy policy. For one thing, Japan has other supply lines from Russia, North America and Indonesia. And, yes, Japan is very vulnerable to energy supply shocks, as many nations are. That’s just a part of the bargain a nation makes if it doesn’t want to have an 18th century lifestyle. Furthermore, even if every nuclear power plant in the country were operating, the loss of fossil fuel supplies would be more crippling to the economy than the loss of nuclear power. Fossil fuel is the only source of energy for airplanes, trucks and cars, most homes use it for heat and cooking, and it has always supplied (even at the peak of nuclear generation) about 60% of electricity.

The claim that nuclear energy is cheap, green and essential is an utter falsehood, perpetuated by some people who know it, and by others who are too dim to understand the nature of the monster they have created. Who in his right mind in this land of earthquakes and volcanoes, after all that has happened at Fukushima Daiichi, would switch on another nuclear reactor? It's time for everyone to stop and listen to the voices from Chernobyl, like the one who said, “They grabbed God by the beard, and now he’s laughing, but we’re the ones who pay for it.”

Sources:

“10 N-reactor restarts sought by summer.” The Yomiuri Shimbun. February 10, 2014. http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001019352.

Martin Fackler. “Nuclear Issue in Limbo as Indecision Grips Japan.” The New York Times. February 11, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/world/asia/nuclear-issue-in-limbo-as-indecision-grips-japan.html.  

“More Record High Radiation Readings at Fukushima Daiichi.” SimplyInfo. February 13, 2014. http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=12348.

Svetlana Alexievich. Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (1997, published in English by Picador in 2006).

John E. Carey (editor). “Why Japan Can’t Quit Nuclear Power.” Peace and Freedom: Policy and World Ideas. February 16, 2013. http://johnib.wordpress.com/2013/02/16/why-japan-cant-quit-nuclear-power/.

The Myth of Extra Fossil Fuel Imports Devastating the Japanese Economy

“If asked whether we should increase our reliance on caviar to fight world hunger, most people would laugh. Relying on an overly expensive commodity to perform an essential task spends too much money for too little benefit, while foreclosing more promising approaches. That is nuclear power's fundamental flaw in the search for plentiful energy without climate repercussions, though reactors are also more dangerous than caviar unless you're a sturgeon.”

−   Peter A. Bradford,

former commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission*

For almost three years, those with vested interests in the Japanese nuclear industry have promoted a false notion that the extra fossil fuel imports required by the loss of nuclear energy are going to devastate the Japanese economy. The data has been distorted and exaggerated, and the nuclear crisis has been scapegoated for the serious economic, fiscal and demographic crisis that has been forming since long before 2011.

In the last nine months of 2011, with no electricity produced by nuclear, consumption of fossil fuels went from 81.58% to 89.64%. But that increase was caused by an event that came in the third month of the year, so if we extend this trend for three more months, we get an annualized increase up to 92.24%. This jump from 81.58% to 92.24% represents a 13% increase.

Chart 2

(Chart 2 shows the same data as in Chart 1: As it is taught in my son’s grade 8 math textbook, you can manipulate a graph so that a change in a pattern looks a lot more dramatic than it really is.)

So how bad is a 13% increase in fossil fuel imports to the balance of trade and the fortunes of the nation? It’s not small, but it is not quite the devastating change in circumstances that it has been portrayed as. Consumers and middle class workers are forced to absorb such shocks all the time. For example, they have to take salary and benefit cuts, and mortgage rates can increase by 13% on short notice (a seemingly tiny change from 2.500% to 2.825% is a 13% increase). Corporations also have to routinely deal with swings of 10% or more in currency values. And who remembers the rampant speculation in world oil prices in 2007 that sharply drove up fuel costs for everyone, without a nuclear shutdown as the cause? These sorts of price fluctuations are common, and governments usually expect individuals and businesses to just roll with the punches.

I’ve been watching reports about Japan’s energy crunch for the last three years, and I haven’t seen a single report in the commercial media that put fossil fuel consumption in its proper context with something like the simple graph shown above. The data wasn’t hard to find, but reporters have preferred to go along with the official line that the loss of nuclear energy is hammering the economy and causing a steep rise in carbon emissions. It’s funny how no one seemed to worry about the failure to meet emission targets before 2011.

