On May 10th, Japanese
Prime Minister Naoto Kan made an incredible
announcement – prompted by the ongoing Fukushima
nuclear crisis, Japan, the world’s 3rd largest
economy, is dropping plans to double its
nuclear power capacity and the construction
of 14 new nuclear plants, and will instead
“start from scratch” with its energy policy,
by developing wind, solar and biomass energy
sources.
Japan’s nuclear crisis
has provided the wake-up call. Two months
after Japan was brought to the edge of a
nuclear catastrophe by dual impacts of an
earthquake and tsunami on the Fukushima/Daiichi
nuclear plant, the situation is still far
from under control.
On May 12th, Fukushima’s
operator TEPCO announced that despite all
previous claims, the fuel rods at Fukushima
Reactor 1 had been fully exposed. This is
a huge setback for the authorities, who
have been at pains give the impression of
keeping the crisis contained. Now, however,
the melted fuel that has now accumulated
at the bottom of the reactor vessel is in
danger of leaking through, which could cause
a serious release of radiation.
The global nuclear industry
is reeling from all of this week’s news.
Earlier in the week the Japanese government
called for the closedown of the Hamaoka
nuclear plant , due to its vulnerability
to earthquakes and tsunamis. The operators
of Hamaoka complied, and the plant is now
being wound down, is a key customer for
MOX fuel, which is produced in UK, while
Japan is still the only place in the world
capable of fabricating the ultra large steel
components need for new nuclear reactors.
In Europe, the European Commission is pushing
for more progressive stress test standards
for reactors, while in the United States,
the Nuclear Agency is under fire for its
cosy relationship with the industry.
The lesson learned is
that even in a country as technologically
advanced as Japan, nuclear plants are vulnerable
to unforeseen, yet deadly combinations of
technical failure, human error and natural
disaster. This realisation has prompted
at least some world leaders to take a step
back and rationally reassess all previous
assumptions about the risks of nuclear power.
In Germany, the Fukushima
crisis has inspired the German government
to make a nuclear u-turn, by reversing last
year’s decision to extend the lifetime of
existing reactors. Instead it has ordered
nearly half of its existing nuclear reactors
to immediately stop operations. Chancellor
Merkel said it straight: "It's over.
Fukushima has forever changed the way we
define risk in Germany. We want to end the
use of nuclear energy and reach the age
of renewable energy as fast as possible.”
With two innovative,
industrialised economies making such strong
statements about the future of energy, and
gearing up to seriously deal with climate
change, other countries are sure to be influenced.
No other country is better positioned to
lead the development of cutting edge technologies
for harvesting renewable energy potential
and to combine them into a robust and reliable
energy system for new era. And lets put
this in perspective, Japan currently gets
30% of its electricity; Germany is the 4th
largest economy, and receives 25% from nuclear.
Yet they are serious about cutting their
future reliance on nukes.
Other countries must
not lag behind; in fact, they need to quickly
get in step with Germany and Japan. Let’s
hope that other world leaders are paying
attention to the growing collection of evidence,
and have been carefully reading this week’s
IPCC report - that renewable energy will
power most of the world by 2050. There's
also our own Greenpeace’s Energy [R]evolution
– which also shows that transition to clean,
renewable energy is possible by the middle
of this century.
Every country has an
opportunity to combine energy efficiency
with wind, solar, sustainable biomass and
geothermal resources to reach this goal.
Of course, major challenges remain, and
the transformation from dirty and risky
energy to a renewable supply is not yet
fully won in either Germany or Japan. But
let’s be clear – this is not a technological
or economical dilemma anymore - it’s a political
choice.
Let’s not be naïve:
the nuclear industry and utilities that
have profited from the historical nuclear
status quo will continue to pushback; renewable
technologies still need to significantly
expand and improve, and so does its related
infrastructure. But with popular support
and political vision, we can move forward.
We need to make sure
that politicians stick to their words, and
do not get distracted or decide to choose
“easy” ways out of nuclear – like replacing
dirty reactors with dirty fossil fuels,
or other unsustainable sources. And in Japan,
there is a long way to go to properly deal
with the impacts of the Fukushima nuclear
disaster – and while we applaud prime minister
Kan for his vision on demanding a clean,
nuclear-free energy future, his government
has to do much more to provide adequate
protection for people from the long term
impacts of the Fukushima disaster, which
has spread radioactivity across both land
and sea, contaminating soil, agriculture
and sea life.
