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Japan ignores post Fukushima nuclear safety guidelines

Who Opens a Reactor Next to a Volcano? Japan’s New Nuclear Gamble, The Daily Beast, 11 Sept 15 

Massive earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves, and natural disasters galore—Japan would seem a rather precarious perch for nuclear power plants. Flooding from Tropical Storm Etau, which overwhelmed the water pumps at the infamous ruins of Fukushima, washing more radioactive waste into the ocean, ought to serve as yet another reminder of how fragile Japan’s atomic energy program really is.

But is anyone paying attention?

Last week the International Atomic Energy Agency sounded a barely heard alarm. In its final report on the March 2011 triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the UN watchdog blasted Tokyo Electric Power Co. for not taking sufficient disaster precautions. “A major factor that contributed to the accident was the widespread assumption in Japan that its nuclear power plants were so safe,” it noted.

The report should have been taken as a warning. It was mostly ignored.

Among its recommendations: “Pre-accident planning for post-accident recovery is necessary to improve decision-making under pressure in the immediate post-accident situation.”

On Sept. 1, Japan’s National Disaster Prevention Day, The Mainichi newspaper ran a story showing that absolutely nothing had been done in the three years since the government ordered new disaster-response guidelines for 17 nuclear research and storage facilities—including the Rokkasho facility in Aomori, which has enough plutonium to make hundreds of nuclear bombs.

Meanwhile, Japan’s first nuclear reactor to be restarted after the shutdown in 2011, at Sendai, went back online on Aug. 11. Things have not been going smoothly.

On Aug. 20, an alarm at Unit No. 1 went off at 2:19 p.m. after seawater apparently leaked into the reactor’s secondary cooling system. Plans to return to full capacity were delayed. The restart had been delayed again and again—and for good reasons………

human error isn’t Japan’s only matter of serious concern: In addition to Etau’s nearly three feet of rain and an onslaught of other typhoons this year, there’s Mount Sakurajima, a volcano 30 miles from the reactor in southern Kagoshima prefecture that’s showing signs of having a major eruption. On Aug. 15, the national meteorological agency advised people within two miles of the crater to leave the area.

The NRA states that the volcano doesn’t pose a threat to the nuclear power plant.

According to Kyushu Electric Power, there are 14 known active volcanoes within 100 miles of the Sendai reactor. The company says its new equipment is fully prepared to withstand 15 centimeters (or about 6 inches) of volcanic ash. In a country that’s home to 10 percent of the world’s known active volcanoes, not everyone is convinced by those assurances.

Why the rush to put a nuclear plant online in the first place?……..

Japan’s big business association [Keidanren] is also under the strong influence of the nuclear power lobby, and it has long demanded that the government restart the plants as soon as possible,” said Prof. Koichi Nakano, an expert on Japanese politics at Tokyo’s Sophia University. “The ‘nuclear village’ is very well represented among the power elite behind the Abe government, so it has long thought that if this government cannot resume nuclear power generation, no other government can.”

“The problem for them is that the public remains very strongly opposed to nuclear power,” Nakano added. “The Sendai facilities in Kagoshima prefecture are far away from any major city in Japan, so presumably they thought that it is a suitable plant to start with. But given the strength of popular opposition, it won’t be easy to restart so many other plants as if nothing happened.”

But in light of the Fukushima disaster and the frequent seismic activity endemic to its Ring of Fire setting, is Japan’s reliance on nuclear energy a wise choice?…….

The restarts illustrate that the lessons of Fukushima are being ignored and that authorities are still wishing risk away,” says Prof. Jeff Kingston, author ofContemporary Japan. “The evacuation plans are a macabre joke. If there is an accident, it won’t be possible to get people out of harm’s way in an orderly and timely fashion. In the event of a tsunami, landslides, and or volcano eruption, many of the roads could become impassable. There is no Plan B.

“The new, so-called strict guidelines do not meet global standards and focus on hardware, whereas the main lesson of Fukushima is that human error was a major factor contributing to the meltdowns,” Kingston added. “It is clear that these significant risks remain unaddressed in the rush to restart. Yet again corners are being cut and public safety is being risked to help the bottom line.”

In the aftermath of Fukushima, former Prime Minister Kan Naoto, who was in charge during 2011’s triple disaster, acknowledged nuclear’s lethal uncertainties—and then one more. “Nuclear power is a huge risk. Not to mention the possibility of human error. And the Fukushima accident also showed the world how vulnerable nuclear power plants could be to terrorism,” Naoto wrote in his memoirs in 2012. “Terrorists don’t have to bomb them, they just need to get inside and cut the power to potentially unleash great destruction.”

Unarmed guards protect Japan’s nuclear power plants, and background checks are not required for employees. Members of organized crime, the yakuza, staff construction teams and work within the plants. The Japanese government has acknowledged in reports that not only is there a threat from outsiders storming the nuclear plants, but also a high risk from workers already inside—in other words, terrorists might walk through the front doors as employees.

And there is another time bomb ticking here for the Abe administration: Japan’s anti-nuclear activists and the courts……….http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/11/who-opens-a-reactor-next-to-a-volcano-japan-s-new-nuclear-gamble.html

September 12, 2015 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, safety | Leave a comment