Japan's Nuclear Crisis

...They would not allow the reactor to be tested in the bay or along the coastline...

...Japan now ranks fourth in nuclear produced kilowatts, behind the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union...

...But while the ship was being built the local scallop industry began booming, and fishermen and other area residents started harboring doubts about the unfamiliar nuclear intrusion...

...On August 25, 300 small fishing boats swarmed around the Mutsu...

...One of the government's main arguments for the development of nuclear plants has been that Japan is 80 per cent dependent on oil, all of which must be imported, for its power...

...Meanwhile, the Mutsu Bay fishing fleet organized to prevent the ship's return and began laying sandbags at the harbor mouth...

...Japan has little nuclear technology of its own...

...A tugboat tried hauling the ship out, but the fishermen chopped through the dragline with hatchets...

...The land had been used for drilling oil in the 1920s, when extensive geological study had shown the ground to be unstable, with severe displacements occurring as recently as 30,000 years ago...

...The Mutsu fiasco really hurt us," admitted a high Tokyo Electric official...

...The government told local farmers that radioactivity might be good for both rice cultivation and the coloring of the carp...

...We have taken great care to prevent such an occurrence," explained a Mitsubishi official, "but it was our mistake...

...In June 1973, highly radioactive waste water leaked from a storage room at Fukushima 1. A worker failed to shut a drainage valve, misrouting nearly three cubic meters of "hot" water...

...In the late 1960s the community invited Tokyo Electric to build at least one plant some five kilometers outside Kashiwazaki City...

...and it sits in its harbor, a disheartening symbol of Japan's first attempt at nuclear independence...

...The story is much the same as in the United States, where small towns virtually stepped on one another trying to attract reactors...

...According to one Japanese critic, "The failure of the test run and later-disclosed serious mistakes in the reactor design indicate unaccomplished nuclear technology in our country, as well as carelessness of the administrative authority to reactor safety...

...The agreement empowered local communities to stop nuclear plant operations and make firsthand site checks...

...When one of them managed to thread his mooring rope through the Mutsu's anchor chain, the nuclear powered ship was locked in...

...With a rating of roughly three million kilowatts at the time, that means no less than a twenty-fold growth in ten years...

...The other half of the scale was found hanging from a hook...

...As a result of a complex expansion phenomenon, fuel rods inside the reactor were bending, parts of them moving dangerously close to one another, vastly increasing the chance of a catastrophic meltdown...

...The fishing industry there was declining, and many felt Mutsu would be a boon to the local economy...

...most people seem to harbor some doubts about their safety, but also believe nuclear power plants are necessary for the economy...

...In 1973, Yokohama's Socialist Mayor Ichio Asukata told his national government he would allow no more nuclear wastes to be shipped through the port of Yokohama...

...Cobalt 60 was subsequently discovered in the sea water, in mussels, and in pearl oysters near the plant's coolant outlets...

...Yet recently the Japanese government revised its capacity expectations down to 70 per cent...

...In the meantime, the company shifted the exact plant site five times...

...But local resistance in Japan has become an important factor...

...Their overall rate of operation has averaged under 60 per cent, and continual cost overruns and construction delays have led many to question whether the plants will ever become economically feasible...

...Whether or not Japan can continue to build nuclear plants has become a real question...

...Nuclear power has become the prime environmental issue in the United States, and is fast pushing its way to the top of those issues in Canada and throughout Europe...

...A second opened within the year at Mihama...

...The fishermen vowed to keep it out...

...In Japan, the "top" of the environmental list is crowdHarvey Wasserman conducted a ten-month study of nuclear developments in Asia for the A Iternate Energy Coalition of Western Massachusetts...

...Construction and export of components for nuclear plants has become a multi-billion-yen industry for Japan...

...The first Japanese reactor opened at Tokai in 1966...

...He is the author of "Harvey Wasserman's History of the United States, " published in 1972 by Harper & Row...

...Clearly, Mutsu would mark Japan's emergence into the age of independent atomic technology...

...But the romance with the peaceful atom had already been tarnished...

...Twelve plants are currently — more accurately, intermittently— in commercial operation...

...In the last few years, local resistance has narrowed the available sites to the point where there is almost no place for the plants to go...

...The crew were now prisoners on a radioactive ship...

...So arrangements have been made obligating Japan to ship its spent fuel halfway around the world to England for reprocessing, and then to bring it back to Japan for final disposal...

...Again they found critical problems in two reactors, this time at Fukushima 1, which was just about to reopen, and at Tsuruga...

...Later they filled the crew members' socks with polyethylene...

