ASIA-ENERGY: Gambling on Nuclear Power

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Johanna Son

MANILA, Aug 8 1996 (IPS) - The vote that a small Japanese town made this week against a nuclear power project has not dented Tokyo’s construction programme and similarly is unlikely to do much to curb Asia’s growing infatuation with nuclear energy.

At a time when all but a handful of countries have stopped ordering nuclear plants, Asia is turning to them to fill huge demands for energy and to cut dependence on imported oil.

Asia, where electricity demand in developing countries is growing by an average eight per cent a year, has more than 80 of the world’s 439 nuclear plants. Some 15 more are currently being built in the region, and nearly 60 more are planned.

Countries planning new reactors include China, Taiwan, Japan, Pakistan, India, South Korea, and Indonesia.

“Most planned reactors are in the Asian region, with fast- growing economies and rapidly rising electricity demand,” notes the Australian Nuclear and Science Technology Organisation (ANSTO) in a new briefing paper.

The proposed nuclear plant project at Maki, a small coastal town in Japan’s Niigata prefecture, is among six new nuclear plants to be built in the country over the next decade. Forty-nine nuclear plants supply a third of Japan’s power needs.

Amid safety concerns, more than 60 per cent of Maki folk Sunday voted ‘no’ to the nuclear project in a referendum that is not legally binding.

Tokyo says its nuclear plans will continue.

“In the absence of substitutes, we must consider nuclear power the central part of our future energy source,” Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto said: “We need to seriously tackle the issue of safety and gain public understanding.”

Takashi Ezaki of Japan’s Agency of Natural Resources and Energy was more blunt: “There is no change in the domestic energy policy of depending on nuclear energy and there will be no freeze on the Maki nuclear power plant project.”

But Asian anti-nuclear activists say communities from Japan down to Indonesia are rejecting the nuclear option. “Nuclear power plants must not be used as a source of energy in Asia because nuclear power plants and humanity are incompatible,” they said at the ‘No Nukes Asia Forum’ in Jakarta last week.

They say many Asian reactors, including those in Japan, have had accidents and caused damage to environment and human health. Asia is not learning from the mistakes of the industrialised world, they say.

“The worst nuclear disasters in the world prove that indeed, there is no such thing as a ‘safe reactor’,” said the ‘No Nukes Asia Forum’.

In a new report, the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID) said: “The risk of nuclear accidents may be statistically tiny, but when they happen they can be catastrophic.”

Proponents however argue that nuclear power is cleaner than burning fossil fuel and more benign than coal and oil-fired plants that pollute the air and contribute to greenhouse gases; or even hydroelectric plants that displace people and inundate fertile land.

Opponents rather make the case for natural gas and hydropower which are safer and cheaper. Nuclear power just replaces one environmental risk with another, they say. Moreover, it is more costly due to the huge funds needed to build the plants, the 15- year construction period and also poses problems in the storing of waste and decommissioning.

Yet, as Asia faces the question of whether it taking the nuclear road is worth the gamble, many countries clearly believe it is.

Early members of Asia’s nuclear club include Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, which rely for a third or more of electricity needs on nuclear energy. Others have ambitious plans.

Despite polls by activists saying 77.7 per cent of people oppose it, the Indonesian government plans to start building in three years a nuclear plant near Mt. Muria in Central Java. Indonesia, whose electricity demand is rising by 15 per cent a year, plans 12 plants by 2015.

Nuclear firms are flocking to Asia for new customers, aware that the region will account for two-thirds of the world’s new electrical generating capacity over the next decade. “Much of this growth will be in China, Japan, India and Korea,” ANSTO said, adding the nuclear share in this should be 10 per cent.

China has three nuclear plants, four under construction and plans for 10 over the next decade, as officials contemplate a 20- fold rise in nuclear capacity by 2020.

India has 10 plants in operation, though nuclear power supplies less than two per cent of electricity. It has at least four plants being built and 12 more are planned.

Even countries like Thailand and Vietnam are interested. The Thai Cabinet formed a committee recently to study the feasibility of using nuclear energy, in the light of an expected seven per cent growth in electricity demand for the next two decades.

North Korea had been building two reactors until they were halted due to suspicions it was acquiring capability for nuclear weapons.

The trend is such that proposals are now being floated for Asia to have a regional agency that will oversee nuclear programmes and tackle issues ranging from its peaceful use to the dumping of nuclear waste.

In May Philippine President Fidel Ramos suggested that Asia put up ‘Asiatom’ — its version of Euratom or the European Atomic Energy Community, to regulate nuclear programmes and ensure a “peaceful nuclear club”.

Ramos said: “What we must forestall is nuclear proliferation in East Asia — either clandestine or open weapons development programmes or the unregulated handling of spent nuclear fuel, which could be diverted toward military purposes — or become a regional waste hazard.”

But even as nuclear power’s popularity grows in Asia, affected communities are speaking out against it.

Taiwanese villagers opposed to hosting nuclear plants have marched in protest in recent years. In Japan, nuclear energy is becoming a campaign issue in local elections. And in its April report, INFID called on citizens to prevent foreign lending and aid for Indonesia’s first nuclear plant.

Some say going nuclear is not the best option for now and that investments are better put in sustainable hydroelectric schemes and natural gas, research in wind and solar power, cutting heavy subsidies for electric power in Asia, reducing wastage and discouraging growth in the use of cars that guzzle oil.

“Energy efficiency and conservation are also becoming increasingly recognised as a far quicker way to meet energy demand, rather than wait the long lead time taken by nuclear programmes to deliver electricity,” explained Jean McSorley, Asia coordinator of Greenpeace’s nuclear energy campaign.

The problem, however, is that these are far easier discussed than carried out.

Said Tokyo government spokesman Seiroku Kajiyama: “If the Japanese people are going to say ‘no’ to the setting up of nuclear power plants amid high demand for electric power, they must be willing to go as far as cutting down on their electric power consumption.”