Lessons Not Learned

Tsunami waves inundate the Fukushima Daiichi NPP

The Mainichi Newspaper reported on September 6, 2012 that the Hokuriku Electric Power Company has refused a request by the Social Democratic Party leader for a visit to the Shika Nuclear Power Plant. A representative told the newspaper, “We determined that those who don't understand the necessity of nuclear plants are low on our priority list.”

International and domestic governments, regulatory agencies and power utilities have consistently boasted about the “lessons learned” from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant catastrophe, but this statement by the representative of Hokuriku Electric illustrates that perhaps nothing has been learned.

Who knew that a tsunami could topple protective barriers, and be large enough to flood a nuclear power plant and disable its backup power systems? Who knew that the preceding earthquake could knock out the main power supply and fatally damage the reactors even before the tsunami hit? Apparently, no one knew, if you listen to the excuses of the electric utilities in Japan. Their standard response, at least for the first few weeks after the meltdowns, was that the natural disaster was beyond all expectation and outside of all risks determined by scientific and historical knowledge.

However, these excuses soon became laughable, as it was revealed that people within Japan’s nuclear village had simply refused to listen to critics and educate themselves about facts in other fields of inquiry. It turned out that many people knew about the high probability of the earthquake-tsunami-meltdown syndrome. They warned their fellow citizens for decades and no one listened. The inescapable conclusion, the lesson to be learned, is that 160,000 evacuees would still be in their homes, TEPCO would still be a financially viable company, and the global nuclear industry would have a much better reputation if the nuclear village had listened to its most despised critics – the kinds of people who “don’t understand the necessity of nuclear power plants.” 

The statement by the Hokuriku Electric representative shows precisely the rigid, uncreative mentality that led to disaster. A wiser person would refrain from stating that there is a “necessity of nuclear power” because what is a necessity is a value judgment to be determined by others. Judgments about necessity depend on who is getting the benefits and who is paying the costs. People who operate nuclear power plants have many responsibilities, but the promotion of specific energy policy for the nation is not one of them.

Hokuriku Electric, like TEPCO, has a disgraceful safety record that calls for a little more humility when requests for visits come from critics. There was a criticality incident at the Shika plant in 1999, but it was covered up until 2007. Reactor 1 was shut down for two years, and the subsequent investigation by the Japan Nuclear Safety Commission concluded that the cause was cost-cutting pressures on staff. Since the Fukushima disaster, all reactors have been shut down while larger seawalls are built and seismic safety is reassessed. According to existing rules about building nuclear reactors on active fault lines, the plant may have to be shut down permanently because new evidence shows that a fault line previously thought to be inactive is now more likely to be active.

TEPCO shows that it too has learned nothing from its mistakes. No matter how many times critics point out the blatant failure to take account of the historical record of tsunami height in the Pacific Rim, TEPCO still stood by its past assessments as recently as April 2012 in a report titled The scale of the tsunami far exceeded all previously held expectations and knowledge. The report concedes that the giant Jogan tsunami of 869 was higher than the design basis of Fukushima NPP, but it splits hairs by noting that studies of this tsunami’s deposits showed a large wave hit the Sendai Plain and the Ishinomaki Plain, and a four-meter wave did hit in Northern Fukushima, but there were no tsunami deposits in the area of the Fukushima NPP. Thus, TEPCO wants to say that because the monster tsunami of 1,200 years ago did massive damage only a hundred kilometers north of Fukushima, it was reasonable to conclude that the next monster tsunami would strike with exactly the same pattern. The question how could we have known? invites the question how could a person of modest intelligence not have known?

If it was too difficult for planners in Japan’s nuclear village to think all the way back to the year 869, they could have checked Wikipedia to get a rough idea of tsunami waves that have occurred recently in the Pacific Rim:

1964, Alaska, 30 m

1993, Hokkaido, 30 m

1998, New Guinea, 15 m

2004, Indian Ocean, 33 m

2007, Solomon Islands, 12 m

2009, Samoa, 14 m

2011, Northeastern Japan, 10-30 m

Tsunami height at Fukushima Daiichi NPP: 14-15 m.

Quoting from TEPCO’s The scale of the tsunami far exceeded all previously held expectations and knowledge:

Later, in 2002, the JSCE published a guideline called the "Tsunami Assessment Method for Nuclear Power Plants in Japan" based on the ongoing technological progress. In this assessment, simulation technology was applied and the results were assumed to be more conservative. Based on this guideline, TEPCO reevaluated the tsunami height, which was assessed to be approx. 6 m. In response to the results, TEPCO has voluntarily implemented measures while reporting them to the government. This tsunami evaluation technology has been the standard method for domestic nuclear power plants up to the time of the accident and is also used for assessing tsunamis at nuclear power plants all around Japan to report to the government including the ones located along the Pacific coastline.

