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[Enter REFERENCE] E
Science and Technology
156 STCEES 12 E rev. 1 bis
Original: English
NATO Parliamentary Assembly
SUB-COMMITTEE
ON
energy and environmental security
Nuclear energy after fukushima
Report
Philippe Vitel(France)
Rapporteur
International Secretariat November2012
Assembly documents are available on its website,
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156 STCEES 12 E rev. 1 bis
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I.INTRODUCTION
II.THE FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR ACCIDENT
A.JAPAN’S TRIPLE CATASTROPHE
B.FAILURES, CHALLENGES, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
III.NUCLEAR ENERGY OUTLOOK: AN UPDATE ON STATUS AND TRENDS
A.GLOBAL ENERGY STATUS AND TRENDS
B.GLOBAL NUCLEAR ENERGY TRENDS
C.THE POLITICS OF NUCLEAR ENERGY SINCE FUKUSHIMA
IV.NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY: AN UPDATE ON DEVELOPMENTS
V.CONCLUSION AND POINTS FOR DISCUSSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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156 STCEES 12 E rev. 1 bis
I.Introduction
1.In 2011, the disaster at the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station shocked the world like only the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island (1979) and in Chernobyl (1986) had before. The Fukushima accident has been catastrophic, but not on the same scale as the Chernobyl disaster. So far, no casualties caused by radiation exposure have been reported, andmany experts believe that the long-term health impacts will be comparatively minor. According to experts from the US National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, the risk of getting cancer for those exposed would increase by about 0.002%, and the risk of dying from cancer would rise by 0.001% (Landers & Johnson, 2012). Others, however,say that the effects of radiation on human health are still unknown in many important respects and could be more severe. Indeed, near Fukushima many people will receive low levels of radiation for very long periods of time. Also, radioactivity in concentrations above the Japanese regulatory limits have been detected in some food produced in affected areas. Consequently, there is a risk of exposure for Japanese citizens. Currently, for example, rice planting has been prohibited on 10,500 hectares around Fukushima (Asahi Shimbun, 2012).Moreover, according to the latest official food monitoring data, 1.3% of samples taken in Japan were found to be above the provisional regulation values for radioactive caesium (International Atomic Energy Agency, 2012, June 28). Radioactive pollution of the marine environment has also occurred in the direct vicinity of the nuclear power plant, but to date, no long-term impact is expected. The economic impact of the nuclear accident alone is difficult to calculate. Before the earthquake and tsunami, the Tohoku region, which was most affected, produced about 2.5% of the total Japanese economy. The impact of the earthquake in terms of damaged capital stock was US$204 billion, equivalent to 4.0% of Japan’s total stock. In sum, even though the Fukushima accident may not have been as catastrophic as first thought, it could still alter the world’s nuclear future just as much as Chernobyl did.
2.Nuclear power is a legitimate subject for the NATO PA, in part because of its evident links with energy and environmental security. It is therefore essential that the Science and Technology Committee (STC)examines the Fukushima nuclear accident and its consequences and once again takes a closer look at the status and trends of nuclear energy.Already in 2011, the STC followed these issues closely.At the 2011 Spring Session, the committee extraordinarily invited theJapanese Parliamentary Observer Delegation,to underline the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s commitment to stand by this indispensable partner. A speaker also updated the committee on the accident and its effects. Furthermore, these issues wereextensively discussed on committee visits.
3.The last report on nuclear energy by the STC was released in 2009, in the form of the Report of the Sub-Committee on Energy and Environmental Security (STCEES).At the time, many believed that a ‘nuclear renaissance’ was underway, spurred by the growth in global energy demand, the challenges of energy security, and the efforts to avert catastrophic climate change, combined with improved international and national safety regulations and nuclear energy’s increasing cost effectiveness.This report,prepared for the Annual Session in Prague, Czech Republic, revisits some of the issues discussed in the 2009 report. It has been amended on the back of discussions which took place at the Spring Session in Tallinn, Estonia in May 2012 and updated as a result of events since.
4.Fundamentally, what is the debate? Do we still trust nuclear energy as an essential source of energy, after Fukushima again showedthe risk of this technology, or do we believe that we should invest in other energy technologies, especially renewable energies?The debate is eminently political because it has large consequences for the organisation of our societies. For example, nuclear energy requires a centralized energy policy, managed by the state and its scientists and specialists, and controlledby independent organs. In contrast, renewable energies can be operated with decentralized management. Another question concerns our model of energy consumption.More humans on Earth, more activities, more technologies (like communication networks) require energy, but until noweconomic growth has always meant increases in production and in consumption of energy. Can we find a model that puts an end to this trend?
II.The Fukushima Nuclear Accident
A.Japan’s Triple Catastrophe
5.On 11 March 2011, an earthquake with a magnitude of 9.0 occurred about 70 kilometres off Japan’s northeast coast. It was the most powerful earthquake in the country’s recorded history, causing a massive tsunami. Between 15 and 30 minutes after the earthquake, waves that reached 30 metres in height in some locations crashed into Japan’s main island, overwhelming existing seawalls, devastating entire communities, and leading to the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi.
