T.The man who predicted the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl sees another looming.
“There is a very strong possibility that another nuclear disaster will occur in Japan, and the company that runs the largest nuclear power plant here cannot be trusted,” said Toshio Kimura, a nuclear engineer who explained Japan’s 2011 nuclear disaster six years before. it happened, The Daily Beast predicted.
The company he is referring to is his former employer, the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO), who operated the Fukushima plant that suffered a historic meltdown in March 2011 after a massive marine earthquake triggered a tsunami that flooded and killed its reactors. let go. radiation and forces 160,000 people to evacuate.
A year after the incident, an investigation by a Japanese parliamentary panel concluded that the disaster, while caused by these catastrophic events, was and can be attributed to ‘a multitude of errors and willful negligence. has left the Fukushima. plans unprepared for events. “
Last week, Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) effectively banned TEPCO from restarting its Kashiwazaki plant – one of the largest nuclear power plants in the world – on the coast of the Sea of Japan after it emerged that the complex was riddled with major security concerns. that could make it a target for terrorists.
Inspectors found 16 locations where unauthorized access to the factory was possible – and an attempted cover-up to boot. Although the utility company had reported some of their faulty equipment to the government, they lied about the backup systems that were supposed to fix the problem.
“It’s just another example of this company covering up misdeeds, as they always do. That can only be said [TEPCO] is in no way qualified to run a nuclear power plant, ”said Kimura.
In 2005, after retiring from the company, Kimura wrote in an article that “like the [Fukushima] factory is hit by a tsunami, the pumps will use seawater as a coolant and emergency power is likely to be lost. And as a result, there will be a meltdown of the reactor core. His prediction came true in 2011.
Are they just fucking us?
Toyoshi Fuketa, Chairman of the NRA.
In Kimura’s new book How nuclear energy will destroy the nation, he points out that TEPCO’s ongoing cover-ups have resulted in nuclear safety regulations that are fundamentally flawed. Now it is clear that Japan’s nuclear authority agrees with him.
After getting preliminary approval to open certain units, the utility was hoping to restart the Fukushima nuclear power plant as early as this year. But last week’s announcement has de facto served as a de facto order to suspend operations until “the company reaches a state where self-sustaining improvement can be expected,” the NRA said. A restart would have increased the company’s profits by an estimated $ 950 million per year.
In a press conference on the TEPCO plant earlier this year, NRA Chairman Toyoshi Fuketa, speaking of the company’s failure to take effective alternative measures to address security issues, got into an angry rant: “Was it dishonesty?” he said. Did they know the problem and did nothing? Is there a problem with their technological prowess? Are they just fucking us? “
While authorities have finally derailed TEPCO’s immediate nuclear plans, experts say Japan’s nuclear dangers are far from resolved.
“TEPCO has lied and falsified critical safety data for as long as it has operated nuclear power plants. A year or so of delay is a blow to the wrist for a company that has misled regulators and systematically defrauded security, ”said Jeff Kingston, a professor at Temple University in Tokyo who has been researching the situation for more than a decade. nuclear crisis in Japan, on The Daily Beast.
“It will get approval as soon as it avoids shooting itself in the foot,” he added.
The Kashiwazaki plant has become a symbol of TEPCO’s ineptitude and the dangers of nuclear energy in an island country where earthquakes are common. Japan is located in the “Ring of Fire,” an area around much of the Pacific’s edge, where volcanic eruptions and frequent earthquakes are common. Building nuclear reactors in Japan is a bit like building wind turbines made from razor blades and rotting wood in the US tornado alley. Just not the best place to do it.
Today, however, there are still four nuclear reactors operating in four Japanese prefectures – two in Fukui, one in Saga, and one in Kagoshima – and they are all plagued by safety concerns such as faulty coolant pumps, steam leaks and insufficient anti-terrorism. measures.
The Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO), which operates two of the nuclear power plants, is at the center of a corruption scandal involving massive bribes and disbursements to and from a city official for three decades. Late last year, the Osaka District Court ruled that two reactors at the Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui were vulnerable to a major earthquake, despite having been approved by the NRA for restart. Last year, KEPCO’s Takahama plant had to suspend operations at two nuclear reactors after adequate counter-terrorism facilities had not been built.
Genkai’s power plant in Saga, operated by Kyūshū Electric Power Company, has also suffered a host of issues since its reconnection in March 2018, including steam leaks and faulty cooling pumps. Last month, a local district court dismissed a lawsuit from residents to stop production, ruling that the plant was adequately protected from volcanic and seismic activity under the new guidelines.
Japan’s nuclear power plants have long been notorious for poor security and were often supplied with manpower by organized crime groups before and after the Fukushima nuclear accident. Even now, background checks are not mandatory. The situation is so dire that two former prime ministers of rival parties held a joint press conference in March this year calling on Japan to abandon nuclear power. Most Japanese citizens seem to share their view: 53 percent are against restarting the country’s nuclear reactors.
But this is no longer just Japan’s problem. Last week, the government announced that within two years Japan will be discharging radioactive waste, which continues to overflow from the 2011 nuclear accident, into the ocean. While officials have offered assurances that the water will be safe, they have failed to mention that much of the ‘treated water’ on site contains deadly levels of other radioactive materials.
What will happen to the people of Japan and the countries that share their oceans if the next nuclear accident happens? It may be just an earthquake away, and neither TEPCO, nor the government that should regulate it, has a promising track record when it comes to managing nuclear power.
Ten years after the Fukushima incident, TEPCO is still cleaning up the disaster, pouring tons of seawater into the remains of the reactors every day to cool them. It will take decades to dismantle the factory, while it remains a disaster lurking.
Japan’s aging nuclear power plants are time bombs waiting to go off. Even if terrorists don’t trip through lax security and steal materials for a dirty bomb, Mother Nature and entropy can get the job done in their place.