There is an additional factor which casts doubt on the claim about the necessity of nuclear energy. If the extra fuel imports were the critical factor in economic recovery, why would the Japanese government embark on a deliberate policy of currency devaluation? The currency has lost over 20% of its value since 2012, which means the Abe government thought this extra cost could be absorbed along with the 13% extra already paid for fuel imports.

If the extra fuel purchases really are such a problem, there are numerous ways to reduce them. Some analysts think that Japan has maxed out on efficiency gains, but they are usually foreign energy experts who have never seen a Tokyo electronics store with hundreds of appliances and air conditioners switched on just for demonstration purposes. Or they have never seen the state of home heating in the countryside. If you want to know about the state of Japanese energy efficiency, come spend the oshogatsu holiday in a traditional Japanese wooden home.

In addition to efficiency gains, we could consider the taboo topic of restricting consumption. If a nation really is in a crisis, it might be reasonable to ask citizens to drive 10% less, for example. However, no one has figured out how to keep people employed while eliminating arbitrarily defined non-essential uses of energy. Once one starts asking about the necessity of vending machines and illuminated billboards, one quickly comes to grim existential questions about the energy expended in almost all economic activity. Very few people would be left standing if we really had to think hard about what is essential.

Finally, another strategy is to get serious about developing alternative energy and ways to store it. With or without nuclear energy, and with or without climate change (since fossil fuel is a finite resource), renewable energy has to be expanded dramatically.

All of this is obvious to anyone disinterested (that is, not uninterested but free from selfish motive or interest) in the Japanese nuclear and power industries. Westinghouse-Toshiba, GE-Hitachi, Areva-Mitsubhishi, the electric utilities, and the politicians who do their bidding have attempted a great con over the last three years in selling the myth that the Japanese economy will be doomed without nuclear energy and nuclear technology exports. It is the opposite, though. Japan is doomed with them. The risks are too great in a nation of earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis, while the rewards – a 13% reduction in fossil fuel imports − are too small to matter. The share of energy produced by fossil fuel is so large that it is pointless to worry about the small increase or the sacrifices that will be needed for a few years before new technologies and new patterns of production and consumption emerge.

*

Wall Street Journal Reports: Energy. “Should the World Increase Its Reliance on Nuclear Energy?” The Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2012.

Secrecy Before and After Secrecy Laws

Japan’s recently passed state secrets bill is without a doubt an atrociously regressive step for a society. It was formulated and passed without any clear explanation to the public why it was necessary, what sorts of information would need to be kept secret, and how decisions about what is secret would be made. This obscurity has led to wild speculation and paranoia about the silencing of free speech, but the result may be that effectively nothing will change, if Japanese society refuses to be intimidated by the fear that anything could be declared a secret.

Most reports have said that the law focuses specifically on two targets: journalists who would publish declared secrets and bureaucrats who would leak them to journalists. If this is all it is, there would appear to be nothing exceptional about this. Other nations do the same thing, although some others offer some constitutional protection to journalists and threaten punishment only on the civil servants who would leak secrets.

The confusion and panic seems to be caused by the vagueness of the new law. No one knows what is going to be declared a secret, or whether information would be declared a secret after it leaked and the government noticed the damage being done. It is also not clear how one would know what is classified and what is not. How would intentional leaking and conspiracy to leak be defined? At what point would the application of the law be unconstitutional? How does one define journalist, anyway? Under this vague cloud, there is a fear now that freedom of speech and assembly will be totally suppressed.

Much of this fear has been expressed by observers outside Japan, and there has been a fair amount of hyperbole in the interpretations of what the law implies. I hope that American critics have noted that the pressure to create the secrecy law came from the US government, in particular over the need to clamp down on leaks of information about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) (See this article by Philip Brasor in The Japan Times, Dec. 14, 2013). It seems like Japan was the last country in the TPP deal to get its bureaucrats and journalists to fall into line. Another motive must be the security leaks by Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. The Japanese government has understood the need to formulate laws that would allow them to deal with their own such leakers, if they appear in the future. In this sense, Japan is only playing catch-up with the West, so there is something a little odd about American observers freaking out about Japan regressing to the dark days of its 1930s fascism. It is actually the US and its “five eyes” partners (the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), among others, that have already been there for a while.