...The proliferation of nuclear plants has become an enormously complex problem involving a range of issues from simple economics to delicate balances of geopolitical intrigue...

...Finally, rising typhoon winds forced the fleet to disperse, and the Mutsu limped out of port...

...The Mutsu drifted helplessly for fifty-one days before an agreement was reached...

...In 1974, plans were announced to increase nuclear generating capacity to sixteen million kilowatts by 1980, sixty million by 1985...

...The ship docked safely and has not sailed since...

...Because of their similar design and manufacture, Japanese authorities decided to inspect Japan's six Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs) as well...

...All the plants but one were designed by General Electric or West-inghouse...

...Despite the national "nuclear allergy''' contracted at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese people apparently welcomed the peaceful atom...

...Japan's biggest companies — among them Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Sumitomo, and others—have invested heavily in non-nuclear "hardware" components, such as generators, turbines, and piping...

...From 1973 through 1975, the government approved only two sites, and in both cases townspeople are suing...

...The leak prompted a protest by local residents against construction of a new reactor proposed for the site...

...Its lush countryside is dotted with small gardens, thatched roofs, rice paddies, and fish ponds...

...The Japanese have contracted with the American Oak Ridge plant to buy enriched ore over a ten-year period...

...Only one of Japan's twelve commercial nuclear plants was operating in the fall of 1975...

...A month before the Mihama bowing problem was made public, ten workers at the construction site of the new Tokai reprocessing plant were exposed to potentially fatal Cobalt 60 radiation...

...Finally there was no choice but to shut the reactor down...

...In September 1974, twenty-one of fifty-five nuclear plants in the United States were closed down for an emergency safety check, prompted by a leaky bypass pipe at the Dresden 1 reactor at Morris, Illinois...

...But the same poll also showed 80 per cent thought that nuclear plants were "necessary for Japan's growth...

...This time it was an Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) problem at Dresden that prompted the mass shutdown...

...Fears that radioactivity would destroy fishing and scallop cultivation brought the local population into open, angry protest...

...By 1985, Japan would be 25 per cent dependent on nuclear power...

...As illustrated by Mutsu, the Japanese have grown extremely sensitive to being anywhere near radiation, and that sensitivity is now posing a powerful threat to the future of nuclear plants in the small but populous nation...

...Construction was to begin in 1972, with the plant scheduled to open in 1976...

...There is a Japan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC), but its role is limited...

...Farming and fishing were on the decline, and it was hoped that the project would provide an economic boost...

...There are plants being built, plans for them, or strong factions pushing them within reach in scores of other countries ranging from oil-rich Iran to tiny Jamaica...

...Cracks in three of the 584 channel boxes protecting the fuel rods were found in June 1975 at Fukushima 2, and similar problems were then found at Fukushima 3 and Hamaoka, which were cut to partial power...

...A local group grew suspicious and conducted its own geological survey...

...No single incident has contributed more to Japanese disaffection with atomic power than the Mutsu incident...

...stockpile has accumulated which the Tennessee state government is trying to tax at 10 per cent — a bill that could run to $30 million...

...At least ten cities have turned down all offers to serve as a home port, and the ship still sits in Mutsu Bay...

...But after 1970, as hard times hit, the people began to hold out for more money for their fishing rights...

...The scale, which was originally sheathed in plastic, may have melted in half, causing the scratch which led to the leak and the shutdown...

...In the midst of unprecedented industrial expansion, communities throughout Japan contested for nuclear plants and the income they would bring...

...There could be no more basic threat to their life than a radioactive sea...

...But even at that, the government's plans involve some fifty reactors at some twenty sites, and the question now is whether it can find twenty Japanese communities willing to accept the plants...

...Even at that, Japan's plants are an economic catastrophe...

...For a month Takahama 2 was closed down because jellyfish had fouled the coolant intake pipe...

...The deeply conservative local people at first resented the intrusion of the students, but gradually the students and a few visits from anti-nuclear scientists began to have an impact...

...Tokyo Electric's report claimed the displacement was 300,000 years old — apparently a deliberate lie...

...In March 1970, the first full-scale Japanese atomic plant opened in Tsuruga...

...If Japan's nuclear power plants continue to perform miserably, and if local resistance continues to gain strength, then Japan may -well become the first major power to abandon the so-called peaceful atom...

...Originally the project was welcomed by the local government of Mutsu Bay, which is in the remote northern reaches of Honshu, Japan's main island...

...after Mutsu, the figure was 77 per cent...

...It was the only Japanese reactor built without American guidance, although Westinghouse was called in at the end for an advisory check...

...But no sooner did it achieve criticality than an extremely high level of radioactivity was detected at the top of the reactor...

