Good News in the Nuclear World:

Reflecting on a Good Week

Left: Tomari Nuclear Power Station, Hokkaido, Japan; Right: Indian Point Energy Center, Buchanan, New York

For a change, most of the news on the nuclear front this past week seemed to be good:

- One reactor in Japan that had been down for repairs was permitted to restart by the local authorities. Under the Japanese system, approval from the local government is a step in the restart process after outages at nuclear power plants. It had been expected that local opposition might make it difficult for local government officials to give such approval, so getting that first approval is a positive sign. Of course, other regions and other government officials may respond differently, and any further hiccups at Fukushima could continue to erode public confidence, but for now, there is at least one sign that cooler heads can still prevail in Japan.

- The Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) approved the completion of the Bellefonte nuclear power plant. No board members voted against the move. There had been some vocal local opposition, which included demonstrators costumed as zombies, but they did not sway a single member of the board. Bellefonte had been under construction when it was cancelled in the late 1980s, so its resurrection is a welcome sign.

- NRC has completed its safety evaluation for two reactors, Summer 2 and 3, proposed for construction by SCANA Corp's South Carolina Electric &Gas and has found no safety issues that would preclude issuing a license for the construction and operation of the plant. A mandatory hearing is still required, but this is a major milestone for that project.

- Despite all the rhetoric from New York's state capital, a poll showed that 49% of the residents near the Indian Point nuclear power plant want it to remain open. While some might not find that terribly impressive--after all, it is technically less than half--there is always an undecided group, so this 49% is actually more than the 40% in favor of shutting the plant down.

Individually, these are small steps, and clearly, this is no time to rest on our laurels. There is much, much more to be done in all these cases, as well as on many other nuclear matters. Still, having four positive events occur in close succession gives some hope that people are getting past the news of the past few months. That, to me, is a very hopeful sign.

***

Observations on Japan and its Nuclear Program:

Not Anti-Japanese!

A reader said to me recently that it sounded like my recent posts on the Japanese situation were anti-Japanese. I was surprised to hear that, because nothing could be further from the truth. But if he thought that, others might also have the same impression, so I thought I should set the record straight.

First, my husband and I have a long-standing love and affection for all things Japanese. We have visited Japan numerous times, have lived and worked there twice, have seen more of Japan's famous sights than many Japanese (climbed Mount Fuji, traveled to Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and Okinawa, etc.), and have many, many good friends in Japan.

Having lived and worked there, I do feel I have more of an inside view of both its strengths and weaknesses. And truly, every personal trait or national characteristic has both a plus and a minus.

On the plus side, as we all saw in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, the Japanese people--as a whole--are more cooperative, more patient, and more polite, even in the face of unspeakable calamity, than many other nationalities. (I say "as a whole" because I realize that any population exhibits the whole spectrum of human behavior, just in different proportions.) I'll leave it to sociologists to explain why, but I have encountered the kindness and helpfulness of strangers many times in Japan. Also on the plus side, I have never seen a more diligent and dedicated workforce.

On the minus side, maybe the same communal perspective that encourages people to help each other and to share scarce resources also causes organizations to tend to close ranks and protect each other in the face of a revelation of wrongdoing or misconduct. Maybe the well-known horror at the thought of losing face causes people to try to hide mistakes instead of acknowledging them and fixing them.

Since my last posting, new revelations have come to light about attempts by the Japanese nuclear regulatory authority to "stack the deck" at public meetings, so I think I can stand by my previous observations. I suspect I could draw up a similar set of pluses and minuses for American workers, but the U.S. is not as much in the spotlight at the moment.

The point of bringing these things up is not to try to trash the Japanese character. It is just to try to share my perspective on why events have unfolded as they have, and to point out some of the behaviors that should be considered closely in making decisions about how to revamp the Japanese nuclear industry and its regulators. Just as an individual can train him- or herself to suppress certain behaviors and to emphasize others, or to exercise somewhat different behaviors in different situations, so can an organization.

As the Japanese are grappling with the aftermath of the Fukushima incident, I hope the insights I have offered and may continue to offer can provide some suggestions about what to do in the future.

***

Japanese Regulation:

The Elements of Independence

The discussions that have been going on in Japan regarding the need for greater independence of the nuclear regulatory organization have, to date, focused mainly on the organizational independence. There are really at least three types of independence that are important--organizational independence, independence from the licensee, and ability of staff to assess the technical situation independently. While these have been discussed separately, it is worth considering them together. This blog post will look at the role each of these characteristics plays in creating an independent agency.

Organizational Independence

Organizational independence is, indeed, important. I have addressed this issue previously, as have others. The placement of the organization within a government's structure does matter because of both the perception and the real possibility that a regulatory organization that is subordinate to other government functions could be subject to pressures to slant its judgments to help support the other missions of the parent body. For example, there could be concerns that a safety issue is dismissed to help assure that power demands can be met. Many other countries originally had regulatory organizations buried within promotional ministries or departments, much as Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) is buried in the Ministry of Economic Trade and Industry (METI). Most have now separated these functions.