Another possible motive for the government is the looming dangers that lie ahead: conflict with China, worsening conditions at Fukushima, another nuclear accident, a natural disaster, or declaration of default on the national debt – which may be impossible to postpone much longer. All of these have the potential to destabilize society and cause the government to draft laws to deal with threats to social order.

  Another feared consequence of the new law is that it will make all matters related to nuclear energy national security secrets. But the fact is that this has always been the case with nuclear energy. In fact, one of the best arguments against nuclear energy is the potential of a nuclear power plant to be turned into a weapon of mass destruction by a terrorist attack. The need for security has been understood since the earliest days of the industry. Thus the routine operations of nuclear power plants are already subject to strict security. Too much is kept secret, yet a tremendous amount of information gets out because the public and the international community demand to be informed. There is no reason for this situation to change, if the public keeps up the pressure and refuses to be intimidated by the new laws.

At this point, it is too early to declare that freedom of speech has been crushed and all is lost. The new secrecy laws have to survive politically in the next election, and stand up to constitutional challenges. It remains to be seen what the government will dare to declare secret and whether it has the nerve to prosecute and punish offenders. And when it comes to these potential offenders, remember who we are talking about here: Japanese journalists and bureaucrats. Passing a law to tell these people not to divulge state secrets is like passing a law telling you to breathe. I’ll believe in their aggressive pursuit of the truth when they try to get answers about why Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 blew up. They are not exactly famous for being aggressive investigative reporters and heroic whistleblowers. Without the threat of jail sentences, there have been plenty of deterrents in the existing system to stop them from causing trouble for the government.

To make my point about the pre-existing attitude to secrecy in the nuclear industry, I cite a recent report in the Asahi Shinbun that stated, “There is growing concern that the government may be tempted to keep sensitive information on the safety of nuclear power plants under wraps once the state secrets protection law goes into force.” The article goes on to back up this fear in a way that disproves this point. It illustrates how US and Japanese nuclear authorities concealed information long before the secrecy law was drafted, and long before Fukushima.

Nonetheless, the Asahi article does make the essential point that the instinct toward secrecy was actually applied to something that was a well-known vulnerability of nuclear power plants. The secrecy actually made the operation of nuclear plants more dangerous. In this case, it was a knuckleheaded decision to hide from the public the shocking, shocking revelation, known by any fool with rudimentary knowledge of nuclear energy, that nuclear power plants could be blown up by a motivated terrorist group. If the secret B.5.b memo had been widely circulated to regulators and nuclear plant operators, they might have assured that they were prepared for the sort of station blackout that occurred at Fukushima.

But still, memo or no memo, the need for such defenses is commonplace knowledge. Operators of nuclear power plants shouldn’t have needed access to secret memos in order to know how to defend their investments against a station blackout. It is just a bit too cute to now blame the failure on bad decisions made by other organizations to declare some mundane information was “secret.”

The article concludes by noting the former US NRC chairman’s admission that the secrecy was not needed:

“Gregory Jaczko… told The Asahi Shimbun in an interview in September that B.5.b was initially clandestine to prevent would-be terrorists from learning about the vulnerability of nuclear power plants. He served as NRC chairman at the time of the Fukushima crisis. B.5.b was declassified after the Fukushima disaster because U.S. authorities decided that making it public would contribute to the improved safety of nuclear power plants.”                     

Duh!

   For those who are still feeling pessimistic and doomed by the passing of Japan’s secrecy laws, don’t despair. I finish with a reference to Leonard Cohen’s Anthem: Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.

Listen: Anthem

by Leonard Cohen

from the album The Future (1992)

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in. 

We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see. 

I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring ...

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.

Sources

Philip Brasor. “TPP offers early test of how far secrets law will cow Japan’s media.” The Japan Times. December 14, 2013.

Toshihiro Okuyama and Hiroo Sunaoshi. “State secrets law raises concern about safety of nuclear power plants.” The Asahi Shinbun. December 17, 2013.

