The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Disaster
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The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Disaster When the Nuclear Safety Commission in Japan reviewed safety-design guidelines for nuclear plants in 1990, the regulatory agency explicitly ruled out the need to consider prolonged AC power loss. In other words, nothing like the catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station was possible— no tsunami of 45 feet could swamp a nuclear power station and knock out its emergency systems. No blackout could last for days. No triple meltdown could occur. Nothing like this could ever happen. Until it did—over the course of a week in March 2011. In this volume and in gripping detail, the Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident, a civilian-led group, presents a thorough and powerful account of what happened within hours and days after this nuclear disaster, the second worst in history. It documents the fi ndings of the Chairman, fi ve commissioners, and a working group of more than thirty people, including natural scientists and engineers, social scientists and researchers, business people, lawyers, and journalists, who researched this crisis involving multiple simultaneous dangers. They conducted over 300 investigative interviews to collect testimony from relevant individuals. The responsibility of this committee was to act as an external ombudsman, summarizing its conclusions in the form of an original report, published in Japanese in February 2012. This has now been substantially rewritten and revised for this English- language edition. The work reveals the truth behind the tragic saga of the multiple catastrophic accidents at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. It serves as a valuable and essential historical reference, which will help to inform and guide future nuclear safety and policy in both Japan and internationally. By the Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident. Edited by Mindy Kay Bricker. Published in association with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation. In a subject area beset by controversy and seemingly interminable disagreements, The Bulletin has long served to provide highly reliable analyses of things nuclear. The Fukushima Daiichi disaster is a case in point, with numerous— often confl icting—reports on what went wrong and what went right, who did what, and who did not… and this book does a great job of distilling the principal issues, and providing a clear-headed analysis of what actually transpired. While there is still much to learn about, and from, this nuclear disaster, the interested reader will not fi nd a better current analysis, and I urge all with a stake in learning how to do better in the nuclear power arena to read this book. Robert Rosner, former director of Argonne National Laboratory, William E. Wrather Distinguished Service Professor, Astronomy and Astrophysics and Physics at University of Chicago, and Co-Director, Energy Policy Institute at Chicago, USA. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Disaster Investigating the Myth and Reality By the Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Edited by Mindy Kay Bricker Published in association with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation First published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN And by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station disaster : investigating the myth and reality / by the Independent Investigation Committee on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident ; edited by Mindy Kay Bricker. pages cm “Published in association with the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation.” Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Disaster relief--Japan--Fukushima-ken. 2. Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Japan, 2011. 3. Nuclear power plants--Accidents-- Investigation--Japan--Fukushima-ken. I. Bricker, Mindy Kay, editor. II. Nihon Saiken Inishiatibu. Fukushima Genpatsu Jiko Dokuritsu Kensho Iinkai. Fukushima Genpatsu Jiko Dokuritsu Kensho Iinkai chosa kensho hokokusho. Based on (work): HV555.J3N556213 2014 363.17’990952117--dc23 2013043787 ISBN: 978-0-415-71393-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-71396-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-88280-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby Contents Letter from Koichi Kitazawa vii Letter from Yoichi Funabashi xiv Points of Investigation xxi List of Members of the Commission and the Working Group for the Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident xxiii List of Acronyms and Abbreviations xxvi Figures xxviii Foreword by Kennette Benedict xli Prologue xliv 1 A Fukushima Diary, March 11–16, 2011 1 2 Nuclear Energy Development in Japan 36 3 The Safety Myth 50 4 Actors in Japanese Nuclear Safety Governance 63 5 International Safety 86 6 Accident Preparedness and Operation 95 7 Impact of Radioactive Material Released into the Environment 124 8 Communicating the Fukushima Disaster 145 9 US–Japan Relationship 158 vi Contents 10 Lessons of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Accident and the Quest for Resilience 175 Epilogue 196 Expert Reviews 204 References 229 Index 239 Letter from Koichi Kitazawa, Chairman of the Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident On March 11, 2011, as the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station unfolded, it was only a matter of time before the key issues behind the catastrophe were made clear: namely, the overcrowded site layout and the proliferation of catastrophic dangers. At the Fukushima Daiichi station, six nuclear reactors and seven spent fuel pools were positioned in close proximity to one another. Operators at the site, facing a nightmare scenario of unreliable readings from water-level meters, pressure gauges, and other measurement equipment, were forced to oversee increasingly dangerous situations—playing out at the same time—in multiple reactors and multiple spent fuel pools. The dangers seemed to multiply at every step. While radiation levels increased, debris from explosions in units 1 and 3 fl ew through the air. Not only were the equipment and facilities damaged, but workers’ efforts to address the situation in the reactors and spent fuel storage pools were stymied by the sheer impossibility of the situation. At the start of our investigation in 2011, we discovered that the prime minister and several top Cabinet offi cials had feared serious high-risk dangers during the accident—dangers they had not at all disclosed to the public until we published our original Japanese-language report in March 2012; we suspect, however, that much of this information remained largely unreported in the English language. In the later chapters of this book, we describe the threats that kept these government offi cials terrifi ed for an extended period of time, including the rising pressure in unit 2’s reactor containment vessel, which, they knew, could lead to a possible explosion that would instantly release huge quantities of radioactive elements into the atmosphere. Furthermore, because of the hydrogen explosion that occurred in the building of unit 4—a unit that was not even in operation at the time of the earthquake—they further feared that unit 4’s spent fuel pool had been exposed directly to the environment. Shunsuke Kondo, chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, reported to Prime Minister Naoto Kan and other offi cials what he identifi ed as the “worst-case scenario”: If the situation worsened, he said, citizens within a 200-kilometer radius, or greater, would need to evacuate—that is, as many as viii Letter from Koichi Kitazawa thirty million people would need to leave their communities, including many in the Tokyo area. Sharing information at a time of danger: the Cabinet’s instructions to site workers and the sense of elite panic Heeding seismologists’ warnings of the possibility of a large earthquake in the Tonankai region, in the southeast, to follow the Tohoku earthquake, in the northeast, the government plunged immediately into accident-response activities. Then-Prime Minister Kan paid an unexpected visit to the Fukushima Daiichi plant on the morning of March 11; he later pronounced, at the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) headquarters, that he would not allow the company to withdraw from the nuclear plant, insisting that water be dumped over the nuclear reactor buildings using helicopters from Japan’s Self Defense Force. At the government’s request, over one and a half months after the accident at Fukushima, Chubu Electric Power shut down its Hamaoka nuclear plant located southwest of Tokyo. All of these incidents can only be understood in the context of the strong fear growing within the