Although TEPCO believed that the nuclear power plant safeguards put in place were sufficient per this standard, we deeply regret the accident that occurred on March 11th.

When Dreams Come True

In 1990, the Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa released his film Dreams toward the end of his long career. The aim of the project was to put on film some of the vivid dreams he could recall from his lifetime. The dreams depicted are joined by a common theme of man's relationship to his environment, but otherwise this is a collection of short stories. The film was made in the years immediately after the Chernobyl catastrophe when both the Japanese anti-nuclear movement and nuclear industry were expanding rapidly. Perhaps because it had a strongly anti-nuclear message in the latter part of the film, Kurosawa found it impossible to raise the funding for production. It was Steven Spielberg who helped arrange backing through Warner Brothers.

The film received mixed reviews at the time, and it is likely that no one expected the unconventional, surrealistic concept to be a blockbuster. Regardless of whether you like the film, one of its segments takes on new significance in the post-Fukushima era. The segment titled Mount Fuji in Red depicts the eruption of Mount Fuji which subsequently causes multiple meltdowns at a nearby nuclear power plant (which would be the now idled “time bomb” called the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant in Shizuoka prefecture.) The dream follows two men, a mother and her two children as they flee toward the sea where panicking refugees are throwing themselves into the ocean like lemmings. The dream consists of dark humor and illogic (color coded clouds of radionuclides), which might tempt the literal minded to dismiss it as nonsense, but, in case it needs to be pointed out, the artist was trying to get at an underlying truth.

Some reviewers at the time were withering in their comments:

Time Out London: Not a little reactionary, the film's main achievement is to show a once impressive director quite out of touch both with the world and with developments in cinema. Much of it is like a moron's guide to the Green manifesto, transforming serious issues into banal trivia...

Heroic Cinema: Kurosawa’s message here is as subtle as a brick: humanity is spoiling the world, with pollution, consumerism and ignorance.

Entertainment Weekly: The picture devolves into a series of obscure, finger-wagging lectures on the subjects of nuclear war, pollution, etc. Even for those seeking faint echoes of Kurosawa's greatness, Dreams, I'm afraid, is a dud.

The Washington Post: "Pontifications" might have served as a more accurate header. Or better yet, "Sermons."... There's so much uninflected, cautionary preaching, with so much sage advice being passed down, that you begin to feel as if you're watching some sort of epic after-school special.

At the time, it might have seemed over-the-top and hysterical to preach about a geological event triggering a nuclear meltdown, but now, not so much. Now that it has happened, and now that the destabilizing effects of climate change are plain to see, the visions and warnings of "scientifically illiterate" artists of the past don't seem so easy to sneer at. Tsunamis, massive earthquakes, floods and drought are real threats to the world's 400 nuclear power plants. (For another work of art worthy of mention here, go to The Talking Heads' Nothing But Flowers, which appeared about the same time as Dreams.)

A four-minute segment of Mount Fuji in Red can be seen here on Vimeo.com but it may not last. Hopefully, Warner Brothers will consider it fair use for review such as this, and beneficial promotion for an old film in their catalog. If you can't view the video, the next best thing is to see the storyboard series of photos below.

Urine tests for cesium? Government says basically, "Piss off."

Eighteen months after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, it's difficult to guess whether Japan has continued to sleepwalk toward the next earthquake and meltdown or whether it has changed course drastically.

On the one hand, business interests have pushed hard for the restart of nuclear reactors. Policy wonks in the government agree it's too expensive to import fossil fuels. Apparently, the country can fix the balance of trade and keep the economy strong only by avoiding the loss on investment already made in nuclear plants. The cost of nuclear fuel itself is cheap, and abandoning nuclear now would mean destroying thousands of jobs and walking away from the sunk costs of a massive infrastructure of nuclear power plants – structures which are still going involve the massive cost of decommissioning, whether they are stopped now or milked for a few more years of “cheap” energy. This dilemma is also a raging debate in France right now, and it should be a debate in other places like Ontario, but Canadians seem to be totally asleep on the matter of where their energy is going to come from in the future.

On the other hand, do we want to be poor or dead? This is the obvious question asked by the millions of people in Japan who are now in favor of the complete elimination of nuclear power. Get rid of this threat to our existence then work out energy policy later.

Last year, it looked like a small protest movement might fizzle out, but this year it has erupted into a powerful force. When the Oi reactor was restarted, VIPs coming to flick the switch had to fly in by helicopter because the road access was blocked by protesters. There have been large weekly protests in front of the prime minister's residence, and at one point former prime minister Naoto Kan brokered a sit-down between the protesters and the current prime minister Yoshihiko Noda. The Japanese government's disaster response has been appalling, and I don't agree with the Noda government's approach to energy policy, but one has to be amazed that such a dialog could happen. The equivalent in the Western world would be Jimmy Carter brokering talks between the Occupy Movement and President Obama, ushering the representatives from Pennsylvania Avenue to a side door of the White House. This never happens.

