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PROLIFERATION AND PROCUREMENT
Date Posted: 13-Apr-2012
Jane's Intelligence Review
Deep impact - Fukushima and the future of nuclear
power
Key Points
Investigations into last year's crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant suggest the incident was preventable.
Since the accident, countries have reviewed the safety of their nuclear infrastructure and plans for expansion, with some choosing to cease their nuclear programmes altogether.
Nevertheless, increasing energy demand, the imperatives of reducing carbon emissions and a widespread desire for enhanced energy security will probably ensure the long-term
survival of the nuclear industry.
A year has passed since the onset of the nuclear crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Mark Hibbs examines the impact of the disaster on Japan and the international
nuclear industry and what lessons have been learned in the aftermath.
In the aftermath of fact-finding missions carried out by Japanese authorities, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and other nuclear safety bodies, it appears likely that the March
2011 nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant could have been avoided.
Although the Japanese government and nuclear industry have not formally acknowledged this, Japan's reactor owners and oversight bodies have responded to the accident by preparing to
implement safety enhancements at the country's nuclear power plants, which, had they been in place at Fukushima at the time of the disaster, would have prevented the accident.
Internationally, government agencies regulating more than 400 nuclear reactors worldwide have sought to uncover any vulnerabilities to externally caused events that might result in a similar
catastrophe.
Before the onset of the Fukushima nuclear crisis, which was triggered by a huge earthquake and tsunami that struck the plant on 11 March 2011, more than 30 countries were considering
establishing their own nuclear power programmes, and global nuclear energy production was projected to triple over the next 50 years. Dubbed a 'nuclear renaissance' by energy analysts and
the international media, countries looking to meet increasing energy demands were enticed by the relatively low operating costs and reduced carbon emissions offered by nuclear power particularly at a time when the industry had managed to recover its reputation following serious accidents at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979 and at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union
in 1986.
However, the Fukushima crisis has clearly set back the tide of interest in nuclear 'new builds' and has curbed power production in those states with existing nuclear programmes - including
Japan. The revelation that, like the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl incidents before it, the Fukushima crisis largely resulted from errors of judgment will be a key factor in decisions by
governments, regulators and the general public regarding the use of nuclear power in the months and years ahead.
Crisis unfolds
On 11 March 2011, a powerful earthquake registering 9.0 on the Richter scale struck Japan's eastern coast, cutting off external power supply to six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
power station. The loss of power automatically shut down the three reactor units operating at the time. As a result, 12 diesel-fuelled electricity generators automatically started up, providing
emergency power to operate the equipment needed to remove residual heat from the cores of the reactors. However, an hour later the site was devastated by a tsunami that wiped out the
pumps supplying seawater to cool the emergency generators, flooding the plant and rendering useless nearly all the emergency power equipment on the site, plunging the facility into a
blackout.
Without power, and without the means to quickly set up alternative power supplies, within three days the cores of three reactors at Fukushima had melted, and radiation began leaking from the
plant and into the atmosphere. This was abetted by hydrogen explosions inside the reactor buildings caused by the interaction of hot molten core material with sea water, which site personnel
had transported to the beleaguered reactors in a frantic attempt to cool them.
Blow-by-blow news reports from March through mid-2011 portrayed a desperate struggle by Japanese authorities to prevent the situation from escalating out of control. A governmentappointed commission of experts, under the leadership of engineering expert Yotaro Hatamura of the University of Tokyo, documented in an interim report in December 2011 that, during the
initial weeks following the calamity, harried officials were incapable of making decisions, in part because a local emergency response centre was crippled by the tsunami. The report also noted
that no clear lines of authority to manage the accident had been established between Japan's regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), and the plant owner, Toyko Electric
Power Co (Tepco).
It is apparent that because, before the crisis, neither the Japanese government nor Tepco took seriously the possibility that a tsunami could cause a severe nuclear incident, Fukushima plant
personnel had never been trained to deal with such an event and were forced to improvise their response as soon as power was lost at the facility. Fortunately Tepco, NISA and personnel at
the stricken Fukushima facility succeeded from the outset in preventing the accident causing an acute radiation health hazard to the Japanese public - a potentially mitigating factor should
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political pressure mount for the termination of Japan's nuclear power programme. Nevertheless, the Fukushima accident resulted in serious atmospheric radiation releases, estimated by NISA
and Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission between April and August 2011 to be between one-tenth and one-fifteenth of the amount of radiation released by the Chernobyl explosion.
