This disaster left about 20,000 people dead or missing. It also destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and released radioactive materials over a wide area. The crash caused widespread evacuations, heavy economic losses and the eventual shutdown of all of Japan’s nuclear power plants. A decade later, the nuclear industry has not yet fully addressed the safety concerns that Fukushima exposed.
We are scholars specializing in engineering and medicine and public policy, and we have advised our respective governments on nuclear energy safety. Kiyoshi Kurokawa chaired an independent national commission, known as the NAIIC, created by the Diet of Japan to investigate the root causes of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. Najmedin Meshkati was a member and technical advisor to a committee appointed by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to identify lessons from this event to make U.S. nuclear power plants safer and safer.
These comments and many others concluded that Fukushima was a man-made accident, caused by natural hazards, that could and should have been avoided. Experts broadly agreed that the root causes were lax regulatory surveillance in Japan and an ineffective safety culture in the company operating the plant.
These problems are far from exclusive to Japan. As long as commercial nuclear power plants operate anywhere in the world, we believe it is critical for all nations to learn from what happened in Fukushima and continue to double nuclear safety.
Not anticipating and planning
The 2011 disaster struck the Fukushima plant hard. First, the magnitude 9.0 earthquake wiped out electricity off the site. The tsunami then broke the protective wall of the plant and flooded parts of the site.
The flood has turned off the control, monitoring and cooling functions in several units of the six-reactor complex. Despite the heroic efforts of the plant workers, three reactors were severely damaged in their radioactive cores and three reactor buildings were damaged by hydrogen explosions.
Off-site releases of radioactive materials contaminated land in Fukushima and several neighboring prefectures. Some 165,000 people left the area and the Japanese government established an exclusion zone around the plant that stretched for 311 square miles at its largest phase.
For the first time in Japan’s history of constitutional democracy, the Japanese Parliament passed a law creating an independent national commission to investigate the root causes of this disaster. In its report, the commission concluded that Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission had never been independent of industry, nor of the powerful Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which promotes nuclear energy.
For its part, the operator of the Tokyo Electric Power Company plant, or TEPCO, had a history of disregarding safety. The company had recently published an error-prone assessment of the dangers of the tsunami in Fukushima that significantly underestimated the risks.
Nuclear power generates about 10% of the world’s electricity (TWh = terawatt-hour). About 50 new plants are under construction, but many operational plants are aging. World Nuclear Association / CC BY-ND
The events at the Onagawa nuclear power plant, located 63 kilometers from Fukushima, told a contrasting story. Onogawa, owned and operated by the Tohoku Electric Power Company, was closer to the epicenter of the quake and was hit by an even larger tsunami. Its three operating reactors were of the same type and vintage as those at Fukushima and were under the same weak regulatory supervision.
But Onogawa closed safely and was not noticeably damaged. In our view, this is because the Tohoku utility had a proactive and deeply established security culture. The company learned from earthquakes and tsunamis elsewhere, including a major disaster in Chile in 2010, and continually improved its countermeasures, while TEPCO ignored and ignored these warnings.
Regulatory capture and safety culture
When a regulated industry manages to cajole, control, or manipulate the agencies that supervise it, making them impeccable and subordinate, the result is known as regulatory capture. As the NAIIC report concluded, Fukushima was an example textbook. Japanese regulators “did not oversee or supervise nuclear safety … They avoided their direct responsibilities by letting operators apply regulations voluntarily,” the report noted.
Effective regulation is needed for nuclear safety. Utility companies must also create internal security cultures: a set of characteristics and attitudes that make security issues a top priority. For an industry, safety culture functions as the human body’s immune system, protecting it from pathogens and defending against disease.
A plant that fosters a positive safety culture encourages employees to ask questions and apply a rigorous and prudent approach to all aspects of their work. It also encourages open communications between line workers and management. But TEPCO’s culture reflected a Japanese mindset that emphasizes hierarchy and acquiescence and discourages asking questions.
There is ample evidence that human factors, such as operator errors and poor safety culture, played a key role in the three major accidents at nuclear power plants: Three Mile Island in the U.S. in 1979, Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986 and Fukushima Daiichi in 2011. Unless nuclear nations do better in both respects, that list is likely to grow.
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Global degree of nuclear safety: incomplete
Today there are about 440 nuclear reactors operating worldwide, with about 50 under construction in countries such as China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
Many proponents argue that in light of the threat of climate change and the growing need for carbon-free base-load electricity generation, nuclear power should play a role in the world’s future energy mix. Others call for the abolition of nuclear energy. But that may not be feasible in the foreseeable future.
In our view, the most urgent priority is to develop tough, system-oriented nuclear safety standards, strong safety cultures, and much closer cooperation between countries and their independent regulators. We see worrying indications in the U.S. that independent nuclear regulation is eroding and that nuclear service companies are resisting pressure to learn and delay the adoption of internationally accepted safety practices, such as adding filters to prevent radioactive releases from buildings. containment of reactors with the same characteristics as Fukushima. Daiichi.
The most crucial lesson we see is the need to counter nuclear nationalism and isolationism. Ensuring close cooperation between countries developing nuclear projects is essential today as the forces of populism, nationalism and anti-globalism spread.
We also believe that the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose mission is to promote safe, secure and peaceful uses of nuclear energy, should urge its member states to find a balance between national sovereignty and responsibility. when operating nuclear power reactors in its territories. As Chernobyl and Fukushima taught the world, the consequences of radiation do not stop at national borders.
Author Najmedin Meshkati holding an anti-earthquake railing in the Fukushima Daiichi control room during a 2012 site visit. Najmedin Meshkati / CC BY-ND
In principle, the Persian Gulf countries should put aside political disputes and recognize that, with the launch of a nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates and others planned in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, they have a common interest in nuclear safety and collective emergency response. The entire region is vulnerable to falling radiation and water pollution from a nuclear accident anywhere in the Gulf.
We believe that the world remains in the same conjuncture it faced in 1989, when it was then Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. made this perceptual argument:
“A decade ago, Three Mile Island was the spark that ignited the funeral pyre for an energy source it once promised. As the nuclear industry asks the nation for a second look in the context of global warming , it is fair to see how its proponents will respond to enhanced security oversight. This will be the measure of whether nuclear energy becomes a phoenix or an extinct species. “
Kiyoshi Kurokawa is a Professor Emeritus, University of Tokyo.
Najmedin Meshkati is a Professor of Engineering and International Relations, University of Southern California.
Disclosure statement: Kiyoshi Kurokawa, MD, MACP, is Professor Emeritus at the University of Tokyo and Professor at the National Postgraduate Institute of Political Studies in Tokyo. He was chairman of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Commission of Inquiry into Japan’s national diet, which published its official report in July 2012. The English translation of his book, Regulatory Capture: Will Japan Change? it is expected to be released in 2021.
Najmedin Meshkati, Ph.D., CPE, is a professor of civil / environmental, industrial, systems and international relations engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). He teaches and conducts research on the security of technological systems and has visited many nuclear power plants around the world, including Chernobyl (1997), Mihama (1999) and Fukushima Daiichi and Daini (2012). He was a member and technical advisor to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences / National Research Council Committee on the lessons learned from the Fukushima nuclear accident to improve the safety and security of U.S. nuclear plants.
It is republished with permission from The Conversation.
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