The world has a choice
- we have a choice –we can decide on whether
we want to invest in old systems, and get
locked into dirty and hazardous infrastructures
for years to come, or we can instead invest
in a renewable energy future unlimited by
fossil or nuclear nightmares. What will
we choose?
+ More
Fukushima meltdown:
two months later, Japan's government still
drags its feet
In the latest in its
ongoing series of late-night announcements,
TEPCO this week finally admitted that the
core of Fukushima’s reactor 1 started melting
a mere five hours after the March 11 earthquake,
and reached full meltdown within 16 hours.
The power company also
confirmed that it was the earthquake, and
not just the tsunami that initiated the
series of failures leading to the reactor
core meltdown. Molten fuel then pooled at
the bottom of the reactor vessel and with
the container consequently breached, radioactive
material was able to leak out with the cooling
water and find its way into the ground and
ocean where it is now accumulating in the
soil, sediment and food chain.
While this new knowledge
- that a full meltdown happened rapidly
in the first 24 hours of the disaster -
doesn’t necessarily mean the current situation
is riskier than it already was, it confirms
the severity of the damage to the reactor
and containment, and makes it impossible
to implement TEPCO’s original plan to fill
it with water and seal it. Things are clearly
not under control and it will be a long
battle to stabilise the reactors.
The new information
also highlight the government’s reluctance
to speak plainly and frankly about the risks
to public health and the environment, and
underscores its remarkable foot dragging
in its response to these threats. For example:
- It wasn’t until three
weeks after Greenpeace’s demands - based
on pure facts and figures - that the government
raised the international rating of Fukushima
accident to level 7 (the highest level for
the UN INES system) despite such early step
would ensure proper response efforts during
a nuclear crisis of this scale.
- It did not expand
the evacuation zone until after our radiation
monitoring field teams highlighted radiation
hotspots in populated areas far beyond the
initial 20 km zone, and additional evacuation
started only two months after the radiation
fallout. Even now, in many cases, authorities
chose to increase “safe” radiation exposure
limits for everyone – even children - in
the Fukushima area instead of ensuring they
are taken out of harm’s way.
-It only considered
sediment testing (in areas along the Fukushima
coast we identified in our research proposal)
after denying us permission to do it.
-It only began testing
seaweed - despite it being a significant
part of the Japanese diet – after we announced
preliminary research showing it contained
very high amounts of radioactivity.
This is not to say the
authorities are doing nothing. Some residents
have finally been moved away from the crippled
nuclear plant, the no-go zone extended and
marine life testing is slowly being expanded.
However, as the first results from our marine
radiation monitoring have shown, the problem
is spreading farther and faster than the
government has been willing or able to react.
It has been more than
two months, but this is still an unfolding
crisis situation and the authorities should
be doing everything they can to protect
the people and environment of Japan – including
welcoming efforts to provide independent
research and analysis of the impacts of
this nuclear disaster. Yet at every turn
the authorities continue to do the absolute
bare minimum, underplay the results, and
insist that the situation is under control
and back to normal when it clearly isn’t.
Last week, we announced
that several types of seaweed that fishermen
are planning to harvest shows radiation
levels over 10,000 Becquerel per kilogram
– the upper limit of what our equipment
can detect, and well above safety limits
for consumption. This was just one small
set of the samples collected by our teams
on the Rainbow Warrior and along the Fukushima
coast. We are currently putting samples
of fish, shellfish, seawater and sediment,
through detailed analysis at professional
labs in France and Belgium, and while we
expect to announce results next week, the
government has not yet started setting up
a marine life monitoring programme. Again
the people of Japan are being forced to
wait for the government to do what it should
have been doing all along.
The authorities and
the nuclear industry should have been prepared
for this worst-case scenario, but they weren’t.
The government should be prioritising the
health and safety of the Japanese people,
but instead it’s playing “whack a mole”
with its policies, as its former nuclear
adviser Prof. Kosako said during his resignation.
The Japanese people
need clear information, decisive action
and leadership, and Japan needs a true Energy
[R]evolution – a plan that follows the example
announced by Germany to transform its economy
from dependency on dangerous and dirty energy
sources to a sustainable supply based on
renewable technologies. Last week, Prime
Minister Kan said that he wanted to redesign
Japan's energy policy "from scratch"
by dropping plans for new nuclear power
stations and relying more on renewables.
Will he keep his word?