In the case of Chernobyl, Soviet authorities had been overwhelmed by the task of trying to stem the large emissions which followed the explosion of the reactor building, while in the Japanese
crisis, personnel at the Fukushima plant managed to contain radioactive material in the cores of the three damaged reactors much more quickly and effectively. They also limited human
exposures by evacuating an increasingly wide area surrounding the plant site, with many local residents choosing to evacuate before orders were issued.
Far more people were evacuated in Japan - perhaps as many as 300,000 - than in the case of Chernobyl. In 2000, the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR)
concluded that the accident at Chernobyl had resulted in the death of 30 workers, the evacuation of around 220,000 others, and may have led to more than 1,800 cases of thyroid cancer in
children who were exposed at the time of the accident. In contrast, the accident at Fukushima resulted in the death of fewer than five plant workers, and no deaths or serious injuries among the
local population due to radiation exposure, according to Tepco, NISA, and Japan's Atomic Energy Commission in late 2011.
The distribution of iodine tablets in Japan may have also reduced the health risks posed to those members of the population who were exposed to radiation. One unofficial estimate by
Princeton University professor Frank N von Hippel, writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, projected that the total number of cancer deaths in Japan due to radiation exposure from the
incident might eventually be "on the order of 1,000", amounting to an increase of about 0.1% in predicted cancer death rates. According to Japanese nuclear power executives and government
agency officials interviewed by IHS Jane's in early 2012, the complete cleanup and restoration of the Fukushima Daiichi reactor site, including the eventual removal of radioactive fuel, may cost
well over USD100 billion.
Nuclear newcomers
There is little doubt that the damage to human health and the environment from the Fukushima nuclear accident would have been considerably worse had the incident occurred in a country
with a less skilled workforce and fewer financial and infrastructural resources than Japan - one of the world's most experienced states in managing complex engineering systems and
technologies. That message will not be lost on the approximately 20 less-advanced countries which, during the decade preceding the accident, had expressed an interest in embarking on new
nuclear power-generating programmes.
As a result of the Fukushima crisis, several of these countries - including Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Philippines, Senegal, Thailand and Venezuela - have announced that they are reconsidering
or withdrawing their nuclear plans. Yet in most of these cases, the accident at Fukushima can be seen as the 'final blow' in the face of other challenges to their nuclear plans. Venezuela, which
regards Iran as a nuclear-development model, would have needed assistance from Russia and other states that are unwilling to provide it. Kuwait's nuclear ambitions were under fire from
domestic parliamentarians even before the Fukushima accident; public support for nuclear power in Thailand in the wake of a fatal radiation source accident in Samut Prakan Province in 2000
had been fragile at best; and plans to embark on a nuclear power programme in the Philippines had been overshadowed by a previous nuclear-plant project that was abandoned for political
reasons at the time of the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Furthermore, nuclear power considerations in post-Muammar Ghadaffi Libya have been surpassed by the challenge of post-conflict
reconstruction.
Since the Fukushima crisis, a few other developing countries - namely Bangladesh, Namibia and Saudi Arabia - have expressed a desire to continue with their nuclear development plans, and
it appears that most of the countries that began seriously considering nuclear power programmes 10 years ago or more have not changed their plans.
Japan's nuclear future
Following the Fukushima crisis, the most significant and immediate impacts on the future of nuclear power were felt in Japan itself. At the time of the accident, Japan's 54 light-water reactor
units represented the world's third-largest installed nuclear electricity-generating capacity at around 50 gigawatts (behind the US and France), routinely producing around one-third of the
country's power.
During the past three decades, the Japanese population had largely trusted the government's claim that it would prevent a serious accident at any of Japan's power reactors. That trust was put
to the test with the onset of the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami: the longer it took the Japanese authorities to demonstrate that the damaged reactors would pose no long-term radiation
threat, the greater would be the loss in public support for the country's nuclear power programme.