6.The Fukushima Daiichi plant was one of the oldest nuclear power stations in Japan, having started commercial electricity generation in 1971. With its six reactors capable of generating about 4.7 GW of electrical power, it was among the 25 largest nuclear power plants in the world. The complex was built on the coastline to provide easy access to large amounts of seawater used to cool the reactors.The plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), had designed the plant to withstand a tsunami with waves of up to 5.7 metres in height (revised from 3.1 metres in 2002). The waves hitting the shore in the wake of this particular earthquake were over 13 metres high, however, and in some locations they reached up to 17 metres above sea level when hitting the plant.
7.At the time of the earthquake, only three of the six reactors were operating. The others were undergoing routine maintenance. When the earthquake hit, all three operating units shut down as designed. After a shutdown, the temperature and pressure in a reactor needs to be lowered in a controlled fashion. Before the tsunami hit, this worked in two of the reactors, but, for reasons still unknown,the temperature and pressure dropped too rapidly in the third reactor.
8.When the tsunami reached the reactors, 11 out of 12 emergency diesel generators failed. Since the earthquake had already knocked out the external power to the nuclear plant, this soon led to complete power failures, so-called ‘station blackouts’, in all but one reactor (which was one of the reactors shut down for maintenance).The three reactors operating before the tsunami hit began to lose the capability to cool their nuclear cores, and the water in these reactors started to boil, exposing the fuel rods.Partial meltdowns of the nuclear fuel were the result.When this was detected, the main objective was to avoid further damage to the fuel rods, so that they would not penetrate their containment chambers.As a response, on 12 March 2011, plant operators started venting the reactors and pumping sea water into the units.
9.These measures to lower the temperature and pressure in the reactors resulted in the release of radioactive material into the air.The Japanese government estimated that the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere was about 15% of the amount released during the Chernobyl accident.In addition, at least 100,000 but perhaps up to 300,000 tons of contaminated water leaked into the sea.Most of this water was only lightly radioactive, however.In fact, most of it wasdumped into the sea on purpose in order to avoid other problems.
10.During the early days of the crisis, hydrogen, which was produced through a reaction between the exposed fuel rods and the water steam, also produced a series of explosions in three reactors. Despite these adverse conditions, operators continued to pump water into the reactors, and on 21 March 2011, they managed to reconnect external power to the plant. All of these actions prevented the complete meltdown of the nuclear fuel.
11.On 17 April, TEPCO published a first initial roadmap for managing the nuclear accident, which aimed atstabilizing cooling conditions in the reactors and fuel pools as well as at mitigating the release of radioactive materials. Following the roadmap, alternative cooling systems had been installed in four of the reactors by 10 August, leading to a stabilization of water temperature. By mid-November, the release of radioactive materials was under control, and one month later, Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda announced the end of the nuclear crisis.
12.Japan has now begun to tackle the longer-term challenges of the nuclear accident. The Japanese authorities believe that a final settlement will take at least four decades to complete. In the next few years, the latest action plan, the Roadmap towards Settlement of the Accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, foresees the following steps(Government-TEPCO Integrated Response Office, Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters, 2011):
-improvement of cooling system reliability;
-treatment of contaminated waters;
-decreasing of radioactive discharge;
-waste management and decontamination at the site; and
-removal of spent fuel rods from storage pools in the affected reactors.
13.Once these steps have been completed, a new roadmap will be developed in order to begin the removal of the melted fuel rods. This will be done under difficult radiological conditions and will necessitate extensive use of robots.
14.Even though the last roadmap has been positively received, the announcement that the situation has been stabilized was criticized by some experts who argue that the Fukushima complex is still vulnerable to large aftershocks (Tabuchi, 2011). Indeed, radioactive leaks and a steep rise in temperature in one reactor were reported in the beginning of February 2012. Although the situation was brought under control shortly after, Japan’s Environment and Nuclear Crisis Minister, Goshi Hosno, recognised the need “to consider matters in an even more careful way” (United Press International, 2012).
15.The consequences of the nuclear accident for the inhabitants in the affected zones have been massive. The high levels of radiation in the area surrounding Fukushima led the Japanese government to evacuate the population within 20 km of the station. At the height of the evacuation, over 170,000 people were displaced in addition to the 320,000 people who had already been displaced by the earthquake and tsunami. At the one-year anniversary of the accident,more than 62,000 inhabitants of the Fukushima area were still unable to return to their homes (Oda, 2012).
16.The Japanese government aims to have cleaned up the areas around Fukushima two years after the accident, in order to enable residents to return home, but some experts consider this to be unrealistic.For example, the government is planning to replace much of the topsoil from an area covering 930 square miles, an area roughly the size of Luxemburg, an effort which theIAEA (InternationalAtomicEnergy Agency) thinks impractical. At present, the lack of a storage site with enough space for the contaminated dirt has stalled the cleanup. According to the government, the cleanup could exceed US$ 257 billion (Saoshiro, 2011).
