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Energy Transition Law Ends France’s Nuclear Renaissance 

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2015
By Kelly Lundeen

Nuclear power is on the decline—evidence is everywhere. A contributing analyst for Energy Investor, Jeff Siegel, wrote in a July article, “I changed my mind…. nuclear can’t cut it.” Sweden, which derives 42 percent of its electricity from nuclear, is closing four out of ten reactors due to the burdensome cost of nuclear energy. Now the financial crisis of France’s nuclear power industry has forced the country to announce an unprecedented Energy Transition Law that will reduce the share of nuclear energy from 75 percent to 50 percent of its total portfolio in less than ten years. This follows on the heels of a report released in June by the French Agency for Environment and Energy Management demonstrating how France could reach 100 percent renewable energy by 2050.

While France has aspired to fuel the nuclear renaissance, economic woes have plagued the industry. The large French nuclear power company Areva recently entered bankruptcy after a loss of $7.37 billion over four years and had to be taken over by the government-run EDF. Yet EDF is having financial troubles of its own, with a $38 billion debt and a negative cash flow. Amidst a throng of reactor construction contracts going over budget and running years behind schedule, along with the discovery of a major design flaw, the company had to abandon several projects. Since our last Quarterly, Areva’s reactor licenses for Calvert Cliffs 3 in Maryland and Callaway 2 in Missouri have been officially canceled. The French government needed a new plan to prevent an economic disaster for the country.

While a financial predicament has led France to see the non-radioactive beam of light in renewable energy, anti-nuclear organizations have always opposed nuclear power on ethical grounds. Pressure from these groups even resulted in EDF spying on Greenpeace, for which they were found guilty in 2011. This movement continues. As we go to press, there is an international action against radioactive uranium transport from Hamburg, Germany to Narbonne, France. A large anti-nuclear contingent is being planned at the United Nations Climate Change Convention beginning December 12, 2015, in Paris. (See http://www.wiseinternational.org/campaign/march-paris.) There is no doubt that the anti-nuclear movement has had an impact on the Energy Transition Law.

The new policy was passed in July by the French Parliament. While it could have gone further, the plan is very ambitious and will need support in order to be fully implemented. After replacing 25 percent of the nation’s electricity with renewable energy by 2025, it will continue to increase to 40 percent renewables by 2040. The Energy Transition Law will remove obstacles that have hindered renewable energy development, and it includes a carbon tax. More importantly, it gives France a place at the head of the table as it hosts the UN climate talks in December.

—Nuclear Heritage Network, Aug. 19; ClimateWire, Jul. 29; Energy & Capital, Jul. 22; Greenpeace France, Jun. 23, 2015

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Reflections of Bolivia

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2015
Through the Prism of Nonviolence
 By John Heid

High in the Bolivian Andes lies Al Salar De Uyuni, a region of vast, snow-white salt flats as far as the eye can see. The prevailing sound there is the hush of wind sweeping across the treeless expanse. And too there is a silence so palpable one can almost touch it. The rain-soaked salt plateau mirrors the clouds. The horizon vanishes. Earth and sky are one. Seamless. Euclidean geometry is out the window. The world as I have known it turned upside down in Al Salar. I felt as though I was walking in the sky, ungrounded, between spaces—surrounded by wonder yet out of place. It was at once an exhilarating and unsettling feeling, an apt metaphor for my time in Bolivia.

For reasons still unclear to me, I have felt drawn to the Andes for decades. When given the opportunity to study Spanish at the Maryknoll Mission Center’s Language Institute, I leapt. I wanted to be immersed in this mountain civilization—so outside my familiar environs. I knew Bolivia still had a vibrant indigenous culture. I knew of its socialist-style government and that it is not a particularly popular tourist destination for most US citizens. These were selling points. So with a backpack of clothing, Spanish grammar books and immeasurable privilege I went to learn. I had no idea what I was getting into.