Shinzo Abe likens Japan to The Sandman

Won't you stretch imagination for a moment and come with me

Let us hasten to a nation lying over the western sea…

Here’s a Japanese Sandman sneaking on with the dew

just an old secondhand man

He'll buy your old day from you…

There's the Japanese Sandman trading silver for gold

The Japanese Sandman

written by Raymond Egan and Richard Whiting

(1920)

 

The Fukushima Daiichi ruins, once said to be “under control” and in “cold shutdown,” have gathered world’s attention again because, in fact, it has become apparent that the situation there remains terrifying and unsolvable. Massive volumes of radioactive water have been stored on the site in a haphazard manner and irradiated groundwater leaks into the sea. No one knows what the effects will be, or whether the situation will worsen. The spent fuel pools pose a risk that some experts classify as potentially a threat to civilization, and certainly a grave risk to Japan.

During this time, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has managed to convince the IOC that Tokyo will be ready to host the Olympics in 2020, and he went to New York this week to sell his new Japan to American investors on Wall Street. Some call him a liar, others wonder if he keeps himself intentionally ignorant or is just incapable of comprehending the danger posed by Fukushima and the demographic collapse of the economy.

His speech in New York (full text here) was a bizarre hodgepodge of references to American culture, all loosely tied to his thesis that “Japan is back” in the high life again, the place it left thirty years ago when Sony ruled with the Walkman cassette recorder.

In the speech he began with the strange request, “Buy my Abenomics.” Then he seemed to be wishing to flatter his hosts, but he just reminded the world of Wall Street’s reputation for criminality by making reference to Gordon Gecko, the criminal, sociopathic stockbroker in the fictional films Wall Street and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. He also talked a lot about sushi, wasabi, bullet trains, LED lights, wind turbines and batteries. There was no mention of the enormous amount of economic growth that would be necessary to raise the revenue that could shrink the deficit and the national debt. But he did have this to say, straight faced, about Japanese nuclear technology:

Japan will also continue to make contributions to the world in the area of safety technology for nuclear reactors. There will be no abandoning them. I believe that it is incumbent upon us to overcome the accident in Fukushima and contribute to the world by having the highest level of safety in the world.

He also talked about his plan to finally give women a useful role in the labor force. Listeners might wonder why the sudden urge to do the right thing has appeared after sexual inequality has been a problem in Japan for so long. It seems the government has suddenly decided that if women don’t want to produce the tax payers of the future, they will have to be the tax payers of the future. The decision is purely economic rather than moral, just as it is in the decline of the nuclear industry in America. Recent plant closures have come because of financial pressures, not because of the moral arguments from the anti-nuclear movement.

Finally, Mr. Abe talked about baseball, the Yankees and Mariano Rivera’s recent last game with the team. From there, the topic jumped bizarrely to Metallica’s Enter Sandman, the song which was always used at Yankee stadium to herald Rivera’s entry onto the field. In this way, the song was appropriated by Rivera and the meaning of its words were somewhat forgotten. Mr. Abe appropriated the song for himself by saying,

Japan is once again in the midst of great elation as we prepare for the Games seven years from now. It is almost as if Metallica's ‘Enter Sandman’ is resounding throughout Yankee Stadium: you know how this is going to end.

This is precisely the problem with Mr. Abe’s attitude: actually, no, you don’t know how this is going to end. Will those hundreds of spent fuel rods in unit 4 be safely removed over the next two years, or will the whole thing come crashing down and create a bigger mess than ever? If Mr. Abe could show a little more nuance in his statements, and a little more awareness of the dangers ahead, we might have more confidence in him. We would all worry less if he would worry a little more and tone it down with the “guts pose” and other empty words and gestures about a yet unproven triumph. Sorry, but Japan is not back yet. Do the victory lap seven years from now, if things go well--but keep in mind that even a century from now, Fukushima Dai-ichi will be a radioactive sacrifice zone. There will never be a tidy restoration allowing anyone to say "job done." 

Since Mr. Abe’s speech writers did such a wonderful job in free-associating with so many diverse elements of American culture, I thought I would add a little more to the flow of this consciousness. I can play this game too. We can look more closely at the cultural history of the Sandman and ask what it means about the present Japanese government policy.

