This disaster left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing. It also destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station and released radioactive materials over a large area. The crash caused widespread evacuations, huge economic losses and the eventual shutdown of all nuclear power plants in Japan. A decade later, the nuclear industry has yet to fully address the security issues that Fukushima has exposed.
We are scientists specializing in engineering and medicine and public policy, and we have advised our respective governments on nuclear safety. Kiyoshi Kurokawa chaired an independent national commission, known as the NAIIC, set up by the Diet of Japan to investigate the causes of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. Najmedin Meshkati was a member and technical adviser 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 more secure.
The reviews and many others concluded that Fukushima was a human accident, caused by natural hazards, which should be avoided and avoided. Experts widely agreed that the reasons were a lax regulation of regulation in Japan and an inefficient safety culture in the utility industry that operates the plant.
These problems are far from unique to Japan. As long as commercial nuclear power plants operate anywhere in the world, we believe it is critical for all countries to learn from what happened in Fukushima and to continue doubling nuclear safety.
Failure to provide and plan
The disaster in 2011 gave the Fukushima plant a devastating one-two blow. First, the earthquake with a magnitude of 9.0 turned off the electrical power of the site. Subsequently, the tsunami violated the protective sea wall of the plant and flooded parts of the site.
Floods eliminated the monitoring, control and cooling functions in several units of the six-reactor complex. Despite heroic efforts by factory workers, three reactors suffered serious damage to their radioactive cores and three reactor buildings were damaged by hydrogen explosions.
The distribution of radioactive substances that are not contaminated on the spot is land in Fukushima and several neighboring prefectures. About 165,000 people left the area, and the Japanese government established an exclusion zone around the plant, which in its largest phase stretched over 311 square kilometers.
For the first time in the history of constitutional democratic Japan, the Japanese parliament passed a law establishing an independent national commission to investigate the causes of this disaster. In its report, the commission concluded that the Japanese Commission on Nuclear Safety was never independent of industry, nor of the powerful Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry that promotes nuclear power.
In turn, the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, had a history of contempt for safety. The company recently released an erroneous assessment of tsunami hazards in Fukushima that significantly underestimated the risks.
Nuclear power produces about 10% of the world’s electricity (TWh = terawatt hour). About 50 new plants are under construction, but many operating plants are getting older. World Nuclear Association / CC BY-ND
Events at Onagawa Nuclear Power Station, located 63 km from Fukushima, told a contrasting story. Onogawa, owned and operated by the Tohoku Electric Power Company, was closer to the quake’s epicenter and was hit by a major tsunami. Its three operating reactors were of the same type and vintage as those of Fukushima, and were under the same poor supervision of regulation.
But Onogawa closed safely and was remarkably undamaged. In our opinion, it was because the Tohoku utility had an in-depth, proactive safety culture. The company has learned elsewhere about earthquakes and tsunamis – including a major disaster in Chile in 2010 – and has continually improved its countermeasures, while TEPCO ignores and ignores these warnings.
Regulatory capture and safety culture
When a regulated industry succeeds in controlling, controlling or manipulating agencies that oversee it, making it clumsy and submissive, the result is known as regulatory survey. As the NAIIC report concluded, Fukushima was an example in the textbook. Japanese regulators ‘did not monitor or oversee nuclear safety … They avoided their direct responsibilities by allowing operators on a voluntary basis to enforce regulations,’ the report said.
Effective regulation is needed for nuclear safety. Utilities must also create internal safety cultures – a set of characteristics and attitudes that make safety issues a top priority. In an industry, safety culture functions like the immune system of the human body, protecting it from pathogens and repelling diseases.
A plant that promotes a positive safety culture encourages employees to ask questions and apply a careful and prudent approach to all aspects of their work. It also promotes open communication between line workers and management. But the TEPCO culture reflects a Japanese mindset that emphasizes hierarchy and consent and discourages asking questions.
There is ample evidence that human factors such as operator faults and poor safety culture played an important role in all three major accidents at nuclear power plants: Three Mile Island in the USA in 1979, Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986 and Fukushima Daiichi in 2011. Unless core countries perform better at both points, this list is likely to grow.
Statement Nuclear Safety Statement in IAEA BoG: Major Safety Upgrades Launched at Six Remaining Nuclear Power Stations … https://t.co/FrgHv4N4UL– SwedenUN Vienna 🇸🇪 (@SwedenUN Vienna 🇸🇪)1614680434.0
Global Core Security Degree: Incomplete
Today, there are about 440 nuclear power plants operating around the world, with about 50 under construction in countries including China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
Many advocates argue that nuclear power should play a role in the future energy mix in light of the threat of climate change and the growing need for carbon-free power generation at the base. Others are calling for the abolition of nuclear power. But this may not be possible in the foreseeable future.
In our view, the most urgent priority is to develop strict, system-oriented core safety standards, strong safety cultures and much closer cooperation between countries and their independent regulators. We see worrying indications in the US that independent nuclear regulation is being defended, and that nuclear power services are resisting the pressure to learn and delay the adoption of internationally accepted safety practices, such as adding filters to release radioactive releases from reactor control buildings with the same properties like Fukushima to prevent Daiichi.
The most important lesson we see is the need to counter core nationalism and isolation. 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 the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear energy, should urge its member states to strike a balance between national sovereignty and international responsibility when it comes to the operation of nuclear power plants in their areas. As Chernobyl and Fukushima have taught the world, the fallout from radiation does not stop at national borders.
Author Najmedin Meshkati holds a railing in an earthquake in a Fukushima Daiichi control room during a 2012 visit. Najmedin Meshkati / CC BY-ND
As a start, the Persian Gulf countries must set aside political strife and acknowledge that they have a common interest in nuclear safety and collective emergency response with the launch of a nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates and others planning in Egypt and Saudi Arabia word. The entire region is vulnerable to fallout due to radiation and water pollution due to a nuclear accident all over the Gulf.
We believe that the world remains at the same time as it came into being in 1989 when the then Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. put forward this acting argument:
“A decade ago, Three Mile Island was the spark that ignited the funeral burning for a once promising energy source. As the nuclear industry is asking the country for a second time in the context of global warming, it’s reasonable to look at its advocates responds to enhanced security oversight. It 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 Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo. He was chairman of the Fukushima Independent Commission of Inquiry into the National Diet of Japan, which released its official report in July 2012. The English translation of his book, Regulatory Capture: Will Japan Change? will be released in 2021.
Najmedin Meshkati, Ph.D., CPE, is a professor of civil / environmental, industrial and systems engineering and international relations at the University of Southern California (USC). He teaches and conducts technological system safety research and has visited many nuclear power stations around the world, including Chernobyl (1997), Mihama (1999), and Fukushima Daiichi and Daini (2012). He was a member and technical adviser to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences / National Research Council Committee on lessons learned from the Fukushima nuclear accident to improve the safety and security of U.S. nuclear power plants.
Replace with permission from The Conversation.
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