[ RadSafe ] Japan Debates Safety After Quake

[Sandy Perle]

Japan Debates Safety After Quake

The magnitude 6.8 earthquake that hit the northwest coast of Japan 
Monday morning is rocking the country's faith in its nuclear power 
plants, raising questions about the safety of facilities that provide 
a third of the energy consumed by the quake-prone archipelago. 
 
The death toll from the temblor, which shook Niigata, Nagano and 
Toyama prefectures, was nine as of Tuesday, with one person 
reportedly still missing. That's far less than a 2004 quake that 
struck the same area and killed more than 60 while leaving 16,000 
homeless. But instead of feeling relief, the entire country has been 
rattled by TV images of black smoke billowing from Niigata's 
Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, located just 9km (5.6 miles) 
from the epicenter in the Sea of Japan. The plant suffered a string 
of problems when the temblor struck. Tokyo Electric, the Kashiwazaki 
plant's owner/operator, was quick to point out that a smoky fire that 
broke out in an electric transformer posed no threat to the rest of 
the facility and was extinguished in a few hours. Three of the seven 
reactors were inactive due to periodic inspections, the company said, 
and four others stopped automatically, as they are programmed to do 
during strong quakes. 

But as the day went on, it became clear that more had gone wrong than 
was originally disclosed. Some 1.2 tons of radioactive water used to 
cool the reactors had spilled, the company suspects, from a spent-
fuel pool and into the nearby ocean. Tokyo Electric also announced 
that 100 drums containing radioactive solid waste were toppled, and 
some radioactive material was detected in one of the main exhaust 
pipes that emit the plant's treated emissions into the open air. 
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe criticized the company for failing to 
respond quickly enough in the quake's aftermath. Tokyo Electric 
President Tsunehisa Katsumata apologized, saying "We were not aware 
of the dangers." He added that Monday was a national holiday, which 
delayed the assembly of response teams. 

The amount of radioactivity escaping into the environment from the 
water and exhaust leaks was reportedly minuscule and posed no threat 
to people or the surrounding area. But questions are being raised 
over the safety of 16 other nuclear plants located throughout Japan, 
a nation that lies atop numerous active fault lines. The intensity of 
Monday's quake was 2.5 times the level the power plant's structures 
were built to sustain without any damage. 

"Just because the quake was double the quake-resistant standard, it 
doesn't automatically mean a threat," says Shuji Kawahara, an 
earthquake safety inspection official in the Ministry of Economy, 
Trade and Industry's nuclear safety department. "The structures are 
built to withstand much much more," he said. How much more? "We don't 
know," says Kawahara. 

It's the unknowns that worry regulators and experts. "Yesterday's 
quake showed that assumptions and suppositions that safety standards 
are based on are completely false," says Baku Nishio, a co-director 
at Citizen's Nuclear Information Center. "Japan is simply too quake-
bound to operate nuclear plants." There's also uncertainty about 
where the next quake will strike. The Kashiwazaki facility underwent 
a tectonic survey last year to reevaluate the site's quake resistency 
and update it in accordance with new government guidelines. That 
survey concluded there were no active faults in the vicinity. 

But because Japan depends heavily upon nuclear power for electricity, 
it's unlikely much can or will be changed. "Building a reasonably 
quake-resistant plant is way too costly to be truly realistic," says 
Hiroyuki Nagasawa, a management-systems professor at Osaka Prefecture 
University. "Nothing short of reevaluating our energy policy will 
change the current situation, but we have much bigger political 
powers working to keep the plants running." The country has been 
spared a quake-related nuclear calamity so far. Citizens can only 
hope their luck holds.
-----------------------------------------
Sander C. Perle
President
Global Dosimetry Solutions, Inc.
2652 McGaw Avenue
Irvine, CA 92614 

Tel: (949) 296-2306 / (888) 437-1714  Extension 2306
Fax:(949) 296-1144

E-Mail: sperle at dosimetry.com
E-Mail: sandyfl at cox.net 

Global Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/