For three months I lived with a Bolivian family in Cochabamba, known as the city of eternal spring. The valley of Cochabamba, at nearly 9,000 feet, is situated between the hot, humid jungle of the Beni and the frigid, arid altiplano, the Andean plateau. In Cochabamba I felt like Alice in Wonderland. Plants that are potted in the US, like poinsettias and hibiscus, are full size trees that line many of the city’s streets. Something colorful was always in bloom.

Cochabamba came into the international limelight in 2000 during what became known as the Water War. Under pressure from the World Bank, the Bolivian government rescinded the existing water rights laws and privatized the utility. Then the administration negotiated a contract with the predatorial international conglomerate, Bechtel, to sell the water. Rates rose 300 percent. No source of water was exempt, not even rainfall.

Bechtel tried to charge people for the rain they gathered in pails. In a unique moment of rural and urban solidarity the various classes and sectors of Cochabamban society resisted. Streets were blocked. Business as usual came to a screeching halt. Among the protest banners one stood out: “¡El Agua Es Nuestra, Carajo!” “The Water is ours, damn it!” Months of vigorous public protest ultimately forced the government to break the contract. Oscar Olivera, one of the movement’s primary organizers, told me: “The struggle was about more than just water, it was about our peoples’ fundamental right to make their own decisions.”

Although I was in a classroom for 12 weeks, the real lessons were on the streets, in the markets, city parks, and on the trufis (a major form of public transportation.) History, like the water wars, went well beyond grammar books tutoring me in the nature of this predominantly indigenous society. This immersion was as rich and disorienting as the Al Salar.

For me, Bolivia is a country of vast contrasts beginning with its geography. There are steamy jungles, and the altiplano with its year-round snow and dizzying elevation. Indigenous women in their black bowler hats and colorful traditional polleras walk alongside women dressed in fitted blue jeans and power suits—both often held cell phones. High-walled residences characterize the cities, while vast areas of the country are sublime fields of rose and saffron colored quinoa plants.

The air quality of Cochabamba rivals the worst in the hemisphere, and there are four days a year where the streets are closed to all forms of motorized traffic, except emergency vehicles. These Dias del Peatóns, designed to raise environmental awareness, transform the city’s streets into a world of informal parades as families walk to city parks to picnic and to ball parks to play soccer—traditional indigenous culture alongside contemporary.

Bolivian society has witnessed enormous transformation over the past decade with election of a socialist-style government. Constitutional reforms have removed many of the once legal racist barriers that European colonization imported. Yet human rights activists point out that there still is no access to public water in Cochabamba’s poorest areas while in upscale neighborhoods residents fill their swimming pools. Class inequity persists despite the success of the Water War 15 years ago. Bolivia was a stark reminder of the challenges every society faces in terms of providing and protecting basic human rights and services for all its members, regardless of the form of government in place.

The country shared something of its heart with me by way of the Spanish language. Still there are much deeper lessons to be learned, a practice that would require studying Quechua and Amyara, two of the country’s most-used indigenous languages.

Bolivia has two official flags: One is the familiar tri-colored banner with the National Coat of Arms at center; the other is the Wiphala, the indigenous flag. The rainbow-colored Wiphala was given its official designation in 2009 by way of a revision of the national constitution. The two fly side-by-side. This powerful symbolic gesture epitomizes, for me, the vision and challenge of a multicultural, plurinational people. Two flags, one people. I was deeply privileged to be a brief spectator in this odyssey of transformation.

—John Heid lives and works at the Casa Mariposa Community in Tucson, Arizona. 

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Nuclear Heartland: Revised, Nukewatch’s Newest Publication 

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2015

The new Revised Edition of Nukewatch’s groundbreaking 1988 book Nuclear Heartland is now available from Nukewatch. Edited and expanded by Nukewatch staffers John LaForge and Arianne Peterson, the book includes updated maps and directions to the 450 remaining Minuteman III nuclear missile silos, as well as a foreward by Matthew Rothschild, former Editor of the Progressive magazine, and an afterword by long-time Nukewatch Co-Director Bonnie Urfer.

