Kim Kyung Hoon/Reuters
Exposure levels in areas around the plant were relatively easily treated by decontaminating: taking off clothes, which capture radioactive particles, and washing with soap and water. Potassium iodine pills were also used as a preventative measure by stopping radioactive material from attacking the thyroid. The key here, of course, is ensuring any human exposure is brief and that radiation doesn’t spread.
The good news is that a Chernobyl-style explosion is extremely unlikely in Japan. The problems at the Soviet plant stemmed from serious design flaws that caused a sudden power spike in the reactor, mixed with a lethal dose of human error. Within three seconds, a massive explosion ejected one-third of the reactor core and radioactive material 30,000 feet into the air. To ease concerns in Japan, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano at one point said he believes the problem at the plant “will not develop into a situation similar to Chernobyl,” even in the worst case.
Yet the Japanese people have every reason to question what officials have been telling them. Japan’s nuclear industry suffers a dubious reputation for downplaying the risks earthquakes pose to nuclear reactors, and in some cases even covering up problems. In 2002, TEPCO’s former president and other officials were forced to resign after it was revealed they’d hidden evidence about more than two dozen incidents where reactors were damaged. There have also been high-profile cases where temperature data was falsified.
Prime Minister Kan has blasted TEPCO for not keeping him informed. He claimed that after the first explosion, the company didn’t inform his office for one whole hour. But Kan himself has at every turn appeared to play down the seriousness of the accident—at least until quite late in the process. It wasn’t until Tuesday, four days after the quake and tsunami hammered the plant, that Japan’s government and TEPCO formed a task force to deal with the crisis. “I’m appalled by the government’s complacency and arrogance—the bland assumption that everything is going to be alright,” says Gregory Clark, president emeritus at Tokyo’s Tama University. “Government nuclear operations have a very questionable record of forthrightness. We simply don’t know how worried we need to be.”
Clark suspects “bureaucratic incompetence and arrogance” are behind the failure of the plant’s backup systems. He’s witnessed that first-hand while serving on nuclear safety committees for Japan’s industry ministry, where he faced constant push-back against efforts to get the nuclear industry to open up. “I happen to favour nuclear power, but when I suggested that whistle-blowing on safety problems should not only be allowed, but rewarded as well, I was told that this was quite contrary to Japanese culture,” he says.
Critics of the industry have also long argued the reactors simply aren’t built to withstand the volatile geography of the region. Not only are the islands of Japan located right on the Pacific Rim of Fire, a region that encircles the Pacific Ocean and that experiences the majority of the world’s quakes, but Japan lies at the intersection of four slabs of the Earth’s crust. The country’s 55 nuclear reactors are built to withstand only a 7.5-magnitude earthquake, yet, as is now known, the seismic convulsions last week hit a magnitude of 9—thousands of times stronger.
Five years ago, a Japanese court ordered a nuclear reactor in Ishikawa prefecture to cease operations after nearby residents filed a lawsuit claiming the plant posed a serious danger. “The building structure of the reactor has a problem in that it underestimates the damage from an inland earthquake,” the judge said. “It is feared that local residents may get exposed to radiation if an accident occurs due to a quake that is larger than what the power company estimates.” The company, Hokuriku Electric Power, continued to operate the plant while it appealed the decision. In December, a higher court gave its blessing to the plant, citing “adequate safety measures.”
“The nuclear plants should have been built to withstand stronger earthquakes,” says Shuji Yoshida, a professor of geology at Chiba University. Now, as the crisis unfolds, he says the government is “hiding too much information” from the nation.
The industry and government officials haven’t done themselves any favours by being so secretive. The incident has thrown the future of nuclear power in Japan into disarray. “There are definitely going to be a lot of problems going forward for building another nuclear plant,” says Yoshida. “Japanese are very sensitive to nuclear threats because of the A-bomb.” As if to drive home that point, four days after the first reactor problems emerged, survivors of the 1945 U.S. atomic bomb attacked the way the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. have handled the current situation. “Speaking from my experience of suffering diseases and health concerns for a long time since being exposed to radiation, I want them to have more of a sense of crisis,” said Haruhide Tamamoto, 80, of Hiroshima.
It’s not just in Japan that nuclear’s future suddenly looks bleak. Just a few weeks shy of the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, it’s taken nearly as long for the industry to recover from that terrible legacy. In the past couple of years, talk of a “nuclear renaissance” became more common, fuelled by worries over climate change and energy shortages. Hundreds of new reactor projects were in the planning stages. Now, across Europe, anti-nuclear protesters feel reinvigorated. In the U.S., there were calls from some legislators for President Barack Obama to rethink his support for the sector. And in Canada, uranium companies saw their stock prices plunge as investors speculated the reactor crisis in Japan means the renaissance is over before it started.
For the Japanese right now, those are still distant questions for another time, when the smoke and radioactive fallout from its nuclear crisis have been contained once and for all.
