ENERGY-JAPAN: New Power Plant Dims Anti-Nuke Campaign

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Sep 25 1998 (IPS) - Japan’s decision to allow construction of a new nuclear power plant has dealt a setback to environmentalists, anti-nuclear lobbyists and communities opposed to hosting such power facilities in the country.

The Atomic Energy Commission gave the green light last month for a new nuclear plant, a decision that shocked many because it comes after more than a decade during which virtually no new reactors were built.

During that time, growing public opposition and several accidents in nuclear plants had thrown cold water on the government’s ambitious plans to meet Japan’s expanding energy needs with more nuclear power.

These mishaps have ranged from revelations last year that low- level radiation had been leaking from the Tokaimura nuclear waste storage site for three decades, to a coolant leakage in the Monju reactor in December 1995.

The new plant, a light-water reactor to be built in Higashidori in Aomori prefecture in northern Japan, is the first of 20 new plants that the government advisory panel envisions.

“This is a bitter struggle,” explained Masako Sawai of the Citizen’s Nuclear Information Centre, a non-governmental organisation at the forefront of the anti-nuclear lobby in Japan.

The ‘Asahi Shimbun’ daily newspaper reports that among the 20 plants endorsed by the government committee are several whose construction is already being hotly challenged by local residents.

“Even power company officials believe it will prove impossible to construct all 20 plants,” the newspaper had opined in July, when first reports hinting of government approval was released to the press.

But Yoichi Fujie, head of the Atomic Energy Commission, indicates the government has really decided to proceed with nuclear energy.

“We are aware of public opposition. But the merits of nuclear power must be recognised,” he said during a special broadcast carried last week over NHK, Japan’s national television station.

Up to 30 percent of Japan’s energy needs are supplied by some 50 commercial nuclear plants.

For environmental groups, most worrisome is how nuclear proponents have taken to pushing nuclear energy as a clean source of power that would enable Japan to cut its rising emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide.

To reduce emissions of carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by around fiscal 2010 as agreed at the Kyoto global warming conference in December 1997, the Council of Comprehensive Energy Policies, a government task force, calls for lowering Japan’s energy dependence on fossil fuels from 83 percent now to 75 percent.

The Council report says this can be achieved by building new nuclear power reactors and raising Japan’s reliance on nuclear- generated electricity by 60 percent.

The report goes on to cite supply-demand projections that it says would allow for lowering carbon dioxide emissions, while attaining 2 percent annual economic growth and improvements in energy safety.

Activists say the nuclear lobby is simply trying to use another environmental cause — efforts to curb global warming — to its advantage. “This is a clever move by officials and intended to be used as propaganda to gain public support. But they will not win,” said Sawai.

Environmentalists say the Council’s report ignores the multitude of problems that have dogged Japan’s nuclear power industry in recent years.

In fact, public opposition to nuclear power due to fears of accidents has made it more difficult to find acceptable sites for new plants.

Japan also faces a nuclear waste storage problem and people worry about the growing plutonium stockpile — which government reports put at 20 tonnes — in the country’s nuclear plants.

Sei Nakahara, a nuclear power expert with Greenpeace Japan, explains that the breakdown of Monju, the nation’s prototype fast- breeder reactor that closed after a sodium leak accident, has boosted the stockpile of high-level spent fuel, a mix of plutonium and uranium that can no longer be used there.

Activists add Japan is treading dangerous ground by going ahead without resolving the issue of where to store waste from nuclear fuel in the future.

By environmentalists’ estimates, Japanese light-water reactors which began operating in 1970 have discharged 124,940 tonnes of spent fuel so far. Of this, 5,600 tonnes were sent to Europe for reprocessing and 6,400 tonnes are stored in on-site facilities.

The saturation of storage sites, a problem made worse by communities’ opposition to hosting new nuclear plant or waste sites, is a pressing concern for the government.

After years of negotiations that delayed the construction of a storage site in Aomori prefecture, its local government relented to official pressure in July and agreed to have spent fuel brought to a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in a village.

In an effort to reduce Japan’s accumulation of excess plutonium, Tokyo plans to begin in 1999 in two prefectures, a controversial mixed-oxide (MOX) utilisation plan that was approved in 1997 after intense protests in prefectures subjected to the plan.

The process, which involves burning a highly toxic mix of plutonium and uranium on a commercial scale, will be the first in the world. “Naturally the process, which is not only costly, is highly risky,” explained Nakahara.