17.Of course, inside the evacuated zone radioactive levels were unacceptably high, but even outside this area, unsafe levels havebeen detectedin agricultural land, water, and even in the food chain.Still, according to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, prompt crisis management averted catastrophic consequences. Indeed, no radiation casualties were reported, and experts expect only a small health impact on the population. One expert believes that the Fukushima accident could lead to about 1,000 extra cancer deaths in the affected population (von Hippel, 2011).A new study by two researchers at Stanford University, estimates that there will be 130 cancer-related fatalities worldwide, with lower- and higher-bound estimates of 15 and 1,300 (Ten Hoeve and Jacobson, 2012).However, negative psychological effects on the population around Fukushima could be considerable unless properly dealt with, he argues. Ultimately, the long-term effects of the accident are still difficult to estimate.
B.Failures, Challenges, and Recommendations
18.Japan faced an unprecedented situation, as it was the subject of not merely one, but three catastrophic events at the same time. It would be unrealistic to expect a flawless crisis response. Nevertheless, major criticisms of the crisis response and, more importantly, of crisis prevention measures have been raised against the Japanese authorities and the plant’s operator.
19.During the crisis, a number of human errors were committed. TEPCO initially failed to recognise the extent of the crisis. According to its own interim report published on 26December2011,the company recognised that it had failed to identify a problem in the cooling system on the day of the tsunami, missing an important opportunity to delay the core meltdown in one reactor by an earlier injection of water. Furthermore, a delay in venting another reactor caused a rupture of the so-called ‘wet well’, which contains cooling water for the reactor core. This led to the release of a considerable amount of contaminated water.Also, the poor co-ordination amongst national and local authorities and the unwillingness of Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s government to assume responsibility has been criticised.Indeed, Mr Kan stepped down in August 2011, not least because of criticisms of his crisis management. Struggles between TEPCO and the government about who had the necessary authority for certain actions took place, which complicated the crisis response(Funabashi & Kitazawa, 2012).Indeed, a general lack of leadership, management skills, and communication failures has been highlighted.
20.Most criticisms have been levelled at the Japanese crisis prevention measures.It is clear that regulatory policies failed in some critical aspects. As already pointed out, the Japanese authorities and TEPCO underestimated the maximum height of a tsunami that could hit Fukushima Daiichi:TEPCO and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) failed to recognize the risks of a large tsunami that occurs approximately once every 1,000 years; TEPCO conducted inadequate computer modeling for tsunami risks; and NISA did not follow up to review these simulations(Acton & Hibbs, 2012).
21.Even beyond the failure to recognize the tsunami risks, a lack in additional safety measures meant that the effects of the tsunami on the power plant were more severe than they could have been otherwise. One analyst summarizes the six most severe regulatory failures in the following way(Lyman, 2011):
-“Station blackouts lasted far longer than regulators assumed.
-Strategies to prevent core damage or hydrogen explosions were far less successful than expected.
-Lack of accurate or functional instrumentation posed far greater challenges than projected.
-Restoration of stable core cooling was far more difficult and took far longer than assumed.
-Management of contaminated cooling water was a much more serious issue than expected.
-Significant levels of radiation exposure occurred much farther from the release site than projected.”
22.A study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peaceargues that one incident, inparticular,should have led to a reconsideration of Japanese safety measures(Acton & Hibbs, 2012): the 1999 flooding incident at a French nuclear plant at Blayais near Bordeaux, which overwhelmed its sea walls, cut off external power supplies, and led to other safety failures. European countries reacted by increasing nuclear safety measures. In France alone, 110millioneuros were invested. Had Japan, which knew about these safety overhauls, put in place similar defences, the Fukushima plant would have stood a better chance of averting the 2011 disaster or at least to reduce its scale.
23.Many underlying reasons for these regulatory failures exist, but a number of reasons have been highlighted by experts.For one, Japanese authorities, companies, and interest groups had been building up a myth of the absolute safety of nuclear power for decades, in part to overcome the anti-nuclear sentiment stemming from the nuclear attacks in the Second World War(Funabashi & Kitazawa, 2012). However, regulatory governance problems probably weighed even more heavily(Acton & Hibbs, 2012): the lack of independence on NISA’s part from government agencies that promote nuclear power as well as from the nuclear industry; the focus on earthquakes to the detriment of other risks; bureaucratic and professional rigidities; and the failure to utilise local knowledge. Indeed, the Carnegie study argues that, ultimately, “the Fukushima accident does not reveal a previously unknown fatal flaw associated with nuclear power. Rather, it underscores the importance of periodically re-evaluating plant safety in light of dynamic external threats and of evolving best practices, as well as the need for an effective regulator to oversee this process.”