Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster

by David Lochbaum

  In his address, Kan conceded that the phaseout of nuclear power would not happen overnight. And—aside from endorsing more renewable energy sources—he failed to outline how Japan might meet its huge energy needs once the nuclear plants were shut down.

  Kan’s motives immediately came into question. His popularity was at a record low, the result of what was regarded as his ineffectual leadership during the accident. Was this a politician’s last hurrah—an attempt to burnish a tarnished legacy? Or was it the response of a leader who had experienced firsthand the dangers inherent to nuclear power and now wanted to steer a new course? Opinions were deeply divided.

  Kan had promised to step down once the accident recovery was under way. As a lame duck, he lacked the political capital to institute a nuclear phaseout, regardless of his motives, and a spokesman subsequently clarified that Kan was merely announcing his personal views. Two weeks later, however, the government agreed to his proposal and backed his plans for reducing Japan’s reliance on nuclear power.

  In late August 2011, Kan resigned, his fifteen months in office marked by the worst crisis Japan had faced since the end of World War II. The task of steering the nation to a new energy policy would fall to his successor, Yoshihiko Noda, a fellow member of the Democratic Party of Japan. In a speech to the Diet in mid-September, Noda outlined his energy plan. Despite public opposition, he promised to restart idled reactors by the following summer, saying it was “impossible” to sustain Japan’s economy without them. As for a rapid phaseout of nuclear power, that also appeared unlikely. “It’s still too early to say if we can get to that stage,” Noda told the Wall Street Journal.

  Gregory Jaczko may have hoped that quickly assessing the lessons of Fukushima and devising an appropriate response would be a straightforward task, but that view apparently was not shared by his fellow commissioners. Jaczko had hinted he might face some opposition, especially concerning the ninety-day deadline he had set for the commission to establish its priorities. During a speech at the National Press Club in Washington in mid-July, he was asked whether he had his colleagues’ support for his aggressive timetable and agenda. “Well, we’ll see,” he replied.

  Turns out he didn’t. The next day, when the five NRC commissioners sat down with the task force to have their first public discussion of the report, two of them promptly expressed doubt about the need for fundamental changes in regulation. Commissioner Svinicki asked whether some of the task force’s recommendations, notably those calling for increasing safety margins as a hedge against uncertainty, represented a “repudiation” of the NRC’s increasing reliance on “risk-informed regulation.”

  Commissioner William C. Ostendorff also took exception to the need for a major overhaul. “I personally do not believe that our existing regulatory framework is broken,” he said. And, he added, any policy changes needed to be done in consultation with “our stakeholders.”

  The largest and most influential of those stakeholders, of course, is the nuclear industry. And that industry has always believed that the best defense is a good offense. Its leaders were hurriedly organizing their Fukushima response, hoping to head off new rules. From the industry’s point of view, voluntary actions it devised on its own were preferable to mandatory ones handed down by the NRC, and it soon put forward its own ideas. (This tactic was nothing new. The NRC’s embrace of industry-proposed measures over many years was responsible, in part, for the patchwork of regulations criticized by the task force and others.)

  The industry’s answer to Fukushima was a plan it called FLEX, shorthand for “diverse and flexible mitigation capacity.” FLEX envisioned a rapid-deployment force of portable equipment such as backup pumps, generators, batteries, and chargers that would be prestaged at or near nuclear facilities. The goal was to provide redundant equipment to keep reactor fuel cool for a certain period in the event of a prolonged station blackout. The industry patterned FLEX after a response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the NRC’s B.5.b order requiring emergency backup equipment in the event of a fire or explosion caused by an airplane crashing into a nuclear facility.

  Although the B.5.b equipment has been touted as an added layer of safety in the event of a crisis, post-Fukushima inspections by the NRC showed that at many sites the backup equipment would be unlikely to function at all during a severe event, especially one involving a natural disaster such as a flood or an earthquake. This should not have been a surprise, as the NRC had not required that the equipment be safety-grade, or “hardened,” to withstand either design-basis or beyond-design-basis events. (In other words, the B.5.b equipment could legitimately have come straight off the shelf from Home Depot. Safety-grade components, on the other hand, must meet stringent quality standards and be rigorously tested to confirm proper performance.)

  Now, however, the FLEX program was being promoted by some as “B.5.b on steroids.” A better description might be “B.5.b on fertility drugs.” Instead of hardening the B.5.b equipment to safety-grade standards or beyond, the FLEX approach would simply add more unhardened items. Utilities would place multiple units of equipment at diverse locations on- or off-site in the hope that no matter what the catastrophe, something somewhere would survive to cool the reactor core and spent fuel pools.

  Even though the FLEX approach would require the purchase of more equipment, it would save the industry money because nuclear safety-grade standards are costly and difficult to meet. As Charles Pardee of Exelon Generation Company summed it up in a December 2011 public meeting, “it’s cheaper to buy three [pumps] than one and a heckuva big building [to put it in].”

  While the NRC quibbled over how to deal with the task force’s recommendations, the summer of 2011 was producing moments that kept nuclear safety on Americans’ radar. A flood and an earthquake—smaller than the natural disasters that had struck Japan—threatened two nuclear plants. These were the kinds of events that nuclear operators viewed as so unlikely that they could be written off. Until they happen.

