A major meltdown is the ultimate nightmare scenario, of course. Yet the more imminent threat from the burgeoning scandal may be economic: should new inspections determine that a significant number of Japan’s 53 nuclear reactors are unsafe, repairs could take them off-line for months or even years. That would deprive the world’s second-largest economy of a major energy source; Japan derives about a third of its power from nukes. A war in Iraq would exacerbate the problem, raising already high oil prices. “If one reactor gets shut down it’s not the end of the world for Japan, but two, three, four… that’s a real problem,” says Peter Arias, a partner at the Seattle-based energy research company Reed Wasden. “Japan is not prepared for a full-on energy crisis.”
But it may get one: Tepco is preparing to shut down five reactors for repairs. Two more companies, Chubu Electric and Tohoku Electric, have also failed to report safety breaches. In light of the Tepco scandal, Chubu and Tohoku said that they shut down reactors late last week to conduct re-inspections. Tohoku revealed that it had neglected to report signs of cracks in one of its reactors first noticed in September 1998. Chubu said it had discovered radioactive water leaking from a turbine valve in early July, but still hasn’t shut down the facility in the city of Hamaoka. Industrial giant Hitachi has acknowledged that it, too, hid problems, such as cracks in neutron-measuring devices, to keep nuclear facilities it constructed up and running. That’s not all. In late August General Electric International, which built and maintains many of Tepco’s plants, admitted that it had falsified safety records at 37 locations.
Last week Tepco asserted that its facilities pose “no safety problem.” But experts disagree. They cite the company’s own acknowledgement that it has continued to operate five reactors in Fukushima and Niigata prefectures that have cracked core shrouds. These massive stainless-steel cylinders stabilize fuel and control rods and are designed to buffer the impact of earthquakes or violent accidents. If broken, they could allow coolant to leak or block control-rod movement, making it impossible for operators to prevent a meltdown, these experts claim. Tepco also admits to having camouflaged, repaired or replaced shrouds and other critical reactor components without authorization–stealthy behavior prohibited in many other countries. Upon hearing about such fixes, one German nuclear-safety official told an industry trade journal that similar conduct on his turf would “immediately lead to suspension of the [company’s] operating license, then we would turn the matter over to state prosecutors.”
That won’t happen in Japan. Last week Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said that it won’t prosecute Tepco’s top brass, but refuses to explain its decision. On Sept. 17, following an internal investigation, Tepco removed five senior executives but immediately rehired them as consultants. (NISA and Tepco declined to be interviewed for this story.) NISA has asked six power companies to recheck a total of 14 reactors it ordered inspected last year. According to the Yomiuri Shimbun, the agency’s latest directives “specify in detail what is meant by the term ‘crack’ " (in case its inspectors didn’t get it the first time).
Even without a power crunch, the scandals could damage Japan’s nuclear industry, which is already coping with financial troubles. Experts say that Tepco could lose $1 million in revenues per day for each reactor that’s shut down for repairs. The company is already sagging under a debt burden estimated at $100 billion. Beyond that, Japan’s atomic-energy advocates fear that safety issues could jeopardize future projects–especially a controversial scheme to convert Japan’s power plants to burn plutonium in so-called fast-breeder reactors. Critics say such plants are more dangerous to operate than conventional nukes and require huge volumes of weapons-grade fuel. “The Tepco scandal could and should be the death blow for the [plutonium] program,” says Steven Dolley, research director at the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington. “If this isn’t a wake-up call, I don’t know what would be.”
It certainly isn’t the first. Three years ago, in a town called Tokaimura, a botched effort to mix nuclear fuel threatened to trigger a major catastrophe just 125 kilometers from downtown Tokyo. Radiation leaked from the plant’s core for 18 hours in an incident that ranks third after Chernobyl and Three Mile Island in the annals of nuclear mishaps. Two workers have since died from radiation sickness.
Despite the problems, government officials regularly insist that Japan’s nuclear-plant operating and safety standards are the world’s highest. Regulations specify that equipment must be in “brand new condition,” for example. But in reality the regulatory system is lax. For the most part, the nuclear-power companies are expected to monitor themselves, filing routine status reports that regulators sign but seldom question. NISA, established after the Tokaimura incident, occasionally performs inspections of its own. But critics say they’re always pre-scheduled and tightly scripted.
Perhaps a bigger problem, say industry analysts, is that the power companies employ many workers who are either unqualified for their jobs or badly trained. In Tokaimura, for example, the workers who inadvertently caused the uranium they were handling to ignite in a blue flash three years ago were so ignorant, according to experts at the Nuclear Control Institute, that they didn’t understand the concept of “criticality”–the point at which a chemical reaction goes nuclear. According to a September 2000 paper by Nagamitsu Miura, a scholar at Tsuda College in Tokyo, 90 percent of the workers in the nuclear-power industry are “temporary employees who work at plants for one to three months at a time. These people are mostly farmers, fishermen or day laborers seeking to supplement their incomes. Some of them are homeless.”
The latest scandal illustrates the system’s many failings. In July 2000, an American inspector then working for General Electric International in Japan discovered 29 discrepancies between his own findings and reports Tepco had been providing to regulators to certify the safe operation of its nuclear plants. The inspector reportedly notified regulators–anonymously at first, then later by signed letter. But government officials ignored the alarm bells. What they did do is inform Tepco that it had a whistleblower in its midst. Government officials then sat by as the company and maintenance subcontractor GE covered up safety problems for the next two years. Regulators “wanted to avoid problems they couldn’t deal with so they neglected the information altogether,” a senior Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry official told NEWSWEEK. “Problems are negotiated and settled under the table. Danger is never a consideration.” (GE International refused to comment.)
Compounding the problem is what one Japanese government official calls the country’s “culture of secrecy.” It certainly extends to the mainstream media, which has abdicated its watchdog function. NEWSWEEK has learned that several members of the exclusive “press club” for journalists assigned to cover Tepco knew of safety lapses at the firm but kept silent. By last November, said one, “we had opportunities [to report] but no stories were written.” When asked why, another who claims to have known about the scandal last year said: “Tepco and the government are unbelievably strong.” If Japanese journalists probe too deeply, company officials may withhold information or refuse to give them interviews, and they may ultimately lose their jobs.
Atomic-energy boosters in Japan argue that today’s regulatory problems stem from overly stringent safety standards. In their view, anomalies like those concealed by Tepco pose no threat to public safety. They suggest revising Japanese law to conform to the realities in an industry where many reactors are in their third decade of service. But as Aileen Mioko Smith of the Kyoto-based antinuclear group Green Action points out, changing the rules to keep aging plants running only “increases the likelihood that, sooner or later, you will have a serious accident.”
Tokaimura was just that, and amid the current scandal environmental groups like Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center are demanding that reactors be shut down until they’re proven safe. Local politicians–especially ones in prefectures that host nuclear power plants–are feeling public pressure to crack down on the power companies. “Are they putting on a comedy?” asked Eisaku Sato, governor of Fukushima, following revelations that Tepco hid problems at local facilities. “What do they think about the people of the prefecture?” The bigger question is why the government has failed so miserably to assure that the nuclear-power industry isn’t headed for a disaster.