The Sandman was a character from European folklore, a benevolent spirit who sprinkled sand on the eyelids of children to give them a peaceful sleep. But in some stories he was a malevolent character, as he is in the song by Metallica. The child in the song can pray to God for protection, but he goes to sleep with a feeling of dread, as conveyed by lines such as these:

Sleep with one eye open
Gripping your pillow tight…
Something's wrong, shut the light
Heavy thoughts tonight
And they aren't of snow white…
Dreams of war, dreams of liars
Dreams of dragon's fire
And of things that will bite...
Sleep with one eye open
Gripping your pillow tight…
And never mind that noise you heard
It's just the beast under your bed,
In your closet, in your head

Indeed, when this pounding heavy metal song is used to signal Rivera’s arrival on the field, it seems to be an intentionally ominous signal of a force that has come to knock out opponents and deliver their worst nightmares. It may not be the allusion to peaceful trade and prosperity that Mr. Abe wanted to create. Instead, the message is that Japan is the monster under the bed, and in fact, that is how I feel many nights with the ruins of Fukushima Daiichi just a two-hour drive from my home.

Extending the Sandman reference farther back in American culture, we could recall the roaring 20s with mention of stories from that era like The Great Gatsby, or the contemporary period drama, Boardwalk Empire, which incidentally revived the period tune The Japanese Sandman. The song is an example of the sort of meaningless exotification of The Orient that was common then. There is no apparent reason why the Sandman had to be Japanese in this song, other than to just lend it a mood of escapism. But if Mr. Abe is suggesting that Gordon Gecko, Mariano Rivera and Metallica are all somehow relevant to Japanese economic policy in 2013, then I’ll use this and leave readers with the lyrics to this wistful song from a century past.

The Japanese Sandman

written by Raymond Egan and Richard Whiting

sung by Nora Bayes (1920), 

sung Lauren Sharp (2011) on Boardwalk Empire

Won't you stretch imagination for a moment and come with me
Let us hasten to a nation lying over the western sea
Hide behind the cherry blossoms here's a sight that will please your eyes
There's a lady with a baby of Japan singing lullabies 

Hear her as she sighs

Here’s a Japanese Sandman sneaking on with the dew

just an old secondhand man
He'll buy your old day from you
He will take every sorrow of the day that is through
And he'll bring you tomorrow just to start life anew
Then you'll be a bit older in the dawn when you wake
And you'll be a bit bolder in the new day you make
There's the Japanese Sandman trading silver for gold
Just an old secondhand man trading new days for old.

Then you'll be a bit older in the dawn when you wake
And you'll be a bit bolder in the new day you make
There's the Japanese Sandman trading silver for gold
Just an old secondhand man trading new days for old.

Enter Sandman

Metallica (1991)

Say your prayers little one
Don't forget, my son
To include everyone

Tuck you in, warm within
Keep you free from sin
Till the Sandman he comes

Sleep with one eye open
Gripping your pillow tight

Exit light
Enter night
Take my hand
Off to never never land

Something's wrong, shut the light
Heavy thoughts tonight
And they aren't of snow white

Dreams of war, dreams of liars
Dreams of dragon's fire
And of things that will bite

Sleep with one eye open
Gripping your pillow tight

Exit light
Enter night
Take my hand
Off to never never land

Now I lay me down to sleep
Pray the lord my soul to keep
If I die before I wake
Pray the lord my soul to take

Hush little baby, don't say a word
And never mind that noise you heard
It's just the beast under your bed,
In your closet, in your head

Exit light
Enter night
Grain of sand

Exit light
Enter night
Take my hand
We're off to never never land

For more on this topic

Pesek, William. “Abe's Turn on Wall Street Is Lost in Translation.” Bloomberg, September 27, 2013:

Nine months into Abe's tenure, nothing has been done to better utilize the female workforce, reduce trade barriers, cultivate entrepreneurship, prepare for an aging workforce, internationalize corporate tax rates, find an alternative to nuclear reactors, wrestle government power away from a vast, unproductive and sometime corrupt bureaucracy and improve relations with Asian neighbors. It's great Abe is putting these issues on the table for discussion, but it's far too early to be telling Wall Street that Japan is back and better than ever. That day is years off, at best.