Because so many citizens have the mistaken impression that our land-based ballistic missiles have all gone the way of the Berlin Wall, Nukewatch is eager to remind everyone that 450 of the anachronistic and destabalizing missiles are still deployed on alert status: they are as vulnerable as ever to ill-behaving missile crews, incompetent commanding officers, and hair-raising computer glitches.

And, as in the 1980s when Nuclear Heartland first appeared, the missile silo sites are just as accessible and in need of protest and resistance as they’ve ever been.

Please see the back cover of this Quarterly to order your copy and copies for your local libraries.

Below are some excerpts from the Revised Edition:

From the New Introduction

Much has changed in the missile fields since the appearance of Nuclear Heartland in 1988.

The original Guide to the 1,000 missile silos of the United States brought much-needed attention to the mostly ignored or unknown presence of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in the Great Plains.

Today, public criticism of nuclear weapons and war policy is on the rise around the world, in part because of revived recognition of and interest in the indiscriminate effects and the outlaw status of weapons of mass destruction. A well-publicized series of three international conferences on the health and environmental effects of nuclear weapons, along with the growth of several new anti-nuclear coalitions around the world, have re-energized the abolition movement after a rather long lull in popular protest—brought on by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, the seemingly endless War on Terror, and the urgent compound crises of climate change, resource depletion, population growth, and pollution.

Over half of the 1,000 Minuteman missiles we charted 27 years ago have been withdrawn, and three entire missile fields have been decommissioned. The ICBMs of Missouri, South Dakota, and Grand Forks, North Dakota are now all gone. In addition, 50 of the 200 missiles once deployed in Wyoming around F.E. Warren Air Force Base—flights P, Q, R, S, and T—were deactivated as of August 19, 2008, and have been permanently removed….

Additionally, the Pentagon announced on April 8, 2014, that to comply with the New START agreement, 50 more Minuteman IIIs would be removed from around Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.

Still, 25 years after the end of the Cold War, 450 Minuteman IIIs poison the Great Plains with their thermonuclear warheads and their constant threat of unlimited mass destruction.

Oddly, the National Park Service in South Dakota and the State Historical Society of North Dakota have turned former missile silo sites into “historical” landmarks—as if the era of intercontinental nuclear madness were a thing of the past. …

The United States currently has about 7,100 nuclear warheads, down slightly from its 1994 total of 7,770. About 2,080 warheads are deployed or launch-ready on missiles and bombers, and another 2,680 are in storage and could be hastily brought into use. The military keeps roughly 2,340 other “retired” but intact warheads in storage awaiting dismantlement mostly at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico….

Today’s Minuteman III missiles are still expensively clothed, housed, and maintained on “alert status” in three fields of 150 missiles each: at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota; at F.E. Warren AFB in Cheyenne, Wyoming; and at Malmstrom AFB in Great Falls, Montana. As of February 2015, each missile carries a single warhead, either the 335-kiloton W78 or the 300-kiloton W87.

From chapter III, “The Drawdown”

Political motivations and strategies aside, reality in the nuclear heartland changed forever on September 27, 1991, when President George H.W. Bush ordered the standdown of all 450 Minuteman II missiles. Dick Cheney, then the Secretary of Defense, announced, “This morning I have signed the ‘execute’ order taking our strategic bomber force and our Minuteman II missile force off alert status, thereby implementing the first part of the President’s decision.” Within 72 hours of the order, missile crews at the three affected wings in Montana, Missouri, and South Dakota “safed” their missiles by traveling to each silo and manually inserting pins that made launch impossible.

