日本核能的教訓

From July 8 to 16 I participated in the seventh annual No Nukes Asia Forum, sponsored by the Japanese members. They arranged a bus tour for our twenty-some international participants through the major nuclear plants and facilities of north Japan. We visited the research center for reprocessing spent fuel to yield uranium and plutonium (planned to feed "fast breeder" reactors that turn uranium into plutonium at the same time that they consume plutonium) located at Tokai (East Ocean) Village, and drove by the small industrial building in the same company town where three workers unwittingly produced a "criticality" accident in September 1999. 

The Citizens Nuclear Information Center in Tokyo produced an excellent, detailed booklet on this accident and the hour-by-hour response of the authorities, and we were able to read it in full English translation. Let me give a few highlights. The workers were temporary workers, no doubt due to retrenchment in the nuclear power industry, which has turned out to be more problematic and less profitable (even with huge government subsidies) than projected in past decades. The plan for processing the uranium oxide had been approved by their supervisor; however, it involved mixing many times the batch that the factory liquid processing tank was designed to handle, and when the seventh batch was added, a flash of blue light and a burst of neutron radiation was emitted. The workers perhaps did not realize that they were handling enriched uranium, nearly double the usual concentration, for this order; but the processing anyway bypassed the safeguards. The factory had only a warning system for gamma ray emissions; it was not until nearly twenty hours later that authorities realized that neutron radiation was continuing and took steps to stop the reaction, exposing more workers in the process. One of the three workers died a few weeks later, six suffered severe doses, and a few dozen people are at increased danger from cancers. There was no evacuation plan, because authorities believed such an accident was impossible. Such is the litany of errors than (that?) broke through Japan's smug ness in its technical superiority and industrial discipline.

But at the fuel reprocessing plant at Tokai the staff kept up the usual Japanese standard of cheerful efficiency and show of helpfulness, as they presented the visitor center explanation of nuclear fuel reprocessing. Like an elevator girl, the young woman guide wore an impeccable uniform, and with a stiff flat hand she pointed out the sparkling-light exhibits of how plutonium was separated from spent nuclear fuel, producing liquid waste that would be solidified with borium （barium?）and buried deep in canisters. She could not answer questions about the temperature of spent fuel rods. She did not explain that only 5% of uranium is consumed before rods must be reprocessed, and much more uranium must be added in each reprocessing. Downstairs, children were amused throwing rings over "Plutonium Boy", the ubiquitous icon of the center, a happy blob like Pokochiu. We were given glossy-printed brochures in English, and they argued with seeming persuasiveness that nuclear fuel reprocessing was necessary, because known world reserves of uranium would only last 73 years, while oil would be depleted even earlier. 

The No Nuke organizers had borrowed a community hall nearby for presentations. Others in our group, particularly Bruce Thompson from Australia, are working to stop uranium mining from destroying national parks and indigenous communities-so there may be less than 73 years of the stuff to go. Only eleven people from the local community attended, although Tokai had just experienced the most serious accident in Japan's nuclear power program. It was a company town, it was said, and you couldn't criticize the company. But the children of the workers who induced the accident were ostracized at school, and the local temple refused to cremate the worker who died.

We met the same robotic guide girls and engineers with fixed beatific smiles two days later at Kashiwazaki on the coast directly north of Tokyo, the site of seven nuclear reactors, two of them ABW (Advanced Boiling Water) reactors of the same design planned for Taiwan's Nuclear Power Plant No. 4, on an oceanside piece of land just the same size as NPP4, 480 hectares. Planted with pines and flowering trees, it could have been a park. The exhibition hall demonstrated with a one-quarter size model how a honeycomb of neutron-absorbing steel could be lowered within 30 seconds to isolate the fuel rods and stop the reaction in the core, if necessary. Later we were taken through Star Trek-like security check tubes, where you were encased in a capsule and scanned for a moment, and then allowed to view the control room, like a double Enterprise deck, each side monitoring one reactor. 

I insisted on asking the handsome engineer with the beatific smile difficult questions, questions relevant to Taiwan. It was hard to get a straight answer. Would the reactor be shut down if Japan were in danger of missile attack? That would have to be decided by the Premier. But it would be wise to stage preventative shutdown, he admitted. How long before there would be no explosive danger if the boiling water system were damaged? The surface temperature of the cooled rods was only 300 degrees Centigrade, there would be no danger immediately. A Japanese member of our group cut in: The interior of the rods is 1000-some degrees; unlike fossil-fuel burners, the system could not be stopped quickly. The beatific smile remained frozen in place. How long would this site continue producing electricity, if there is only 73 years' supply of uranium left in the world? The engineer would only say that there are no present plans to build more reactors. The activist added the information that the company already realizes it faces insurmountable protests from local residents who know there is not sufficient stable footing for an eighth reactor at this site. How will these reactors be decommissioned? No answer.

But the answer I got from "no answer" is that even in Japan this is a political process in which the technocrats refuse to face up to the central questions: how can this technology provide a sustainable future, what is to be done with the waste, how much land is to be consumed and off-limits to safe human habitation for the next 10,000 years, how much of the tax-payers' money is the government pouring into this technology, and what are the risks to human life, in peace and in wartime?

On returning to Taiwan, I have read that Premier Tang Fei says he will resign if the construction of NNP4 is halted. Why should he stake his personal position? He is not a nuclear scientist. Is this really a cool, technological process in which the more economical choice wins? Is money really what is being argued about here? Or is it whose life, and whose land, in exchange for whose profits?