  The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generation Station, north of Omaha, Nebraska, during heavy flooding on the Missouri River in June 2011. A year earlier, the NRC had cited the plant and its owner, the Omaha Public Power District, for an inadequate flood protection plan. As a result, new flood barriers were installed and the plant survived the 2011 flood undamaged. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

  In mid-June, the Missouri River, swollen by record snowmelt and heavy spring rains, sent floodwaters surging across much of the upper Midwest. The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station, about thirty miles north of Omaha, Nebraska, went from sitting alongside the Missouri to sitting in it. The NRC had issued Fort Calhoun its operating license in 1973 based on representations by the plant’s owner, Omaha Public Power District, that the plant could withstand flooding up to 1,014 feet above mean sea level. Years later, however, NRC inspectors discovered that flooding above 1,008 feet could disable vital equipment in several structures.

  The key to Fort Calhoun’s flood safety plan was old-fashioned sandbags piled atop floodgates. NRC inspectors had previously determined that the floodgates could not support a five- or six-foot-high stack of sandbags. The utility’s own risk assessment concluded that “severe core damage results if either intake or auxiliary building sandbagging fails.” The possibility of flood-water penetrating the plant walls was an additional threat.

  Omaha Public Power District argued that the chance of a flood exceeding 1,007 feet above mean sea level was so small that the sandbagging response was adequate as it stood. Nevertheless, the NRC cited the plant in 2010, forcing the plant to install new flood barriers. But in June 2011, the operator of an earthmover accidentally broke through a newly installed flood berm, allowing the rising Missouri to pour into the plant site. Water reached building entrances. “It was a jarring sight . . . a boat tied to the nuclear plant,” said the local congressman who toured the Fort Calhoun plant, traversing catwalks to gain access. Although water levels rose around the plant entrances to a depth
of two feet, and operators relied on backup generators, the plant was not damaged because of the newly upgraded flood barriers.

  And then came the earthquake that surprised just about everybody. At 1:51 p.m. on August 23, 2011, a magnitude 5.8 quake rattled central Virginia, its epicenter about thirty-eight miles northwest of Richmond. The largest previous earthquake in this zone was reported in 1875 and was estimated at a magnitude of 4.8. One of magnitude 4.5 had produced minor damage in 2003.

  The North Anna Power Station sat approximately twelve miles from the epicenter. Ground motion exceeded what the plant was designed to withstand—making this a beyond-design-basis accident. Although North Anna suffered no serious structural damage, it did temporarily lose its connection to the off-site power grid, just as occurred at Fukushima Daiichi. Four backup diesel generators automatically started and provided power for nearly four hours (although one sprang a coolant leak and a replacement had to be located). Power wasn’t fully restored for nearly nine hours.

  In both near misses, the plant owners and the NRC pointed to the lack of damage as proof that the safety margins built into U.S. reactors and regulations were adequate. That kind of logic, critics have long said, is akin to arguing that if a drunk driver makes it home safely, the public doesn’t need to worry about drunk driving. At both Fort Calhoun and North Anna, the owners had taken extra steps in advance that would head off serious damage from floods or earthquakes. In the case of North Anna, the owner, Dominion, voluntarily upgraded seismic protection at its two units in the 1990s when it learned that earthquakes posed a greater threat than previously known. That made Dominion the exception among nuclear utilities. Even though North Anna had survived intact, there was no assurance that the next plant experiencing a rude surprise would be as lucky.

  After the quake in Virginia, an expert offered a takeaway lesson. “[W]hat I would say in terms of lessons learned from Fukushima and now yesterday’s quake [at North Anna] is that setting reactor design . . . hazard limits just above recorded human experience is turning out to be really shortsighted,” said Allison Macfarlane, a geologist and environmental policy professor at George Mason University. “With something like a nuclear reactor,” she told a reporter, “I would like a large safety margin.”

  Macfarlane’s opinions would soon carry additional clout. In mid-2012, she would take over as chairman of the NRC. The threats posed by earthquakes, she promised, would move up on the NRC’s priority list.

  As the NRC Near-Term Task Force moved ahead with its assessment of the lessons from Fukushima, the agency itself was wrestling with growing internal dissension. Even before Fukushima, Jaczko had told friends and acquaintances that he felt isolated on the commission, believing himself to be the lone voice for tougher oversight. (Commission votes were often 4–1.) But there were also complaints about Jaczko’s management style. He was considered brusque toward staff members and his fellow commissioners, and some said he was prone to intimidating those who disagreed with him.

  As chairman, a position he assumed in 2009, Jaczko had authority over commission activities related to budget and administrative matters. However, any new policy decisions and safety regulations require a majority vote, and it was clear as the months went by that the other commissioners disagreed with the chairman about the extent and the urgency of regulatory reform.

