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5 Downfall of nuclear
nationalism By Matthew Penney
Despite the description of the March 11,
2011, disaster as "outside safety expectations",
there were multiple warnings from Japanese
scientists, writers, activists, and international
bodies that a large earthquake and tsunami could
cripple Japan's nuclear plants. This article
examines how assumptions of nuclear safety
remained strong in Japan from the 1950s until the
2000s, even after numerous accidents that
demonstrated inadequate oversight, and ties these
assumptions to technological nationalism at the
heart of Japan's conservative political culture.
Toyoda Aritsune's book Nihon no
genpatsu gijutsu wa sekai o kaeru (Japan's
Nuclear Technology Can Change the World) was
published in December 2010, fewer than four months
before the March 11 tsunami struck. [1] Toyoda, a
science fiction author and longtime proponent of
nuclear power, writes that " ... nuclear
energy has become the
global standard. Japan, which has long pursued the
peaceful use of nuclear energy, now holds the
world's highest level of nuclear technology and
knowhow." [2] He describes anti-nuclear positions
as a "fashion" or "fad." [3] He even boasts of how
"earthquakes have proven the safety of Japanese
nuclear technology." [4] Now, in 2012, this brand
of technological nationalism and curt dismissal of
criticism seems like so much hubris.
Toyoda's claims concerning the quality of
Japanese reactors were essentially correct -
Japan's nuclear technology was and is among the
world's best. The Fukushima meltdown did not take
place because of but rather despite Japan's
undeniably advanced nuclear technology.
This essay attempts a cultural history of
nuclear power in Japan, examining the terms used
to represent it to the public and the blind spots
which allowed the worst nuclear disaster since
Chernobyl to take place. Even if Toyoda is correct
about the level of Japanese nuclear technology,
his book still encapsulates the hubris of decades
of conservative energy discourse - the idea that
best necessarily means safe.
I will argue
that frequent use of the terms of economic and
technological nationalism stifled debate and
fostered a system that allowed warning signs to be
overlooked. [5] If "technology" is used to mean
not only the sophisticated reactor cores and fuel
reprocessing facilities, but also the "application
and practice of science" as the whole network of
personal and institutional elements through which
Japan's nuclear plants have been organized and
overseen, Toyoda's claims are false.
They
and the discourse of which they are a part
indicate a fixation on "Japanese technology", a
nationalist marker that ties into the whole
trajectory of Japan's postwar development, which
left the country vulnerable on March 11.
Warnings ignored The backup
diesel generators at Fukushima Daiichi, which
could have maintained cooling functions and
forestalled the radiation crisis, were built to
withstand waves of up to 5.7 meters. The tsunami
that struck Japan's northeastern coast on March 11
is reported to have been as high as 15 meters,
nearly three times the level considered to be
safe.
In the months since the tsunami,
online sources and the Japanese press have drawn
attention to examples of the Liberal Democratic
Party, in power until 2009 and the major steward
of Japan's nuclear policy since the 1950s,
repeatedly ignoring warning signs.
In
1991, the Japanese government received a report
from America's Nuclear Regulatory Commission
warning of the vulnerability of backup cooling
systems at Japanese power plants. [6]
In
2000, Tokyo Electric, the power company that runs
the Fukushima Daiichi plant, was found to have
falsified dozens of safety reports, hiding cracks
in reactor shrouds. The deception was not
uncovered by Japan's nuclear regulators, but was
revealed by a whistleblower from one of Tokyo
Electric's international partners. Falsification
had been going on for over a decade, calling into
question the commitment to disclosure of Japan's
large energy companies, as well as the competence
and effectiveness of atomic inspectors and the
entire system of regulation. [7]
In 2001,
Minoura Koji, a Tohoku University geologist,
published a paper on a ninth-century earthquake
and tsunami that devastated the region around
Fukushima. In the decade after the paper appeared,
Minoura and other researchers repeatedly presented
the findings to Tokyo Electric representatives,
arguing that the historical tsunami was much
larger than the 5.7 meter level that Fukushima
Daiichi was built to withstand and should be
factored into risk assessment. Their assertions
were still "under review" when the March 11
tsunami hit. [8]
In 2006, a Japan
Communist Party member of the lower house of
government raised the example of an earthquake and
tsunami in Chile, arguing that several Japanese
nuclear power stations including Fukushima Daiichi
could see their cooling mechanisms knocked offline
by a similar six-meter wave. His calls for more
stringent anti-tsunami measures were ignored. [9]
In 2007, the Japan Communist Party again
singled out the Fukushima Daiichi plant and called
on both the Liberal Democratic Party government
and Tokyo Electric to improve tsunami resistance
measures. They tried to draw attention to the very
flaw that sparked the present crisis, but were
ignored once again. [10]
In 2008, the
International Atomic Energy Agency warned the
Japanese government that earthquake resistance
measures at Japanese plants were outdated. [11]
These are some of the most forceful
warnings relevant to Fukushima Daiichi, but the
list is by no means a complete one.
To
explain the lack of oversight and the hesitance to
act when flaws were pointed out, we need look no
further than the tight relationship between elite
conservatives, business, and bureaucracy. For
example, in 2007, the Communist Party newspaper
Akahata reported that virtually all top managers
at Tokyo Electric had given personal donations to
the Liberal Democratic Party, at the level of
several tens of thousands of dollars yearly. [12]
In the following year, the government
reduced the mandatory inspection requirement for
Fukushima Daiichi from once a year to once every
two years. [13] Corporate donations from the
nuclear industry subsequently wer even greater. In
2009, companies linked with the industry gave the
equivalent of around US$10 million to the Liberal
Democrats. Donations to the Democratic Party
barely topped $300,000. [14]
In addition,
since the 1990s dozens of senior energy
bureaucrats have joined Tokyo Electric after
retiring from public service through the process
known popularly as amakudari or "descent
from heaven". [15] Employment with private firms
is seen as a form of "reward" by bureaucrats who
reciprocate by using their ministry connections to
smooth over regulatory issues. When a civil
servant visits a Tokyo Electric plant, he or she
may be met by a former boss, now working for the
company.
