David Lochbaum - Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster

David Lochbaum is the director of the Union of Concerned Scientists Nuclear Safety Project and the author of Nuclear Waste Disposal Crisis.

Edwin Lyman is a senior scientist in the Global Security Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Journalist Susan Q. Stranahan was a member of the Philadelphia Inquirer team awarded a 1980 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Three Mile Island accident.

The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world.

2014 by Union of Concerned Scientists

Introduction 2015 by Union of Concerned Scientists

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First published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2014

This paperback edition published by The New Press, 2015

Distributed by Perseus Distribution

ISBN 978-1-62097-118-5 (e-book)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Lochbaum, David A.

Fukushima : the story of a nuclear disaster / David Lochbaum, Edwin Lyman, Susan Q. Stranahan, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Japan, 2011. 2. Nuclear power plantsAccidentsJapan Fukushima-ken. I. Union of Concerned Scientists. II. Title.

TK1365.J3L63 2014

363.17'990952117dc23

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CONTENTS

Nearly four years have passed since the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan. Since that time, the long-term environmental and economic consequences of the accident and the magnitude of the effort it will take to address them have come into sharper focus. While Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has almost completed removal of the spent fuel assemblies from their precarious perch in Unit 4, the inability to contain the vast and growing quantity of contaminated water at the plant site has emerged as one of the biggest problems that Japan is facing. Water being pumped into the reactors to cool the damaged cores continues to leak out through cracks in the containment structures while hundreds of gallons of groundwater flow under the site every day, washing radioactive contamination into the sea. TEPCO does not have the capacity to collect and treat all of this water. It is constructing a system to freeze a mile-long wall of soil around the contaminated area in order to divert groundwater flow, but that may not work. Preliminary attempts to freeze a much smaller area have failed.

Although more details about the accident and its aftermath have come to light, the fundamental elements of this disaster remain the same: a trio of reactor cores in meltdown; an extended loss of all power; vulnerable pools of deadly spent fuel at risk of boiling dry; radiation threatening large swaths of Japan, including Tokyo, the worlds most populous metropolis, and potentially even parts of the United States. Images of reactor buildings exploding, stories of heroic efforts to save the plant, poignant accounts of families uprooted from their homes and heritage, and communities rendered uninhabitable will remain vivid in the public consciousness for years to come.

The story of Fukushima Daiichi is a larger tale, however. It is the saga of a technology promoted through the careful nurturing of a myth: the myth of safety. Nuclear power is an energy choice that gambles with disaster.

Fukushima Daiichi unmasked the weaknesses of nuclear power plant design and the long-standing flaws in operations and regulatory oversight. Although Japan must share the blame, this was not a Japanese nuclear accident; it was a nuclear accident that just happened to have occurred in Japan. The problems that led to the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi exist wherever reactors operate.

The staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) appear to have finally accepted this as well, concluding in a November 2013 report that even if Japan had the same regulatory framework as the United States prior to the accident, there is no assurance that the Fukushima accident and associated consequences could or would have been completely avoided.

Although the accident involved a failure of technology, even more worrisome was the role of the worldwide nuclear establishment: the close-knit culture that has championed nuclear energypolitically, economically, sociallywhile refusing to acknowledge and reduce the risks that accompany its operation. Time and again, warning signs were ignored and near misses with calamity written off.

Important lessons from Fukushima Daiichi continue to emerge. TEPCO now believes that core damage at Unit 3 was more extensive than it had previously estimated because the emergency core cooling system in the Unit 3 reactor stopped working earlier than it had thought. Consequently, the core became uncovered around 2:30 a.m. on March 13, rather than 9:00 a.m., as we reported in the book. And TEPCO is now convinced that a containment failure at Unit 2 on March 15, coupled with an unfavorable weather pattern, was the cause of the extensive radiation contamination to the northwest of the site. However, much still remains unknown about what happened inside the Japanese nuclear plant.

Also unclear is the magnitude of the long-term effects of radiation releases on human health and the environment, as well as the ultimate economic impact. Based on a 2014 estimate of the total radiation dose to the Japanese public for eighty years after the accident by the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, a few thousand cancer deaths could be expected. However, the ultimate human toll depends on the fate of the more than one hundred thousand evacuees who remain displaced because their homes are contaminated. The Japanese authorities could limit future radiation exposures by enforcing strict cleanup standards before allowing the evacuees to return to their homes, but instead they are declaring areas safe where radiation levels are ten times greater than normal background levels.

One thing is certain: absent the valiant and tireless efforts of many at Fukushima Daiichi, the consequences could have been much, much worse.

Fukushima Daiichi provided the world with a sobering look at a nuclear accident playing out in real time. Like previous accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the events that began on March 11, 2011, defied the computer simulations and glib assurances of nuclear power promoters that this form of energy is a prudent and low-risk investment. It cannot hope to fulfill that claim absent an unwavering and uncompromising commitment to safety.

Excuses about this accident flew almost from the outset. Nobody had predicted an earthquake this large. Nobody had expected a huge tsunami to flood a low-lying coastal nuclear plant. Nobody had envisioned an accident involving multiple reactors. Nobody had assumed such an event could involve a loss of power for more than a few hours. But all of this did happen, and within a matter of hours the assurances of nuclear safety were revealed as a fallacy.