The START I treaty required that the missiles and warheads be removed and dismantled, the silos destroyed to a depth of more than 19 feet below ground level, all communication cables cut, and the underground launch control centers deactivated and filled with dirt. The Air Force was responsible for removing the warheads, which were sent to the Pantex facility in Texas—where they were made—for dismantling, and it shipped the missiles themselves to a facility at Hill AFB in Utah to be disassembled and stored. This part of the decommissioning process lasted from December 1991, when the first warhead was removed, through 1995, when the final Minuteman II missile was pulled from its silo. After this and other sensitive equipment was removed from the silos, the Army Corps of Engineers and its contractors, tasked with demolishing the launch facilities they helped to build, took over the sites at the three fields whose silos would be destroyed in compliance with the treaty: those at Grand Forks AFB in northeastern North Dakota, Whiteman AFB in Missouri, and Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota.

Did Protests Factor into Missile Field Closure Decisions?

Decommissioning 450 Minuteman II ICBMs, which had one warhead each compared to three on each Minuteman III, was the most efficient way for the US to comply with START I, while keeping the highest possible number of deployed warheads. The decision about which Minuteman launchers, or silos, would be destroyed along with them proved more complicated. Eventually, the Pentagon decided to move its Minuteman III missiles from Grand Forks AFB in North Dakota to the Montana wing controlled by Malmstrom AFB, so that Minuteman II silos in Montana would remain active while those that had held Minuteman IIIs in Grand Forks were destroyed. But why go to the trouble of transporting these 120 missiles—and their warheads—over 700 miles?

From chapter VII, “The Breakdown”

In the near future, the Air Force plans to eliminate 104 Minuteman III silos, 50 silos at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, 50 at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, and four Minuteman test silos used for experimental launches at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Destruction of the Montana silos began in February 2014 and was expected to be complete in early 2015. Destruction of the 50 silos in Wyoming is to take place in 2015 and 2016, and demolition of the test-launch silos in California is scheduled for 2017.

Still, the United States is moving ahead with plans for new nuclear weapon production. Warheads for the so-called Long-Range Stand Off weapon, the B61-12 “smart” H-bomb, and something tentatively called an interoperable warhead.

The fiscal year 2015 Defense Authorization Act directs the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to ramp up production of the plutonium cores of nuclear warheads known as “pits,” to demonstrate a production capacity of 80 pits per year for at least a 90-day period in 2027. According to Los Alamos National Laboratory, plutonium pit production is not needed to address aging of the plutonium, but only if new warheads are to be built using new pits (as opposed to reused ones from decommissioned weapons). The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability reported in April 2015 that the NNSA has not shown a “need” for new pits to maintain the nuclear weapons stockpile, “yet the plans move forward with inexplicable momentum.”

Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group in New Mexico, told the Guardian the only reason that new H-bomb production is even being considered at all is simply private greed. This may come as quite a shock to some, but for-profit corporations now run all the US government’s nuclear weapons labs. They were privatized in 2006. One reason weapons development stumbles on in the face of nearly universal public sentiment in favor of nuclear abolition, is, Mello says, “The business model of the nuclear weapons labs is to blackmail the government into continuing excessive appropriations,” and continued, “The nuclear weapons labs are sized for the Cold War, and they need a Cold War to keep that size.”

Early Reviews…
By Dr. Helen Caldicott

Nuclear Heartland: Revised is one of the most frightening books that I have ever read. How we are still surviving on planet earth is a mystery to me. Every single American should read this book and after imbibing the information, they should rise to their full moral and spiritual height to take on the treasonous entities that now imperil our survival. These are the US Navy and Air Force, and the numerous corporations including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and others who make these monstrous weapons of mass destruction documented in the book. The people engaged in these treasonous activities are the real terrorists of our age. Let us name them, out them and remove them from the enormous power that they control.

Nuclear Heartland: Revised is an excellent compendium of the missile bases scattered around the Midwest in various farms and benign locations, with the bases mapped out in detail by people who care about preservation of the creation. These maps insult the senses when visualized. The book also documents the brave souls who have trespassed on the missile silos and poured blood on them and prayed that the never be used.

