March last year, the world has witnessed the second
largest nuclear disaster in human history after Chernobyl. Fukushima Nuclear
power plants in Japan, was hit by a wave of tsunami followed by an earthquake.
This has knocked out the electrical systems and the operation of water pumps
crucial to the cooling of the nuclear fuels. Generally speaking, nuclear power,
when well-managed, is a viable source of energy at the cost of a very high risk
during their lifetime due to the radioactive residue and waste materials after
the exhaustion of the fuel rods. Generally plutonium and uranium are used as a
fuel sources, and through a process called atomic fission –which is a
decomposition of an atom into two different element of smaller atomic mass – these
heavy elements become a number of various other elements in unstable state
which emits radioactive energy. Besides uranium and plutonium, a number of
other elements are being considered for use, such as Fluoride Thorium and
Deuterium. Generally most of these fuel metals require enrichment, which is a
process to extract atoms that are able to go through nuclear fission.
Sustainability
Besides other
concerns such as nuclear proliferation or weaponization of the waste residues
(or even the fuel metals), the main issue is that the waste materials can take
up to few hundred years to lose its harmful radioactivity, and nuclear power is
not considered sustainable –or rather, recyclable. Because Japan has very
little resource in regards to fossil fuel, their energy consumption heavily
depends on imported petroleum oil. For Japan, nuclear energy must have been the
most viable alternative to foreign oil, and hence their high dependency on
nuclear power plants for supplying the nation.
Prior Events that
ultimately led to disaster
After the
nuclear accident, there’s been a lot of investigation as to why such event
could have occurred against claims made by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)
and the Japanese Government that nuclear plants are protected from such natural
disasters. Studies have revealed that several factors have contributed to the
disaster:
- · Aging facility with low maintenance
- · General neglect on safety precautions against earthquakes and tsunamis
- · Inappropriate isolation of power facilities against tsunami and flooding
- · Ineffective Government bureaucracy hindering the implementation of preventive measures
- · Governments and TEPCO ignoring Safety Study reports suggesting that Fukushima plant is not able to withstand a flooding of more than 5 meters
- · Despite nation’s self-claimed world’s top robotics expertise, they had not a single robot to deploy into the accident
- · Officials and staffs had excessive confidence in the nation’s “technological infallibility” and the myth of safety
- · Importance of saving face, reluctance to send bad news upwards
Japan drew a lot of criticism for their ineffective,
inefficient and disorganized effort to contain the disaster. The government and
TEPCO had poor communication with each other –not to mention they did poor job
at reporting the actual truth and state of the reactors to the public and the
international media – but also the issue was aggravated due to cultural
tendencies where Japanese people are reluctant to inform bad news to the public
or their superiors. The need to save their dignity, and the reluctance to
inform the factual bad news have brought the crisis, whereas the risks and
preventive methods were very well known as early as 2008 when the safety
reports were written. These suggestions were not only present in the report,
but were completely ignored by the decision makers.
The Aftermath
It is
understandable that Japan is an island nation with no energy resources. Also
the renewable energy is expensive to harness given the fact only recently these
new alternative technologies for generating energies are becoming available.
However, despite the circumstances, the government and the utility company
officials have hid the facts and ignored warnings and studies suggesting a
critical modification of the plant, not to mention reject IAEA’s suggestions
and kept the actual status of the Fukushima plant to the public and the media.
Results were catastrophic, not only in terms of casualties and damages done,
but in terms of public and international trust and the system on how important
decisions are handled. The events that happened during the unfolding of the
disaster dates as early as 1991, and 2007 being the most critical year in which
TEPCO ignored Tsunami studies warning the risk of tsunami flooding of the
Fukushima reactor. It is simply appalling to know these facts, on how much
negligence was present up to the moment the tsunami hit the plant.
References
Buzzwords. (2012). What
is Nuclear? Retrieved from http://www.whatisnuclear.com/resources/buzzwords.html#enrichment
Fukushima Accident 2011. (3 August, 2012). World Nuclear Association. Retrieved
from http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/fukushima_accident_inf129.html
Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update Log. (6 January,
2012). International Atomic Energy Agency.
Retrieved from http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html
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