A Shut and Open Case
May 05 - Environment
In a decision that may breed nearly as much public discontent as fissile material, authorities in Japan's Fukui Prefecture are making moves to reopen a nuclear reactor that was shut down in 1995. As a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol, Japan now faces difficult decisions on how to meet the agreement's carbon-reduction stipulations, and low-carbon nuclear energy is seen by most officials as an important part of the solution. Fukui, a prefecture that hugs the Sea of Japan just north of Kyoto, is Japan's nuclear energy powerhouse: According to its governor, Issei Nishikawa, its 13 reactors produce nearly one- third of Japan's nuclear power. However, accidents in the region over the last decade have generated public concerns about safety. The facility scheduled to reopen, the Monju fast-breeder prototype reactor, was shut down 10 years ago after a liquid sodium coolant leak from its secondary cooling system caught fire. According to The Japan Times, authorities attempted to cover up the accident. Last August, at a reactor in Mihama-just up the road from the Monju facility-five workers were killed when extremely hot steam escaped from a pipe that inspectors had overlooked. Critics in Fukui are also uneasy about the Monju reactor because it relies on technology they say the developed world has largely abandoned. "The fast- breeder reactors operated in Britain, the U.S., the Soviet Union, Germany, and France were shut down due to operating problems and unfavorable economics," explains Dave Lochbaum, a nuclear safety expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists based in Washington, DC. Because the designs used sodium, which is explosive when exposed to air or water, they had to develop costly piping systems to avoid such contact, he says. In addition, he says, "all of the fast breeders presented very serious control problems," because reactivity occurs so much faster than in a conventional water- cooled reactor, creating less room for error. Despite such concerns, fast-breeder technology is attractive because it creates more fissile material than it consumes, burning uranium-235 and plutonium atoms for energy while converting uranium-238 (which cannot fuel a reactor) into plutonium, says Lochbaum. This characteristic, coupled with the relative scarcity of resources in Asia, explains why countries like India and China-and now Japan-are funding fast- breeder projects. "Once fast-breeder reactors are introduced and a breeding cycle initiated, the securing of a semiperpetual supply of domestic energy is possible," says Tadao Yanase, director of Japan's Nuclear Energy Policy Planning Division of the Natural Resources and Energy Agency. Many Fukui residents hold a more skeptical view, however. According to The Japan Times, more than 200,000 residents of the prefecture-nearly one-third of its adult population-signed a petition stating that they are against starting up any more nuclear reactors in the region. Some say this distrust stems from the unwillingness of nuclear energy industry and government officials to participate in an open debate. "We'd love to have a public debate with high-level government representatives," says Teruyuki Matsushita, a member of the Mihama Municipal Assembly and an opponent to nuclear power. "But they're afraid of addressing our arguments and don't want to answer basic questions about the wisdom of Japan's nuclear policy."