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Web-only Exclusives
November 30, 2000

From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War
A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix

From Our Correspondent: A Rough Road Ahead
Bad news for the Philippines - and some others

From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies
Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights?

Asiaweek Time Asia Now Asiaweek editorial

OCTOBER 22, 1999 VOL. 25 NO. 42

Damage Control
To salvage its nuclear-energy plans, Japan needs urgent reforms


    ALSO IN ASIAWEEK
Accident
After the latest plant mishap, Japan needs to rethink its nuclear-power program

Visions
Toward a clean, creative Hong Kong

More editorials:
China A rising power that certainly matters
AFTA Delaying the ASEAN free market is a bad idea
Pyongyang Dealing with North Korea can be frustrating, but it's better than isolating the country
New Delhi What India could really use is a top economic advisor free from partisan politics

  RELATED STORIES
Intelligence: After Tokaimura
Ratting on Japan's nuclear sloppiness (10/13/99)

CNN
Inspectors find another radioactive leak at Japanese plant
(10/11/99)

Japanese worker exposed to more radiation than Chernobyl victims
(10/09/99)

TIME
Unclear Fallout
The Japanese government may be guilty of negligence in the country's worst nuclear disaster

Japan's nuclear-power program may be headed for a meltdown. Public confidence has been severely eroded by a series of mishaps and cover-ups, of which last week's accident at a nuclear facility in Tokaimura, 140 km north of Tokyo, was the worst. Official insistence that "Japan needs nuclear power" may not be enough to turn the tide. One recent poll indicated that 74% of Japanese now distrust nuclear power. In a modern democracy, it is hard to see how authorities can continue to promote, without change, an energy program that three-quarters of the public thinks is unsafe.

Ever since a 1995 incident, in which liquid sodium leaked from the cooling system of the Monju fast-breeder reactor 340 km northwest of Tokyo, Japan's nuclear-power scheme has undergone significant "democratization." Prefectural governors are now putting atomic-energy questions before the voters in local referendums. The Kansai Electric Power Co. had the bad luck to receive a shipment of new nuclear fuel mixed with plutonium the day after the Tokaimura accident. Authorities now say the fuel will not be loaded into its designated power station unless local residents approve the move in a referendum next month. They are most unlikely to do so.

Public confidence is set to decline further as more information comes to light about the lackadaisical and self-serving operating procedures employed at the Tokaimura fuel-fabrication plant. Amazingly, one of the three severely irradiated plant workers told investigators that he had not received any instructions on how to avoid creating a spontaneous nuclear chain reaction, even though he regularly handled uranium. That is a bit like a commercial airline letting a pilot get behind the controls who does not know how to land in a cross-wind, or how to pull an aircraft out of a stall.

So government-approved safety procedures are too cumbersome? Then write your own. That apparently was what JCO, the Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. subsidiary that ran the Tokaimura plant, did. The firm's unauthorized manual, which details ways to cut corners to save time and money, had been in use for years. The practice of workers mixing uranium in buckets by hand goes back even longer. Somehow, such activities eluded the regulators at the Science and Technology Agency, responsible for ensuring compliance with safety laws. But then the last detailed inspection was in 1992. The agency, critics have suggested, is more interested in promoting Japan's pro-nuclear policies than in enforcing the safety regulations.

Predictably, the Tokaimura accident has sparked concern in other Asian countries with nuclear-power programs. Authorities in China, for example, have vowed to tighten safety measures. For its part, Japan has pledged to review procedures. But that may no longer be enough. Tokyo needs to rethink its nuclear program and perhaps retrench. That will probably mean abandoning the more advanced elements of the plan, including the reprocessing of spent fuel, as well as the use of mixed uranium-plutonium oxide (MOX) fuels and fast-breeder reactors that, in theory, make more fuel than they consume. The industry could then regroup around Japan's 51 conventional nuclear plants, which provide 37% of the nation's electricity and, in fact, have a decent safety record.

Almost every other country has abandoned breeder-reactor technology. One reason: it both needs and creates plutonium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons. The technology is also uneconomical, as uranium is plentiful and relatively cheap. Japan's breeder program is near a standstill already. The Monju plant has been closed since its 1995 debacle. And the Joyu facility, intended destination of the Tokaimura fuel, has lost its supply source for the moment. Tokyo's energy planners have argued that Japan's lack of resources obliges them to look beyond the current uranium glut and take a long-term view. Now, that may no longer be politically feasible.

Japan should also abandon its controversial program to burn MOX fuels. (Mixed-oxide combines plutonium recovered from already burned nuclear fuel with uranium to stretch out supplies.) The scheme has already ruffled relations with Asian neighbors, who are not happy about having the stuff shipped from Europe to Japan through their waters; they are also uneasy that Japan, in a few years, will possess more plutonium than any other country. Japanese commercial utilities, always sensitive to public opinion, may abandon the program anyway. Fresh impetus to do so may come from reports that British nuclear suppliers allegedly bypassed procedures and falsified data on MOX fuel pellets destined for Japan.

Tokyo may need to reorder its energy-research priorities as well. At present, 60% of the research-and-development budget goes into nuclear power. A portion of that money should be diverted toward alternative energy sources and conservation. The remaining funds could be used to develop newer nuclear-plant technologies - such as high-temperature, gas-cooled reactors - that are known to be safer than conventional light-water generators. Among other benefits, that would help keep Japan's many capable nuclear technicians employed. Such a revamp is the best, if not the only, way to save Asia's most advanced nuclear-power program.


This edition's table of contents | Asiaweek home

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