  In mid-December 2011, the infighting at the NRC became public at a hearing before the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where serious allegations levied against Jaczko were aired. Two months earlier, Jaczko’s fellow commissioners—two Democrats and two Republicans—had written to White House Chief of Staff William Daley accusing Jaczko of causing “serious damage” to the agency. The letter expressed “grave concerns” about his leadership and management style. They contended that Jaczko had improperly invoked emergency powers during the Fukushima accident without consulting his colleagues, and said he had set an agenda and timetable for the NTTF review that went beyond what the majority believed necessary. The letter also claimed that he “intimidated and bullied” staff. The NRC’s inspector general investigated these allegations and ultimately exonerated Jaczko of overstepping his legal authority, but found instances in which his behavior was “not supportive of an open and collaborative work environment.”

  The inspector general’s findings were unflattering but hardly federal offenses. By the time the report was issued in June 2012, however, the political damage had been done. Jaczko had announced his resignation from the commission a month earlier. Allison Macfarlane, pledging to run the NRC in a “cooperative and collegial manner,” was named by the Obama administration as his replacement.

  In Japan during the summer of 2011, the magnitude of the recovery task grew ever larger, more daunting—and more costly. Although few details of the conditions at Fukushima Daiichi were made public, news was pouring out about the extent of contamination to the surrounding area and how long it would take to get back to normal.

  The government was saying that up to 1,500 square miles (four thousand square kilometers) had been contaminated to the extent that it may require cleanup. (Radioactive substances from Fukushima Daiichi ultimately would be detected in all of Japan’s prefectures, including Okinawa, about one thousand miles from the plant.) On August 26, the minister in charge of the crisis response announced that over the next two years the government would cut radiation in the affected area by half.

  The goal, said the minister, Goshi Hosono, was to bring radiation levels below two rems (twenty millisieverts) per year, which had been the threshold for evacuation but was still twenty times higher than the previous standard for public exposure. “[W]ith enough government funding and effort, it can be done,” he pledged. Hosono also promised that the government would bear the costs of the cleanup, which some experts thought could be as high as $130 billion.

  The passage of time—and natural decay of radioactivity—would do most of the work; humans would speed nature along by removing soil, plants, and trees. In areas where children might be exposed, the goal was to reduce radiation by 60 percent.

  For the tens of thousands of people still living in temporary shelters and for families who had spent the summer with their children cooped up indoors to minimize exposure, Hosono’s announcement signaled progress. But the good news came mixed with the bad. “Some places may have to be kept off-limits to residents for a long period of time even after cleanup operations are undertaken,” Hosono said at a media briefing. Comparisons to the permanent exclusion zone around Chernobyl were unavoidable.

  Radiation data gathered by the Ministry of Education and Science showed pockets of extremely high readings across the contaminated zone. In the town of Okuma, two miles southwest of Fukushima Daiichi, some areas recorded radiation levels in excess of fifty rems (five hundred millisieverts) per year.

  As much as the government—and many dispossessed residents—were pushing to repopulate the communities now standing empty, it was obvious that no amount of scraping or scrubbing or isotope decay was going to make certain areas safe. Decontamination efforts simply were not that effective; typically they could reduce the dose rate only by about one-third. Ironically, some locations within the twelve-mile (twenty-kilometer) evacuation zone had radiation levels above those now measured at Fukushima Daiichi itself. In certain places at the plant, radiation levels were dropping, thanks to the massive cleanup effort. The reactors, however, remained unstable and highly radioactive.

  The details about contamination and the risk it continued to pose spilled out from government reports and media accounts as summer turned into fall. In August, low levels of cesium were detected in a rice sample taken ninety miles from Fukushima Daiichi. A sample of beef from Fukushima Prefecture was found to contain high levels of cesium. In Tokyo markets, food shoppers saw radiation levels marked alongside the prices of their favorite fruits and vegetables. And those eager to prey on public fears, especially among families with young children, peddled their own products, inc
luding a $6,500 bathtub that was touted as being able to soak away radiation.

  It was becoming increasingly obvious that TEPCO was on the brink of financial collapse and would soon need help from the Japanese government—and taxpayers. Compensation claims alone could exceed the company’s assets, predicted The Economist, which went on to say: “Only the government can save TEPCO from bankruptcy.” The unanswered question, it said, was whether the government would impose wholesale reforms within the company in exchange for a bailout.

  TEPCO was not winning any allies among the Japanese public. In early October, the utility announced a 15 percent rate hike for customers. Although the first compensation checks to evacuees began arriving at about the same time, TEPCO seemed unwilling to fully acknowledge the damage it had caused. In fact, in one instance, the utility denied “owning” the radiation causing the contamination.

  The proprietors of the prestigious Sunfield Nihonmatsu Golf Club, located about thirty miles from Fukushima Daiichi, sued TEPCO, seeking damages to clean up the closed course. The utility countered with a novel defense: the radioactive substances that fell on the course “belong to the landowners and not TEPCO.” “We are flabbergasted at TEPCO’s argument,” said a lawyer for the club. The utility also argued that radiation levels on the golf course were below allowable levels set for schoolyards, and thus were not a hazard. A lower court agreed with TEPCO. On appeal, TEPCO’s denial of ownership of the radiation was rejected, but the claim for compensation was turned down on the grounds that if the radiation levels were safe for schoolchildren, they were safe for golfers.