...At the same time, radical students from Tokyo appeared to talk about the dangers of nuclear power and to organize an opposition...

...The government has dropped its 1985 nuclear kilowatt projection from sixty million to forty-nine million, and insiders estimate the actual total will not even reach forty million...

...One of the 3,400 pipes of the steam generator leaked radiation...

...With an annual electrical consumption growth rate well above 12 per cent, and with projections for an overall annual economic growth rate of 7 per cent, Japan's nine privately owned utilities were totally sold on nuclear power...

...But Japan can produce little of its own uranium, and got a taste of what might happen when France arbitrarily doubled the price of uranium ore, including ore which had already been contracted for...

...The project has already been delayed six years, and when construction will actually begin is uncertain...

...Meanwhile, technicians found the problem "was not a small accident but a serious mistake in the reactor basic design...

...Our years of efforts to persuade local people have been absolutely shot...

...At that rate the radiation level would have reached as much as 400,000 times the maximum allowable standard...

...It was not that easy...

...The Mutsu proceeded to sea and fired its reactor, prompting three "banzai" cheers from the fifty-eight-man crew...

...In Japan, however, there are no strong national environmental groups such as the Sierra Club or Ralph Nader's Public Interest Research Group to give the anti-nuclear movement an easily identifiable national forum...

...Tokai was greeted as "a symbol of the peace-loving nation that renounced war under the constitution...

...But one basic theme for many years will probably be the eagerness of industrially advanced countries to sell expensive technological projects to resource-rich customer nations...

...Plans were made public in 1968, and the town approved them in 1969...

...Japan is a small, crowded country and the number of potential sites for nuclear plants is extremely limited...

...The court eventually handed down an interim decision that for the first time obliged the government to make public critical information about plant safety and performance...

...The Japanese are negotiating to have the British reprocess their spent fuel, but the British public has reacted strongly against keeping Japan's wastes after they are reprocessed...

...Most of Japan is far too mountainous and earthquakeprone to allow nuclear plant siting...

...After closing the plant, investigators found a one-centimeter-wide, 1.8-meter-long piece of a measuring scale lying in the generator...

...By 1973 there were four commercial plants on line...

...In May, further inspection of Mihama 2 revealed a serious problem that required removal of half the 121 fuel assemblies...

...Mutsu is an 8,214-ton surface ship, which was built by the Japan Nuclear Ship Development Agency as a national showpiece at a cost of $ 133 million...

...In January 1975, twenty-three American plants were closed for a second emergency check...

...Twelve hours later Maritime Safety Board patrol boats tried slashing their way through the barricade...

...In 1974, local communities in the Mito area forced the nuclear industry and the utilities to negotiate an agreement on the control of plant emissions and radioactive discharges...

...Finally, the ship was allowed to return on condition that a new home port be found within six months and the old facilities dismantled...

...Japan's stake in the nuclear industry is not limited to either reactor technology or plants at home...

...They found a major problem with the site...

...The scale was left by a worker either at the site installation or at Mitsubishi's Kobe Shipyard and Engine Works...

...At least one plant in South Korea will be financed largely by Japanese capital and built by Japanese industry...

...But even that was not enough assurance for the people of Mutsu Bay, and the local fishing fleet vowed to keep Mutsu locked and inactive in the harbor...

...They found alarmingly similar defects at Tokyo Electric's Fukushima 1 reactor, and at'Hamaoka...

...Again the Japanese decided to check their BWRs...

...The test run proved that the metal shield could not block fast neutron emissions, although it was not clear a concrete shield would either...

...By then most of the students had left, and the Kashiwazaki movement was firmly in the hands of local people, many of them women in their fifties and older...

...Some 150 reactors are now sporadically generating electricity in the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, Japan, East and West Germany, France, Sweden, Canada, Spain, Switzerland, India, Italy, Holland, Bulgaria, Belgium, Argentina, Pakistan, and Czechoslovakia...

...By the time Mutsu was ready to sail in 1972, there was enough local opposition to keep it firmly anchored for two years...

...The Japanese had chosen to ignore the recommendation...

...I am an expert at handling labor problems," announced Moriyama Kinji, head of the Science and Technology Agency...

...Four more opened in 1974, and another four have opened since — some after significant delays...

...on June 10, 1975, a warning device went off at Kyushu Electric's Genkai plant, which had been on its test run less than a year...

...In a sense, then, it might seem that the Japanese view is similar to the American...

...At 8 a.m...

...A national poll taken before Mutsu's 1974 cruise revealed 44 per cent of the Japanese public thought nuclear power "dangerous...