A few months ago, the government announced that it would consider three energy policy options, and that it would hold public hearings and survey the public for their opinions. It turned out that the message of hundreds of thousands of protesters was a pretty accurate reflection of the millions of people who couldn't attend. The result of the public consultation showed that the public was 90% in favor of the complete elimination of nuclear power. Predictably, business interests and bureaucratic fiefdoms are fighting back, and now the Noda administration has said that they want to look for other options and find out what the “silent majority thinks.” The anti-nuclear movement can't claim victory yet.

Another sign that the once-dormant Japanese public still has a pulse is in the various groups that have emerged to share data and protect health. The government has exerted strict limits on which hospitals can give screening and treatment, and insurance doesn't cover anyone who wants to get “peace of mind” checks on the radiation their children have been exposed to. When a survey of children in Fukushima showed that 36% of them had thyroid nodules, the doctor in charge of the government health survey, Dr. Shinichi Yamashita, deemed this a rate of normal occurrence. Yet it was later discovered that he was an author of a 2001 study done elsewhere that found the usual rate of abnormalities to be less than 1%. This discrepancy may be due to the fact that screenings are now done by the latest ultrasound technology that can detect very small nodules (doctors have been known to refer to technology-driven over-diagnosis as the finding of "incidentalomas"). The baseline normal occurrence in children of thyroid nodules, and the cut off size of nodules to be concerned about, are yet to be defined.

The policy seems to be that if any problems emerge in the future, from minor thyroid problems to cancer, they will be dealt with as they normally are, without any questions raised about causes and liability. Dr. Yamashita has risen above his calling as a scientist and appointed himself the government's judge, defense lawyer and treasurer. He spent a lot of time in Chernobyl and concluded that the Soviets and subsequent governments had limited success in protecting themselves from welfare cheats and dubious lawsuits claiming harm from radiation. He has vowed to protect the national purse from such abuses:

We might find small cancer, but thyroid cancer can occur at a certain frequency under normal circumstances... After the Chernobyl accident, many lawsuits happened regarding health effects, with compensatory expenses cut into the national budget. When that happens, the ultimate victims are people of the country.

Given this limited help from their government, citizens have had to take action at their own expense. Some grocery store chains announced their own commitments to food monitoring, above what the government was promising to do, and submitting themselves to third party monitoring.

Sorakuma has data on milk produced in various places. A group called Keitousagi has helped parents test their children's urine for cesium (50,000 yen per child, about US$625), and now thousands of samples have been plotted on maps and in tables that show whether the children have any symptoms of poor health. The urine test is not as accurate as a test with a whole body counter, but it gives a good estimate, and an idea of the scale of contamination in the population. In the Tokyo and Chiba area, many of the results are ND (not detected) and the rest are below 1 Bq/kg. Some in the Fukushima area are between 2 and 3 Bq/kg (It's not clear why the data is not given as Bq/L for urine - is this an estimate of the load per kg of body tissue based on what comes out of the urine?) The Chernobyl children who were treated for heavy cesium loads by Bandazhevsky were in three groups: those with less than 5 Bq/kg (in their flesh, not in their urine), those with 38.4+/-2.4 Bq/kg and those with 122+/-18.5 Bq/kg. So based on the urine testing in Japan (with no thanks at all to the government), we can say that the scale of the problem in Chernobyl was probably much worse. In this case, it was not a good thing to be a locavore. Japanese people eat food sourced from various locations, and a big portion of the nation's food supply is imported. In contrast, the Chernobyl children who suffered heavy loads of cesium ate food that was almost entirely sourced from their local area. A big staple of the diet was mushrooms, a food source that accumulates cesium at high levels. 

For people in Japan, the results of the urine tests are both good and bad. It is good that they confirm that the levels are very low and that what we've been told about the food supply is accurate. If you choose your food carefully, and perhaps even if you don't, levels will be far below what caused problems in Chernobyl victims. Yet it is very bad that the Fukushima victims had to pay for this testing and organize it themselves. Even if the government feels vindicated by the low levels that came up, still people had the right to be tested and given peace of mind. Furthermore, the data would be valuable in determining how well the food monitoring was working to protect the population. And you have to wonder, when you see all the pins on the maps, whether the lab running the urine tests could have started offering a better price for the volume of tests they were doing. Finally, cesium 137 and cesium 134 are not naturally occurring substances. They shouldn't be in our bodies, so any detected level is enough to make one feel outraged.