Abe's clumsy sales job is emblematic of Japanese governments, past and present. Japan has long had trouble capitalizing on its soft power around the globe. Abe certainly tried in New York, with references to baseball star Ichiro Suzuki, sushi, bullet trains and advances in maglev rail technology that Japan is itching to export to America's Northeast corridor. Yet nothing would sell Japan Inc. globally like success. Revive the economy, reinvigorate the biggest corporate names, unleash a wave of innovation among young Japanese, and the international clout Japan craves will follow.

Bring on the Games

While Tokyo celebrates getting the 2020 Olympics, a video blogger in Fukushima City reminds us of the enduring legacy of the 'closing ceremony' of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

So Japan has been awarded the 2020 Olympics, and Shinzo Abe says he is more delighted than when he became prime minister. Nice for him. He spoke almost as if it were all about him. I could be annoyed by this turn of events, but I have to admit that it will make for good drama over the next few years in a mixed genre combining comedy, horror and organized crime, better than any of those surrealistic dream sequences Tony Soprano ever went through.

The essence of all good narrative fiction is that the audience knows what the protagonist does not, and this gap in knowledge is what creates the dramatic tension as they watch him walking blindly toward his tragic ending or comeuppance. We watch him move through the plot thinking, “no, don’t open that door” but we know he will. He must. In the next episode it’s a door he should open, but doesn’t, and he passes up his last chance at salvation. In this sense, Shinzo Abe is the perfect hapless antihero. He’s haunted by the ghost of his grandfather (a post-war prime minister), he’s got a big heart and all that sad ambition to restore his nation’s lost glory, but when there is a mistake to be made, he will make it.

If the Fukushima Daiichi disaster were a cable TV drama, the writers would sit around a table hashing out ideas about how to stretch and build up the suspense for another season. It would be too boring if the characters just plodded ahead with logical, cautious solutions like turning away from nuclear power. At some point, some young genius writer would say, “OK, get this. The country is broke. They borrow half the national budget every year. Government debt is 230% of GDP – totally un-repayable without a national default. A nuclear disaster in the hinterland is unresolved and threatens to become a global catastrophe. So what do they do? They double down on bread and circuses! Get this: they decide they want to host the Olympics – no one thinks they’ll get it, but the IOC actually lets them have it! With this, we’ve got enough for seven more seasons before we have to wind it down in a grand finale.” The idea might be a hard sell at first. The show runner wouldn’t be convinced easily that the audience could accept the plausibility of it. But they go with it, and it’s a hit!

Alas, too bad it’s not fiction. Nonetheless, it’s going to be interesting to watch this story unfold between now and 2020. Shinzo Abe has set the stage well. All his ducks are in a row. His country awaits either his promised Disneyesque happy ending or a run-up to a Shakespearean downfall punctuated with much awesome hubris and comic relief.

While the country was rejoicing the IOC announcement on September 8, youtube user Birdhairjp had been kind enough to remind us of what life is like on the ground in the still very-inhabited Fukushima City. This drama doesn’t have high ratings. On the ground, literally, there are 20 microsieverts per hour hitting the Geiger counter – 400 times above those safe levels in Tokyo that Shinzo Abe described to the IOC last week. Birdhairjp has shared a video demonstrating the radiation hazard outside the Abukuma Incinerator in Fukushima City. He is to be commended for producing this video and sharing it with the world, and also for demonstrating to other Japanese citizens that they need not be shy about getting their message to the world in other languages. As he proves in this case, simple English can be enough to get the point across.

I thought it would be helpful to put the data from his video in context of international norms for radiological protection.

