130 miles northeast of Tokyo. March 11, 2011. One of the 15 largest nuclear power plants in the world was hit by a 9.0 quake and a following tsunami. We all know what happened to this Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Your worst nightmare. Meltdown. Death and destruction. A dead zone on shore and off the coast. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) began a clean-up that was estimated to take 40 years to implement. The same company has been charged with restarting Japan’s 50 nuclear power plants, most of which were shut down after the Fukushima disaster… but Japan needs the electricity. At Fukushima, job one: stabilize the plant and stop any and all emissions. Report Card: F.
They’re not exactly sure what the exact continuing radioactive leakage is, but estimates are staggering, and this has been going on at this level for two and a half years. “Highly radioactive water from Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is pouring out at a rate of 300 [metric] tons a day, officials said on [August 7th], as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered the government to step in and help in the clean-up... The admission indicates that two and a half years after the plant was hit by a huge earthquake and tsunami, plant operator [TEPCO], which only recently admitted water had leaked at all, has yet come to grips with the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
“Calling water containment at the Fukushima Daiichi station an ‘urgent issue,’ Mr Abe ordered the government for the first time to get involved to help struggling Tepco handle the crisis… The newly acknowledged leak from the plant … is enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool in barely a week. The water is spilling into the Pacific Ocean, but it was not immediately clear how much of a threat it poses.” Telegraph.co.uk, August 7th. No one is really sure what this means for the regional coastal water… or its flow of nuclear effluents to the rest of the world.
The stories “leaking out” of this process since the quake have been littered with small moments… that apparently have been bigger than announced and aggregated to rather unsustainable levels. “First, a rat gnawed through exposed wiring, setting off a scramble to end yet another blackout of vital cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Then, hastily built pits for a flood of contaminated water sprang leaks themselves. Now, a new rush of radioactive water has breached a barrier built to stop it, allowing heavily contaminated water to spill daily into the Pacific…
“Tepco had clung to the chance to lead the cleanup as an opportunity to redeem itself and regain its position as a leading member of Japan’s corporate community. But critics say it has continued to lose credibility by repeatedly underplaying dangers at the plant, following a pattern set in the early days of the disaster when it hid information about the extent of the damage and frequently bungled its response. The company balked at adding seawater to the reactors even as their cores became dangerously hot, for fear of ruining them for good, and officials did not acknowledge for two months that three reactors had suffered meltdowns.” New York Times, August 7th.
The Japanese government was following the U.S. government’s standard operating procedure when a privately owned facility creates a massive threat to millions of people: let private industry do it, particularly those in the private sector who under-engineered and helped exacerbate the problem in the first place. Strange for a society with a history of tons (metric?) of central regulation, but since the government really didn’t know what to do and had no solid plans, it just stepped back and let the quasi-perpetrator do it. Kinda like giving Wall Street hundreds of billions of dollars with the hope that they would clean up their own meltdown. Worked well for the stock market. Not so well for the average American worker, who continues to earn decreasing levels of buying power, year after year, saddled with additional taxes and debt that will linger for generations.
Japanese have known for years that the energy industry and government were a tad too cozy. “Tepco’s leadership has been particularly worrisome, critics say, since it remains enmeshed in the collusive ties between the government and the industry that many say made the plant vulnerable… Mr. Abe, a staunch defender of the country’s nuclear program, appears to have calculated that he needed to intervene to rebuild public trust and salvage a pillar of his economic revival plan: the restarting of many idled nuclear plants. That trust has been eroded not only by the original catastrophe, but also by two and a half years of sometimes embarrassing missteps by the plant’s operator… Tepco, and what many Japanese see as the company’s continuing attempts to mislead the public and cover up continuing troubles at the plant.
“‘This is not an issue we can let Tepco take complete responsibility of,’ Mr. Abe told a group of cabinet ministers gathered to discuss the water problem that has swiftly emerged as the biggest challenge at the plant and that appears to be slowly spiraling out of control. ‘We must deal with this at the national level.’ … But taking a bigger role in a vast and unprecedented cleanup may also be a political gamble for Mr. Abe, especially if the government proves as unable as Tepco to contain the unending leaks of radioactive materials from the devastated plant.” NY Times.
The lesson for us all, one that is exceptionally unlikely to be heeded by our heartless, do-nothing Congress, is that matters of public health, safety and profound national economic consequence are absolutely not going to find solutions in a world of self-regulation and allowing those who helped cause the problems be in charge of the fix. Since the tax and regulatory playing field is already heavily tilted in favor of those at the top of the food chain, there hasn’t really been a “free market” in recent memory. And you don’t stop bank fraud by making the tellers into the auditors!
I’m Peter Dekom, and understanding the necessity of detailed regulation, in a complex society with a plethora of evolving problems, seems to have eluded our national leadership.
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