It ultimately took nine months before the Japanese government could tell the public that cooling water added to the reactor cores at Fukushima was no longer boiling, and that the level of
radiation emitted by the facility no longer exceeded statutory limits. During this period, the requirements for periodic inspections forced nearly all of Japan's nuclear reactors to shut down oneby-one for routine maintenance. As of early April 2012, only one reactor in Japan was still operating, and it is expected to be shut down for scheduled maintenance by May 2012. Because
Japan's local governments will decide whether reactors are safe enough to restart after these inspection outages, the population living near the country's 54 reactor sites will decide whether
Japan continues to generate nuclear power.
Two years before the Fukushima crisis, Japan's government had announced plans for a massive expansion in nuclear power generation to reduce both Japan's carbon emission footprint and
its energy fuel imports, implying that by 2030 around half of Japan's electricity would be generated by nuclear reactors. However, immediately after the 2011 accident at Fukushima, Japan's
government announced that this plan would be suspended (a new plan is expected to be released in mid-2012). Notably, two successive Japanese prime ministers, Naoto Kan and incumbent
Yoshihiko Noda, have asserted that in future, Japan would reduce its reliance on nuclear energy.
As a result of the Fukushima crisis, any plans by the Japanese government to push forward with the development of nuclear energy will depend, more than ever before, on the opinion of a
Japanese public that is suspicious of the country's nuclear programme.
Kan, who was Japanese prime minister at the onset of the Fukushima disaster, increasingly opposed renewed nuclear power development for the country as the crisis developed. When he
resigned in August 2011, he left a political field deeply divided over how to recast Japan's future energy policy, and an electorate increasingly resentful of backstage influence of powerful
industrial firms and bureaucrats that, in the view of many voters, were ultimately responsible for the disaster.
Around 70% of the Japanese public supported nuclear power before the Fukushima accident, a figure that has reversed to 70% opposed, according to data polled by Japan's Kyodo News
Agency in July 2011. Critics of nuclear power in Japan claim that the country does not need nuclear reactors, as Japan has steadily reduced the nuclear contribution to its electricity supply to
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near zero over the past year without major power interruptions. However, government officials and business executives warn that the sudden and unexpected reversal of Japan's perennial
current account surpluses into an USD18 billion deficit in 2011 was partly caused by the import of replacement fossil fuels.
Altered plans
Japan is not alone among developed countries in facing political pressure to cut back or terminate nuclear power generation. In the year since the Fukushima crisis, Germany and Switzerland
have pledged to phase out their nuclear power programmes, Belgium has indicated it may follow suit and Italy has relinquished its ambition to develop new reactors.
In 2012, the post-Fukushima fate of France's nuclear programme will also be sealed. The country is the world's most intensively nuclear-powered country, with 58 reactors generating around
75% of the country's electricity. Representatives from France's opposition Socialist and Green parties, who are challenging French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his ruling Union for a Popular
Movement (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire: UMP) in this year's presidential and parliamentary elections, are campaigning to close 24 older French reactors. In the aftermath of the
Fukushima nuclear crisis, the Socialists firmly embraced views critical of nuclear energy, but it remains unclear whether the accident will have a profound and lasting impact on the views of
French voters.
Despite the renewed international debate about the safety of nuclear power, a few European countries - most prominently the UK - remain steadfast in their nuclear plans. The announcement in
March by two German firms, E.ON and RWE, to pull out of the contest to build nuclear power plants in the UK, according to both UK and German nuclear industry executives, was prompted by
the German firms' mounting liabilities in the aftermath of Germany's decision to phase out all of their reactors and not by doubts about the future of UK nuclear power generation.
The Netherlands also announced in February 2011 that it intended to build new reactors, but that plan could stumble if the country's shaky coalition government falls. Elsewhere in countries
already generating nuclear power, such as China, India, Russia and South Korea, the deployment of nuclear power continues to advance as a result of unshaken central government support.
Nevertheless, in all these states there are signs that the Fukushima crisis may contribute to a slowdown in capacity addition. China's rapid building programme may be trimmed, public opinion
in India is showing greater concern, and South Korea's main opposition Democratic Party (DP: Minju dang) now vows to oppose some nuclear projects.