...Technicians soon surmised that the top reactor shield was inadequate to stop fast neutrons, and plugged it with seventy-five pounds of boron-treated rice balls...

...Bowing had occurred previously at Mihama in December 1973, and the recurrence angered Kansai officials, who had been assured by Westinghouse that fuel rod technology had been perfected...

...The Mutsu incident occurred in 1974...

...But Japan's demand has fallen off and a U.S...

...In 1971, fishermen working the seas around Tsuruga began catching abnormally large trepangs (a sea cucumber commonly eaten in the Orient...

...At 1.4 per cent capacity, the radiation indicator showed .2 milliroentgens, a level expected only with the reactor at 100 per cent capacity...

...In August 1974, the government decided it was time to sail...

...In that same month, Kansai's Mihama 2 was closed down because of a "wall thinning" problem, a possible cause of massive radioactive fuel escape...

...Mutsu poked a big hole in Japan's nuclear credibility, but there have been other factors as well, and one of the strongest is simple economics...

...And it seems more and more likely that the answer will be no...

...The proposed nuclear plant suddenly became an insult to the local community...

...Although the town government still favors the nuclear plant, a poll revealed that 50 per cent of Kashiwazaki residents were "concerned," and another 30 per cent were "against...

...Lawyers, scientists, and local residents sued to cancel the licensing of a reactor at Ikata, the first such suit in Japanese history...

...Only a fraction of the nuclear construction proposed for the past several years has actually gotten under way...

...The Japanese eat five to six times as much seafood as do westerners...

...While 20,000 people cheered from shore, the fishermen lashed their armada together into a giant blockade...

...In July 1974, Kansai Electric asked Westinghouse to replace the steam generator of one of Kansai's two Mihama reactors...

...Nor are there as many public hearings connected with plant licensing...

...According to the Japan Times...

...Finally, the national government asked approval to take the ship out under conventional power, and then fire the reactor out at sea...

...In 1971 the government announced plans for sixteen more plants, and added three more to the list in 1972...

...In the fall the leaves of the many hardwood trees become a riot of color...

...Perhaps prototypical of the local resistance is Kashiwazaki, one of the two sites approved by the government since 1973...

...In March 1971, radioactive gas was detected leaking from the Tsuruga nuclear power plant chimney...

...But to date there are no firm plans for the Mutsu...

...It is a rule of thumb that a nuclear plant must operate at 80 per cent capacity for ten years merely to pay back its initial investment...

...So far there has been talk of docking the Mutsu at Sasebo and at Nagasaki, of turning it into a youth ship, and of removing the reactor and selling it as a conventional cargo ship...

...The plant is designed to suck in fifty tons of seawater per second, and swarms of jellyfish attracted by the warm waste water outlets had clogged the intake pipes of both Takahama 1 and Takahama 2. The problem required removal of more than 20,000 jellyfish a day...

...Area residents were deeply alarmed...

...The Kashiwazaki area is known as Japan's "rice bowl," and it is a major producer of ornamental carp...

...Mihama 1 had experienced four major closures in less than four years, and Kansai apparently concluded the only solution was a new generator...

...Nuclear power thus appears as a far less coherent national issue in Japan than in the United States and some other countries...

...The opposition movement is composed almost entirely of farming and fishing people with deep roots in the area, and a long history of extreme conservatism...

...Leaks detected after the docking of U.S...

...It has paid fantastic royalties to General Electric and Westinghouse, and there is little doubt that Japan will be dependent on imported nuclear technology for at least five more years...

...The ultimate irony of the bargain may be that the countries selling the nuclear power plants may soon be forced to slow down drastically or even stop the proliferation of plants within their own borders...

...Called "bowing," the problem was first discovered in a Spanish reactor in 1969...

...For the past few years the nuclear industry has been unable to choose a single site without meeting bitter local resistance...

...nuclear submarines at Sasebo Harbor in 1968 and later at Yokosuka and Naha (Okinawa) already had many Japanese alarmed...

...they rely on it for 50 per cent of their protein...

...The important nuclear decisions are made by the utilities and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry...

...The nation has been overwhelmed by a depressing array of environmental catastrophes ranging from mercury, cadmium, and chromium poisoning to pollution-caused asthma to people keeling over unconscious in Tokyo's summer smog...

...Later it was found in seaweed as well...

...I will never yield to the pressure of demonstrations and red flags...

...I consider them 'congratulations' on our departure...

...The fishing fleet beat them back...

...In June there was an Iodine 131 leak, prompting the removal of fourteen fuel rods...

...A shielding ring at the top of the reactor had been made of metal, but the Westinghouse advisers had recommended that the ring be made of concrete...