And it documents the sorry state of affairs among the US Air Force officers that control and run the missiles, the lack of esprit du corps, the boredom of their jobs as they sit below the Earth waiting at any minute to destroy most life on Earth. So much so, that many of them have been fired in the last few years for misconduct, drug abuse and sleeping on the job. And most amazingly in this day and age, the launch crews still operate with floppy discs and telephone lines that frequently malfunction.

—Helen Caldicott, a co-counder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, is the author of eight books including Nuclear Madness and Missile Envy. She recently edited Crisis Without End: The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe.

By Kathy Kelly

Why would anyone want to sow razors in a loaf of bread? The heartland of the US should be used to grow needed crops, not harbor weapons of mass destruction. I recall being deeply moved, during the height of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, as Nukewatch activists raised these issues.

They helped educate and radicalize numerous communities. Equipped with Nuclear Heartland as a guidebook, activists defied the buildup of US intercontinental ballistic missiles buried under Midwestern fields. Some hammered on the missile silos, some planted corn, while still others organized walks, vigils, and teach-ins. As political elites pursue a new cold war and the menace of nuclear weapons continues to build, Nuclear Heartland: Revised Edition reliably extends our horizons for renewed nonviolent resistance.

—Kathy Kelly is a Co-cooridinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, and the author of Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison.

 

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Japanese Baby Milk Formula Again Declared Unfit by China

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2015
By John LaForge

Chinese import authorities seized more than 881 pounds of baby milk formula that had been imported from Japan because it had been produced in areas known to be heavily contaminated with radioactive material emitted by three damaged nuclear reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi complex. 

China’s Xinhua news agency reported that quarantine officials said no excessive radioactive material was found in the formula, but that the baby food was sent back to Japan because China retains its ban on all imports from the areas around Fukushima. 

The seizures of the baby formula, betwen July 1 and 20, came just after a Japanese delegation implored the Chinese to ease its restrictions on Japanese food imports. On June 19, Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries used a meeting in Beijing to request that the import bans—which still apply to 10 Japanese prefectures—be lifted. According to the South China Morning Post, the Japanese Agricultural Ministry had stressed “the safety of Japanese food.” 

The Chinese may have scoffed at the lobbying effort since July’s seizure was the second time Japanese infant milk formula has been declared dangerous by Chinese authorities. In December 2011, traces of cesium-137 were detected in imported baby formula from the same area from the same company. Shortly thereafter, Tokyo-based Meiji Holding Company announced the recall of 400,000 cans of their baby formula as a precaution but said the levels of cesium detected were well below allowable limits. At the time, Meiji PR officials claimed, “Babies could still drink the formula every day without any effect on their health.” 

Contrary to the clearly uninformed Meiji corporate opinion, many doctors and scientists warn that even the slightest internal radioactive contamination can cause cancer. Dr. John Goffman, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, Dr. Alice Stewart, Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Dr. Jay Gould, Dr. Helen Caldicott, and others, have all promoted the precautionary principle regarding any inhalation or ingestion of radioactive materials. 

Scientific evidence indicates that the exposure to radiation suffered by fetuses, infants and children is far more serious than if the same exposure is suffered by adults. Also, the damage done to girls and women by radiation—compared to boys and men—is known to be more severe. The World Health Organization’s 2011 assessment of Fukushima notes that when children are exposed to radiation below the age of five, there is a 70 percent higher risk of cancer for girls than there is for boys.

Feeding radiation-tainted food to the most vulnerable is at best ill-advised and at worst criminal. 

Mary Olson, a senior staff researcher with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service explains, “If the alpha-emitting particles are hitting tissue from inside the body, estimates indicate that internal alpha particle damage is anywhere from seven to 1000 times more damaging to cell structures than is X-ray [external] exposure. Another way of saying this is that when there is no distance from the source of the alpha or beta particle to its target, the doses to the target are very much higher.” When it comes to babies ingesting contaminated baby formula, no level is actually safe and this is known throughout scientific circles. 