For conversion:

1 Sievert = 1,000 millisieverts, 1 millisievert = 1,000 microsieverts

There are  8,760 hours in a year, so in the tables below the risk of the radiation levels at the incinerator are shown as the accumulated annual doses to someone who is exposed to these levels of microSv/hr for a whole year. Note that at ground level the feet get a much higher dose than the chest:

Table 1. Outside the Abukuma incinerator, Fukushima City

(55km from Fukushima Dai-ichi Power Plant)

	microSv/hour	mSv/year
at chest level	varies from 0.82 ~1.27	7.18 ~ 11.13
at feet	20.46	179.23

Table 2. For comparison, other times and places in Japan

natural background level in Japan before 2011	about 0.05 microSv/hour
present background level in Narita, Chiba (200 km from Fukushima Dai-ichi Power Plant)	0.12 microSv/hour = 1 mSv/year

Table 3 and Table 4, showing international norms in effect in 2007, are from data compiled from Nucleonica Wiki.

For occupational exposures, the 1990 recommendations of the ICRP limit the effective dose to 100 mSv in a 5 year period (giving an annual value of 20 mSv).

Table 3

	Euratom	ICRP	IAEA	Germany	Japan after its nuclear disaster
Dose limits for members of public, for whole body exposure	1 mSv/y	1 mSv/y	1 mSv/y	1 mSv/y	changed from 1 mSv/y to 20 mSv/y

Table 4

	Euratom	ICRP	IAEA	Germany
Dose limits for exposed nuclear industry workers, for whole body exposure	100 mSv/y	20 mSv/y	20 mSv/y	20 mSv/y
Limit on effective dose for exposed workers in a consecutive 5-year period:	100 mSv/y	20 mSv/y	20 mSv/y	20 mSv/y
Maximum effective dose in any single year:	50 mSv/y	50 mSv/y	50 mSv/y	50 mSv/y
Equivalent dose limit to the fetus, accumulated during the pregnancy	1 mSv	2 mSv		1 mSv
pregnant woman				2mSv/mo.
total work life (50 years)				400 mSv

Of course, no one stays all the time in one spot like the one outside the Abukuma incinerator. Some places have higher or lower radiation, and levels are lower indoors. It is impossible to know the accumulated annual dose people receive as they move about Fukushima City over a year. Officials don’t seem to be collecting this data, for obvious reasons. This video shows that the radiation level is high around this incinerator, and probably others, so this implies also that people are being further exposed to internal contamination as they breathe in the emissions from such facilities.  

Although there are variations in exposure levels, it is clear that residents of Fukushima City are being exposed to levels far above the international standards for the public. They are more likely to get exposures equivalent to those which are allowed for nuclear industry workers, and in some cases even more. This applies to adults, children, pregnant women and fetuses. Exposing a child to 20 mSv is the equivalent of two adult full body CT scans. Adults are advised not to have even one of these without a compelling medical reason for it.

Japanese officials simply decided that the economic and social impacts of evacuation outweigh the risks to health, which the WHO claims to be only a small percentage increase in lifetime risk of getting cancer. All other health effects are ignored, and they would be difficult to link definitively to radiation exposure. The global nuclear industry says now, in retrospect, the exposure limits for the public and for nuclear workers were overly conservative and established with normal operations in mind. They say that actually there are only very minimal risks at levels up to 100 mSv, so in an emergency we should all relax and just live with the higher levels. Would you abandon your home and livelihood just because of a sudden small increase in the risk of getting cancer twenty years or more in the future?

Only time will tell the result of this human experiment, but before the IOC vote last week Shinzo Abe said the radiation released by the Fukushima Daiichi disaster has harmed no one. This was a shamelessly false claim that cannot be supported by any evidence. It may be equally difficult to prove harm, but scientific knowledge is developed enough to let us know that the amount of radiation released had to have done some harm. Just ask the sailors on the US Ronald Reagan who were stationed offshore assisting with disaster relief. Because Abe made this statement to the IOC, he showed that he is either a shameless liar or shamelessly (willfully?) ignorant about the grave dangers that Fukushima Daiichi still poses to his country.

As much as this is a dramatic illustration of a population suddenly being put at risk for the convenience of the majority, it is not much different from other atrocious situations advanced civilizations impose on the unfortunate minorities who live in the shadow of the energy industry. Just two examples: native people in Northern Alberta have been poisoned by the exploitation of the tar sands, and the people in the coal mining regions of West Virginia have been horribly poisoned for over a century. The majority living in big cities ignores them, but they too live in their own toxic clouds. This is what we do. Bring on the games.