Nuclear industry safety: alleged cover-ups in Japan
No nation knows better than Japan the ferocious power of nuclear energy. But while the power released by nuclear fission is inherently dangerous, it is how humans use, abuse and disrespect this power that is the true menace to society and planet Earth.
And in the post-Atomic Age, it is primarily the lack of governmental regulation, military oversight and corporate social responsibility in regard to nuclear energy that is most concerning.
As Albert Einstein said, "The discovery of nuclear reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than the discovery of matches." But considering the large-scale nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, as well as smaller-scale meltdowns across the United States and Europe, we have been playing with much more than just fire.
FUKUSHIMA 1: FEARS OF MELTDOWN UNDERSCORE NUCLEAR POWER RISK
An explosion today destroyed the building containing a nuclear reactor at Japan's troubled Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant, following the malfunction of the reactor's cooling system which was damaged by yesterday's 8.9-magnitude earthquake. The blast stoked fears of a nuclear meltdown following the unprecedented announcement by the Japanese government of an atomic power emergency.
The plant is operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the world's fourth largest electric power company. Nuclear power supplies 30 percent of Japan's energy, according to United Nations University.
"The fact they're having trouble cooling the reactors is going to trigger an emergency," said Ron Chesser, director for the Center of Environmental Radiation Studies at Texas Tech University and the first American scientist allowed inside the exclusion zone in 1992 following the Chernobyl disaster.
"There are certain trigger points for declaring an emergency at nuclear reactors," Chesser said. "Reduction in cooling capacity would be one of those. Release of radiation would be another. Reactors are not like your car that you can turn off and walk away. They're going to continue generating a great amount of heat until the core is disassembled. Without cooling water, then you stand a real chance of a meltdown of core that could result in a large release of radiation, potentially."
As fears of a meltdown continue, the radiation leak was decreasing, and government spokesman Yukio Edano said that the troubled reactor was not impacted by the explosion. But the state of emergency underscores the massive risks of nuclear power.
TROUBLE AT TEPCO: SCANDALS, COVER-UPS, ADMISSIONS
"Japan is the best-prepared country in the world for the twin disasters of earthquake and tsunami -- practices that undoubtedly saved lives," said James Glanz and Norimitsu Onishi in The New York Times.
But Yoichi Shimatsu, an investigative journalist who covered the Great Hashin Earthquake near Kobe and the Sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway, which both occurred in 1995, disagrees. "Most people assume that the meticulous Japanese are among the world's most responsible citizens," Shimatsu writes in New American Media. "I beg to differ. Japan is better than elsewhere in organizing official cover-ups."
"Over the decades, the Japanese public has been reassured by the Tokyo Electric Power Company that its nuclear reactors are prepared for any eventuality," says Shimatsu. But he notes that "in 1996, amid a reactor accident in Ibaraki province, the government never admitted that radioactive fallout had drifted over the northeastern suburbs of Tokyo. Reporters obtained confirmation from monitoring stations, but the press was under a blanket order not to run any alarming news, facts be damned. For a nation that has lived under the atomic cloud of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, total denial becomes possible because the finger on the button is our own."
In 2002, Japan's Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency "found 29 alleged false records relating to cracks detected at Tokyo Electric Power Company's nuclear plants from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. The agency started its investigation into the records two years ago based on a tip from a whistle-blower," according to The Daily Yomiuri.
"The company falsified reports regarding voluntary inspections at 13 nuclear reactors at three power plants -- the No. 1 and No. 2 Fukushima nuclear power plants in Fukushima Prefecture and the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture. The false records include some that fail to mention cracks discovered in the core structures of the nuclear reactors."
In her 2009 book In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age, Uranium Intelligence Weekly editor Stephanie Cooke noted that TEPCO "eventually admitted to two hundred occasions over more than two decades between 1977 and 2002, involving the submission of false technical data to authorities."
NUCLEAR GIANTS, ETHICAL INFANTS
The Sendai earthquake and tsunami offer a painful reminder that it is difficult enough mitigating and responding to the chaotic power of nature without also having to deal with corporate negligence, irresponsibility and cover-ups, especially in the potentially devastating arena of nuclear energy.
In their 2007 report "New Nuclear Power Plants Are Not a Solution for America's Energy Needs," the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) called for more corporate social responsibility in the nuclear industry, saying that until the sector "demonstrates it can further reduce the continuing security and environmental risks of nuclear power -- including the misuse of nuclear materials for weapons and radioactive contamination from nuclear waste -- expanding nuclear power is not a sound strategy for diversifying America's energy portfolio and reducing global warming pollution."
"The simple truth is that no matter how advanced the technology and how prepared a country might be to deal with a disaster it doesn't change the fact that nuclear power is inherently dangerous and always will be," according to Greenpeace, which today issued a public petition urging President Obama and Congress to "cut the $38 billion in loan guarantees to the nuclear industry from the proposed budget for next year" and instead "invest in clean, renewable energy, not risky and dangerous nuclear power."
According to their 2007 Progress Report: Environment, Safety, Community, Exelon, the largest nuclear energy provider in the United States, "sustained 24 OSHA recordable incidents during 2007 -- up from 18 in 2006." OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, is the main federal enforcement agency for safety and health legislation. Exelon said, "We will renew our vigilance in driving toward a workplace with zero accidents, injuries and fatalities -- which remains the only acceptable goal."
But, writes Susie Madrak in Crooks and Liars, "believing that for-profit nuclear power plants operated by companies whose first priority is the bottom line will build according to the highest specifications, and safely operate the plants exactly as they're supposed to, well, that seems a little naïve."
As Japan works to secure its crippled reactors and prevent radioactive contamination, nuclear companies, legislators and governmental regulators around the world would do well to remember the words of Omar Bradley, the American general who commanded the U.S. ground forces in the Normandy invasion of World War II: "The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants."
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