The principle radioactive poison that is being tested for in Japanese foods is cesium-137. Unfortunately, there are also other deadly poisons that have been spewed in lesser amounts by the Fukushima disaster. These include americium-241, plutonium-236, uranium-238, thorium-232 and the extremely dangerous isotope, strontium-90. All of these contaminants may also be found in food from Japan, including in baby formula. 

In July 2011, Tokyo officials discovered cesium-137 at levels 6.4 times the national limit in beef sold to restaurants and stores in at least five prefectures; in April 2011, radioactive iodine-131 was found in breast milk of mothers east of Tokyo; radioactive tea from Japan was seized in France in July 2011 when it was found with twice the permitted amount of cesium—not that even a trace can be called harmless. The tea had come from Shizuoka Prefecture, 300 miles south of Fukushima.

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Concerns About Evacuations in Radiation Emergencies Unabated

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2015

Editor’s note: In view of the failure of evacuation plans in the wake of the enormous radiation releases from Fukushima during March, April, and May of 2011, and considering well-known concerns about inadequate evacuation plans approved for US-based nuclear reactors, the lengthy treatment given the subject by the Tokyo daily Asahi Shimbun was a welcome warning. “We the People” founder Stephen Comley has brought particularly alarming attention to the impossibility of successfully evacuating residents from within the required 10-mile radius of the Seabrook reactor in New Hampshire, especially in summer. Because the issue applies across the whole of the nuclear power complex, the full editorial follows.

Asahi Shimbun, Editorial, Aug. 8, 2015

The 2011 nuclear disaster resulted in a horrifying scenario in which nuclear fuel inside reactors melted down, triggering a massive release of radioactive materials into the environment outside the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has proposed a system of five layers of safety measures for nuclear power plants. The nuclear watchdog urges each country operating nuclear power plants to adopt this approach, known as “defense-in-depth,” to ensure the facilities operate safely.

The final barrier in this system is prevention of radiation exposure to people living in areas around nuclear power plants.

Specifically, this fifth and final stage of defense-in-depth should be implemented in the form of plans developed by the central and local governments to mitigate the consequences of nuclear accidents and evacuate local residents.

When the Fukushima disaster occurred, however, no effective plan existed for the mass evacuation of local residents in Japan. This is because the possibility of a severe nuclear accident had been ruled out. As a result, the accident triggered utter chaos in local communities around the Fukushima plant.

Now, more than four years since the disaster unfolded, Kyushu Electric Power Co.’s Sendai nuclear power plant in Kagoshima Prefecture is expected to restart its No. 1 reactor…. But the mitigation and evacuation plans currently in place are far from reassuring to local residents. The responsibility to establish the “final barrier” and ensure the safety of residents rests with the local government. There should be no headlong rush toward restarting the reactor when serious safety concerns persist.

Seriousness of evacuation plans questioned

After the Fukushima accident, the central government made it mandatory for all local governments within 19 miles of a nuclear power plant to develop disaster mitigation and evacuation plans.

All the nine municipalities within 19 miles of the Sendai plant have drawn up such plans. The total population of the areas covered is about 210,000.

Takuro Eto, 58, who operates a daytime care service for the elderly in Ichikikushikino, a city located about 10.5 miles from the Sendai plant, is deeply skeptical about the evacuation plan crafted by the municipal government.

“Are they really serious about protecting the lives of people?” he said.

Many of the ten or so elderly people who regularly come to Eto’s facility are suffering from dementia. If a serious nuclear accident occurs, they are required to return to their homes before being evacuated, according to the city’s evacuation plan. One of these patients lives alone in a house located within 6.2 miles of the plant.

“Are we supposed to have this patient return home, which is located closer to the plant?” Eto said indignantly. “How can we ask our staffers to escort the patient home (in such an emergency)?”

How to evacuate people who cannot move on their own, such as the residents of nursing homes and hospital inpatients, also poses a challenge.