Also important is the
"deregulation" mantra of the Liberal Democrats
under Koizumi Junichiro, prime minister between
2001 and 2006. Everything from labor oversight to
inspections in the energy industry were downgraded
in deference to a neo-liberal "international
competitiveness" mandate. [16] The Koizumi
government also cut funding for specific measures
including nuclear plant earthquake resistance
research and development programs for robots to be
used in nuclear emergencies. [17]
These
examples may help to establish the context of poor
oversight and official inaction, but they do not
give much insight into how Japan's conservative
politicians convinced the Japanese public and, in
the end, themselves, that nuclear accidents like
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were impossible in
Japan. To understand this, we can turn to examples
of political rhetoric surrounding Japanese atomic
energy.
Technology, growth,
nationalism The April 25, 2011, issue of
news magazine Weekly Gendai described the
"reality" of the Fukushima Daiichi crisis, which
10 days earlier had been upgraded to "Level 7",
the highest on the International Nuclear Event
Scale and the same class as the Chernobyl
disaster, as having "transcended imagination".
[18] The article points out that in essence,
Japan's nuclear energy had always been imagined as
safe by the government. The failure of Japanese
nuclear technology was simply outside the realm of
imagination.
In an April 26 editorial, the
Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's (and the world's) largest
circulation newspaper, returned to the Japanese
government's assessment of the Chernobyl disaster
in 1986. The tragedy in the Ukraine was termed an
example of an "operator mistake". [19] It was
judged a "man-made catastrophe" of a type not
possible in Japan where technological efficiency
was held to guarantee safety.
The
political rhetoric of atomic energy speaks to
questions of national identity. Political rhetoric
does not define national identity, but politicians
attempt to set the tone for acceptable public
expression of what constitutes community, norms,
and values. Discussions of nuclear safety in terms
of unquestioned Japanese qualities helped to
create a blind spot. The assumption that Japanese
technology was essentially safe stymied debate. In
particular, it was used repeatedly by the Liberal
Democrats to dismiss serious inquiries about
nuclear safety.
There were dozens of
exchanges on issues of nuclear safety in the Diet
between Liberal Democratic Party prime ministers
and cabinet members and members of the opposition
Communist and Socialist Parties from the 1970s
until 2009. Almost without exception,
conservatives dismissed safety concerns with a
curt line or two and repeatedly referred to
Japanese nuclear technology as uniquely safe.
The following are two examples of
nationalism and presumed national characteristics
entering into debates over nuclear power.
In 1982, LDP Diet member Uekusa Yoshiteru
described atomic energy as "supporting the nation"
and "answering the people's demands for
prosperity". He went on to describe Japan as "a
country built on science and technology" and tells
of how he " ... wants everyone to cooperate with
our atomic energy plans to make Japan a world
leader".
He castigated critics who refer
to spent fuel reprocessing areas as nuclear
"graveyards", "garbage dumps" or "toilets", as
using "dirty" rhetoric and opposing, not because
of legitimate concerns, but "just for the sake of
opposition". He said that critics should refer to
sites properly as "waste product disposal and
reprocessing facilities" instead.
Conservative politicians have frequently
placed themselves as representatives of scientific
rationalism and branded critics as succumbing to
passion or irrationality, dismissing their
arguments while simultaneously using an emotive
language of national purpose and progress that
masks the inconvenient details. Uekusa speaks as
though "safety has already been guaranteed" at
nuclear plants in his constituency. [20]
At worst, the terms of technological
nationalism have made accidents seem an
impossibility. Tokai Kisaburo, an LDP
Vice-Minister of Education, Science, and
Technology in the Fukuda cabinet, was confronted
about Japan's nuclear safety record in Diet debate
in 2007. He described the use of technology to
minimize risk as fundamental to progress and
nuclear technology as a particular example of "how
far we have come". He could not say that the risk
of a catastrophe is zero, but he did suggest that
it might be something "like 0.000001 percent" and
that acceptance of small risks is necessary to
move forward. [21]
This style of
representation predates Japan's post-war economic
boom. In 1950, in the latter part of the American
occupation, future prime minister Nakasone
Yasuhiro, then serving his first term in the House
of Representatives, claimed that freedom to carry
out atomic energy research and join America and
the club of Western scientific powers at the
forefront of an energy revolution would be a mark
of Japan's restoration to the global stage. [22]
The "peaceful use of atomic energy" became
a way of putting the war behind through the
development of a technologically founded
nationalism befitting what was described as the
post-war "cultural state". In this way, atomic
energy was put forward as a marker of Japan's
relative national quality.
Politicians
like Nakasone forged links with the conservative
media establishment to promote this new vision.
Shibata Hidetoshi, a Yomiuri media group manager
and right hand man of pro-nuclear don Shouriki
Matsutarou, is reported to have told American
representatives, "In Japan we have an old saying -
'eliminate poison with poison' ... In order to get
rid of opposition to nuclear weapons, we can get a
lot of use out of the 'peaceful use of nuclear
power' idea, and give hope for a great industrial
revolution of tomorrow." [23]
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