In the country with more nuclear power reactors than any other in the world, the US, the Fukushima accident has set back an already unfavourable business case for new reactor construction,
highlighting to uncertain private investors the risks posed by unforeseen extreme events. Optimistic predictions beginning a decade ago that US utility companies would build a dozen or more
new reactor units have not materialised, largely because risk-averse investors are deterred by high up-front costs, project risk and expectations that natural gas will outcompete nuclear energy
in the US market. As a result, the Fukushima crisis has not been a significant driver of decisions on the construction of new reactors in the US, nor is it likely to lead to a phasing out of US
nuclear power generation.
Lessons learned
What is emerging from Japan is a picture of a national nuclear programme that failed to systematically heed good practices and standards applied elsewhere. This would have enabled the
authorities to anticipate the threat posed to Japan's nuclear infrastructure by tsunamis and make engineering improvements that would have mitigated their impact. Facility 'stress tests' carried
out in other nuclear programmes, particularly in Europe, since the Fukushima accident have underscored the value of consistent efforts undertaken to accurately predict infrequent external
hazards and protect emergency power supplies, seawater pumps, and other critical equipment.
Since the accident, Japanese and foreign investigators have confirmed that regulators and industry in Japan paid insufficient attention to historical evidence of severe tsunamis, some of which
were considerably greater in magnitude than the event which devastated the Fukushima plant. The government-appointed investigative commission headed by Hatamura blamed both Tepco
and NISA for having ignored and failed to accurately model the tsunami threat to Fukushima and other coastal nuclear sites. A study written by this author and James Acton, published in March
2012 by the non-governmental organisation Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, described what appears to be a systematic underestimation of tsunami threats by both NISA and
Tepco. For example, NISA did not pursue computer simulations, which in 2008 suggested that the tsunami risk should be reassessed.
The Fukushima crisis appears to have been the result of a failure to adequately evaluate and mitigate threats posed by externally caused events. Particularly after the 11 September 2001
terrorist attacks on the US, nuclear officials in countries outside Japan, and especially in Europe, took action to considerably improve the robustness of nuclear power plants against major
potential threats, including floods, blackouts, and the loss of ability to dissipate decay heat from a reactor core.
In the aftermath of Fukushima, it appears that a number of factors, including a flawed corporate culture, weak nuclear regulation and inadequate risk assessment practices, may have
contributed to this overconfidence. Japan's government and nuclear industry are beginning to rectify deficiencies in their nuclear power plants' defences against tsunamis and other extreme
events. Immediately after the accident, NISA ordered utility owners to install high-protective seawalls around coastal nuclear power plants, and owners have announced programmes to
waterproof plant compartments, provide for alternative decay-heat removal capability and move emergency power equipment to higher ground - actions that would have prevented the 2011
tsunami from causing a severe accident with significant off-site radiation releases. All Japanese nuclear power plants are also undergoing rigorous 'stress tests' on the model of exams carried
out during 2011 at Europe's nuclear power stations by national government regulators.
Conclusion
The Fukushima nuclear crisis could have been prevented, or at least minimised, if it was not for a lack of oversight and errors of judgment. It was not the result of unforeseen technological
difficulties or physical challenges which could not have been brought under control.
After Chernobyl, many international nuclear industry executives warned that if another severe accident were to take place - especially in a modern, advanced nuclear programme - the incident
would render the technology politically unacceptable. The phrase "a nuclear accident anywhere is a nuclear accident everywhere", was axiomatic in the industry for two decades, and has been
repeated by US President Barack Obama and former IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, among others. Yet despite the Fukushima disaster, this projection has failed to immediately
transpire. For many countries, nuclear power remains an option due to a growth in the demand for power, the imperatives of climate change reduction, and a widespread desire for greater
energy security.
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Nevertheless, the Fukushima accident will continue to cast a long shadow over the effectiveness of nuclear safety oversight. Investigations since the incident suggest the accident could have
been prevented had Japan during the last three decades followed the example of other national nuclear programmes and improved the design of its nuclear power plants to withstand severe
external events.
Japan is planning to make organisational changes in its nuclear energy oversight system during 2012, but the root causes of Japan's lack of effective regulation will be more difficult to fix than
the safety deficits in tsunami protection at the country's nuclear facilities currently being addressed by well-understood engineering measures.
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Author
Mark Hibbs is a senior associate at the Carnegie Nuclear Policy Program.
Copyright © IHS Global Limited, 2012