The crisis left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing, also destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and released radioactive tissues over a giant area. The turn of fate led to widespread evacuations, large economic losses and the imaginable closure of all nuclear power plants. Japan.
A decade later, the nuclear industry has responded fully to the protection considerations defined through Fukushima.
We specialize in engineering, medicine and public policy, and have asked our respective governments to protect nuclear energy.
Kiyoshi Kurokawa chaired an independent national commission, the Independent Nuclear Accident Investigation Commission (NAIIC), established through the Japan Diet to investigate the root causes of the Fukushima Daiichi accident.
Najmedin Meshkati, member and technical adviser to a committee appointed through the US National Academy of Sciences. But it’s not the first time To identify the classes learned this time to make US nuclear forces plants themselves a problem. But it’s not the first time Be safer and safer.
These reviews and many others concluded that Fukushima was a man-made accident, caused by herbal hazards, which may have been avoided.
Experts widely state that the fundamental reasons were lax regulatory oversight in Japan and a culture of useless protection in the public service operating the plant.
These disorders are far from unique to Japan. As long as advertising nuclear power plants operate anywhere in the world, it is imperative that all nations be informed of what happened in Fukushima and continue to double nuclear security.
The 2011 crisis hit the Fukushima plant devastatingly: first, the magnitude 9. 0 earthquake cut off-site power supply; then the tsunami (17 meters high) violated the plant dam and flooded parts of the site.
Flooding disabled monitoring and cooling purposes in various sets of the six-reactor complex.
Despite heroic efforts by plant workers, 3 reactors suffered severe damage to the radioactive core and 3 reactor buildings were caused by hydrogen explosions.
Off-site emissions from radioactive tissues have infected the lands of Fukushima and several neighboring prefectures.
Some 165,000 more people have left the region and the Japanese government has established an exclusion zone around the plant, covering 807 square kilometers in its extensive maximum phase.
For the first time in the history of democratic constitutional Japan, the Japanese Parliament approved the creation of an independent national commission to investigate the root causes of this disaster.
In its report, the committee concluded that Japan’s Nuclear Security Commission had never been independent of industry, or the harsh Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which promotes nuclear energy.
For his part, the operator of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant. (Tepco), had a history of contempt for safety. The company had recently published an error-prone assessment of the tsunami threat in Fukushima that underestimated the threats.
Events at the Onagawa nuclear power plant, 64 kilometres from Fukushima, Onagawa in Oshika district and Ishinomaki city in Miyagi Prefecture told a combined story.
Onogawa, who owned and operated through Tohoku Electric Power Co. , approached the epicentre of the earthquake and went through an even greater tsunami.
Its 3 reactors in service were of the same type and age as those in Fukushima and were subject to the same low regulatory oversight.
But Onogawa stopped safely and remarkably intact.
In our view, this is due to the fact that the application of Tohoku had a proactive and deeply rooted culture of protection. The company has learned of earthquakes and tsunamis elsewhere, adding a primary crisis in Chile in 2010, and has continually made progress on its countermeasures. , while Tepco has ignored and ignored those warnings.
When a regulated industry manages to cajon or manipulate the agencies that oversee it, making them inconsiderate and enslaved, the result is known as regulatory capture.
As the NAIIC report concluded, Fukushima is an example of a school.
Japanese regulators “did not monitor or monitor nuclear safety . . . They have moved away from their direct daily jobs by allowing operators to apply regulations voluntarily,” the report states.
Effective regulation is mandatory for nuclear protection. Public services will also need to create internal security cultures, a set of features and attitudes that make protection issues a highly sensitive priority.
For an industry, the culture of protection functions as the immune system of the human body, protecting it from pathogens and repelling diseases.
A plant that fosters a culture of positive protection encourages workers to ask questions and apply a rigorous and prudent technique in all facets of their work, as well as promote open communication between line workers and management.
But Tepco’s culture has a Japanese mindset that emphasizes hierarchy and acceptance and discourages questions.
It is sufficient that human points, such as operator errors and a culture of poor protection, played a key role in the 3 primary nuclear power plant accidents: Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979, Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986 and Fukushima Daiichi in 2011. .
Unless nuclear nations do better on either front, this list will most likely grow.
Today, some 440 nuclear reactors are in service worldwide, adding around 50 structures in countries such as China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
Many advocates argue that, given the risk of climate replacement and the growing need for carbon-free fundamental electricity generation, nuclear power plays a role in the long-term combination of global energy.
Others call for the abolition of nuclear energy. But this may not be feasible for the foreseeable future.
In our view, the urgent top priority is to expand strict system-based nuclear protection standards, a culture of protection and much closer cooperation between countries and their independent regulators.
We see disturbing indications in the United States that independent nuclear regulation is eroding and that nuclear service companies are resisting the pressure of being informed and are delaying the adoption of accepted protection practices around the world, such as the addition of filters to prevent radioactive emissions. reactor containment buildings with the same characteristics as Fukushima Daiichi.
The ultimate lesson we see is a desire to combat nuclear nationalism and esis. Ensuring close cooperation between countries that are looming nuclear projects is now essential as the forces of populism, nationalism and anti-globalism spread.
We also consider that the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose project is to publicize safe, safe and non-violent uses of nuclear energy, deserves to urge its Member States to strike a balance between national sovereignty and external duty when it comes to operating nuclear reactors in its facilities. Territory.
As Chernobyl and Fukushima have taught the world, the consequences of radiation are prevented at national borders.
To begin with, The Persian Gulf countries set aside political disputes and recognize that with the launch of a nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates and others planned in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, they have a non-unusual interest in nuclear protection and collective protection. emergency interventions.
The entire region is vulnerable to radioactive rain and water pollution through a nuclear twist of fate anywhere in the Gulf.
We believe that the global remains in the same scenario as it experienced in 1989, when Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. made this insightful argument:
“Ten years ago, Three Mile Island was the spark that ignited the funeral pyre of a once promising energy source. As the nuclear industry asks the country for a momentary look in the context of global warming, it is fair to practice how its supporters respond to enhanced security surveillance This will be the measure of whether nuclear energy becomes a phoenix or an extinct species. Kiyoshi Kurokawa and Najmedin Meshkati / The Conversation, CC via AP