The Kagoshima prefectural government has secured evacuation destinations for the 17 nursing homes and hospitals within 6.2 miles of the Sendai plant. As for the 227 facilities located between 6 and 19 miles from the plant, however, the local government has decided to do computer searches after an accident happens to find facilities that can accommodate those evacuees.

An employee at a home for elderly people requiring special care located within a 19-mile radius of the nuclear plant voices anxiety about the plan.

“We have only one staff member on night duty,” the employee said. “How can the staffer deal with evacuating the residents to an unfamiliar place in an emergency?”

Despite such concerns, the prefectural government has no plan to carry out an evacuation drill involving local residents to test the effectiveness of the evacuation plan before the reactor is brought back online.

“Kyushu Electric Power currently has no time (for such a drill) as it is busy with inspections prior to the reactor restart,” Kagoshima Governor Yuichi Ito said.

An Asahi Shimbun survey revealed that 66 percent of medical institutions and 49 percent of social welfare facilities within 19 miles of nuclear power plants across Japan have not compiled mandatory evacuation plans specifying evacuation destinations, routes, and transportation means to be used in the event of an accident.

Dialogue with local residents essential

The fifth level of the IAEA’s defense-in-depth safety approach—the final barrier—should be designed to work effectively to protect public health even in cases in which all the other four layers of defense have failed.

In Japan, this stage of defense is the local government’s responsibility. Evacuation plans are not covered by the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s safety assessments. Such plans are to be simply approved by the nuclear disaster prevention council, headed by the prime minister.

It should be assumed that the responsibility for protecting local residents from nuclear accidents lies with the local government, which is abreast of special regional circumstances.

According to experts, in the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, even the nuclear fuel pool of the No. 4 reactor, which was offline at that time, was at risk of a severe accident.

One vital lesson from the catastrophe is that the mere existence of a nuclear reactor poses serious safety risks. Evacuation plans are indispensable, whether the reactors are restarted or not. To be sure, it is almost impossible to create a perfect evacuation plan. But it is possible to clarify what can be done, ascertain problems to be solved and explain them to local residents.

To do so, the local governments of areas where nuclear plants are located need to conduct drills to test the effectiveness of their mitigation and evacuation plans and hold the necessary dialogue with local residents.

It is said that a two-stage evacuation approach is effective during nuclear emergencies. Under this approach, residents within 3 miles of the plant should be evacuated first. People living between 3 and 19 miles from the plant should first take refuge indoors to wait for their own evacuation.

It is obvious that this approach does not work without the understanding and cooperation of the local residents.

If local governments are responsible for the safety of their residents, they should also be involved in the process of deciding on whether to restart reactors.

Currently, however, under agreements with electric utilities, only the prefectures and municipalities that host nuclear power plants have the right to agree to reactor restarts. But this right should also be given at least to all the local governments in the 19-mile zone that are obliged to map out evacuation plans.

Nuclear reactors should be considered to be too dangerous if the local governments of areas that can be affected by accidents involving the reactors refuse to support their operations. These reactors should be decommissioned as soon as possible.

Continued failure to act

The Diet’s investigative committee that looked into the Fukushima accident has pointed out that little serious effort has been made in Japan to establish even the fourth level of the IAEA’s defense-in-depth strategy for nuclear safety, or control of severe plant conditions, the stage before the final barrier.

In 2006, the Nuclear Safety Commission tried to make a sweeping review based on the IAEA standards of the priority areas designated under the government’s nuclear disaster prevention policy. But the plan was dropped in the face of opposition from the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which feared such a review would provoke anxiety among local residents, according to the findings of the investigation.

The radiation exposure that afflicted many residents around the Fukushima plant could have been avoided. Many patients in hospitals who were not evacuated quickly enough died due to deteriorating health conditions. More than 1,900 people in Fukushima Prefecture have died due to causes related to the nuclear accident.

Have all the relevant lessons from the calamity been gleaned and absorbed to prevent any further casualties of administrative nonfeasance?

This is the question local governments should ask first in examining and evaluating their abilities to protect residents from nuclear accidents.

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