It’s around year and a half since
the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster started. But it’s still not over. The
reactor core meltdowns may have been contained, although they are still active
and temperatures have fluctuated, suggesting continued risks of further fuel
melts and emissions. Perhaps more
worryingly, a tank containing spent fuel is still precariously balanced on top
of the wreck of Reactor 4, and some fear that if another earthquake hit the
site it could fall and spill its lethal contents- 1500 fuel rods. That could
result in much more radioactive material being released than from any previous
nuclear accident. The open waste
tank has been propped up and a cover put over it, but it will take some time
before the rods can be removed. It
will also be some while before the melted fuel in the cores can be removed, and
the mess from the explosions can be cleaned up- vast areas of NE Japan have to
be decontaminated
So maybe it’s not a bad time to take a look
at what happened at Fukushima and its implications. That’s what I tried to do
in a new book, to be published soon as part of Palgrave Macmillan’s new Pivot
e- book initiative.
Japan has been hit by nuclear disasters
before. The US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WWII, forcing
its surrender, seem to have been part of the reason why Japan as a society
redefined itself as a non-military state, still devoted to winning, but this
time through civil technology. It
did well in many areas of technology, although its choice of nuclear technology
seems not to have turned out to be wise. Perhaps now it will reconfigure itself
as a non-nuclear, renewable energy focused society – and win that way. In May, Naoto
Kan, the former Prime Minister, told a parliamentary committee that the bulk of
the blame for the disaster lay with the nuclear lobby, which he said had acted
like the nation's out-of-control military during the Second World War, with
"a grip on actual political power".
There certainly is a continuing incentive
to make changes. The economic impact of Fukushima has been very serious. The
disaster clean up cost – put at around $250 billion, forced the Japanese
government to bail out and take over TEPCO, the plant operator, and, with
public fears mounting, it has also carried out safety tests on all the other
all the plants. That meant that by May all Japan nuclear plants had been shut
down- although two have now been restarted, despite massive 170,000 strong
protests.
The full social and health impacts of the
Fukushima accident are as yet
unknown. While no radiation related deaths have yet been reported, longer-term
effects are possible. In May TEPCO almost quadrupled its initial estimates of
total Iodine-131 releases from Fukushima- from 130 Peta Bq to 511PBq.
Iodine-131's half-life is 8 days, so it is so not worrying as the releases
of Caesium 137, which has a 30
year half life. TEPCOs estimates for releases of Caesium 137 were raised from
6.1 to 13.6 PBq .
An
interim UN-World Health Organisation study says that in the most
affected areas of Fukushima prefecture, thyroid doses from iodine-131 were
estimated as between 10 and 100 mSv apart from one area which was lower, at 1
to 10 mSv, and one that was higher for infants at 100-200 mSv. In the rest of
Fukushima, adults received 1 to 10 mSv to their thyroids while children and
infants received 10 to 100 mSv, the study estimated. For comparison, it said
young people in the vicinity of the Chernobyl accident received on average
doses of 300 to 1400 mSv to their thyroids.
However comparisons with Chernobyl do not
go down well in Japan, which is desperately trying to re-establish
normalacy. Not least since Japan
was a candidate for hosting the 2020 Olympics. While by then the radiation
issue may not be seen as so significant, the International Olympic Organising
Committee have indicated concerns about the energy situation in Japan. They are
not alone. Whereas Germany already had a established plan for nuclear phase out
and expansion of renewables, which it accelerated after Fukushima, renewables
had been marginalised in Japan. Now it is desperately trying to catch up. For
example, it is backing some large offshore wind farms using floating wind
turbine technology.
While
it remains to be seen whether policies will change elsewhere, with the UK, USA,
China, India and Russia still pressing ahead with nuclear to various extents,
it is clear that, as I review in my new book, Fukushima, like Chernobyl before
it, has led to major changes in attitudes around the world, and for Japan and
several other key countries, including German, Italy, Switzerland and Belgium,
a fundamental shift in policy. Bahrain, Kuwait, Malaysia,
Taiwan and the
Philippines have also backed off from nuclear. Following the elections in 2012,
nuclear power is also now being challenged in France, increasingly on economic
grounds, this leading to potential knock-on impacts for the UK programme, with
investment in its proposed nuclear projects looking increasingly risky.
I
suspect that it can only get worse.
Radiation issues:
Impacts: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2012/ee/c2ee22019a
which talks of there possibly being 100s or maybe 1000s of radiation-related deaths around the world ultimately, due to Fukushima, most though in Japan.