Independence from the Licensee

I have previously written about my concern that the Japanese system of amakudari makes it difficult for the regulator to maintain true independence from its licensees. This system, which I believe is unique to Japan, institutionalizes the movement of government employees from an agency into companies regulated by the same agency. People often counter this concern by noting that people move between the government and industry in other countries as well. This is true, and some movement between sectors is probably even a good thing. We all need to understand the issues, constraints, difficulties, and concerns faced by the people and organizations with which we interface. However, in other countries, such movement between sectors occurs in both directions and is based on individual initiative. In fact, there are often even some temporary restrictions on the activities of government officials who move into the private sector. But most importantly, such moves are not managed by the personnel department and do not depend on coordination between government and private organizations as is the case in Japan.

Technical Ability of Staff

Another characteristic of the Japanese government is that the majority of the government employees are generalists. Although the Japanese government does employ some specialists in different fields, the majority of staff, even in highly technical areas, do not have technical degrees or experience in technical fields. Furthermore, the government employment system operates much like the US military and diplomatic personnel systems operate--that is, individuals are rotated to positions throughout their agency, and sometimes to other agencies. Because of this, they do not become specialists in a single area, even after a career in one agency. As a result, government agencies have come to rely heavily on committees of outside experts. Japanese government staff is overly reliant on the advice and is unable to develop any of their own independent assessments. Therefore, they may not be able to recognize it in the hopefully rare case where an expert adviser makes an error. Of course, regulatory agencies in other countries use expert advisers and expert contractors as well. The difference is that the staffers in other countries are capable of reviewing the technical materials developed by others and making independent judgments.

***

Suggested Changes to the Japanese Nuclear Program:

Guidelines versus Requirements

It has occurred to me that some of my previous posts may sound too much like I think I have a neat set of answers to "fix" the Japanese nuclear program. In trying to make certain points--and to keep my word count under some control!--I have sometimes not gone into all the ifs, ands, and buts to some of my observations.

In particular, I want to step back slightly from any impression that I have tried to present a "how to" for the Japanese government or the Japanese nuclear industry. Most especially, I want to make sure no one thinks that citing a model in the United States or Europe is intended to imply that the model should be copied completely.

The ways in which the nuclear industry and government structures have evolved in each country are a complex blend of the history of nuclear power development in that country, the legal structure, and the typical government organization and staffing. Therefore, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to simply duplicate the institutions and practices of one country in another. In fact, I would go farther and say that, even if certain things could be duplicated, they might have unintended negative consequences of their own, simply because a forced fit is probably a bad fit.

To be specific, many have criticized the Japanese government practices of amakudari (early "retirements" from the government to positions in the industries the government agencies control) and of staffing government organizations with highly technical missions with staff who are generalists. In some cases, I have expressed by personal view that some of these practices (particularly the practice of amakudari) need to be changed throughout the Japanese government. Obviously, that is a tall order and may not be the fastest or most practical way to implement the needed change in the nuclear regulatory agency.

If the practices of concern cannot be changed completely, the message is that the underlying weakness of the practice should be addressed. In the case of the practice of amakudari, perhaps the weakness could be overcome by placing government retirees from the regulatory agency in positions in non-nuclear industries. Or, perhaps restrictions could be imposed on what the individuals are able to do. (This latter measure does have a possible model in US practice, but the requirements might have to be even more stringent if there is widespread movement from the government to the private sector.)

In the case of the use of generalists in technical positions, clearly the Japanese practice of using expert committees was an effort to overcome the deficiency of technical talent in the agencies. However, it is my view that this has not proved sufficient. The government does hire some specialists, so it would seem that an alternative solution would be to increase the fraction of specialists. Possibly some better career paths would have to be developed. This would not necessarily follow US or any other national practice, but could be structured to accomplish the same goal--that of assuring that there are staffers within the government who have an independent capability to understand the technical arguments presented to them, whether these are arguments made by the regulated industry, outside technical researchers, or expert committees.

One thing that is very different in the United States is that our nuclear power program is a product of our World War II weapons development program. Part of the legacy of this program is an extensive infrastructure of national laboratories with numerous experimental and test facilities and a large staff of highly trained technical people. Thus, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the US Department of Energy have access to a unique repository of experimental and analytical capabilities and use them on a regular basis to contribute to policy deliberations. In addition, of course, the US government agencies have access to a large academic reservoir of talent.

Even with all this capability, the United States is turning more and more to collaborative arrangements with other countries for research. In part, this is because many research facilities in the US have shut down over the years, and other nations, in some cases, have newer facilities. In part, many countries have come to realize the benefits of sharing the costs of expensive research efforts and of pooling the top talents of several countries.

Therefore, the fact that other countries may not have the equivalent of the US national laboratory infrastructure does not mean that they cannot participate in cutting-edge research activities, and does not mean that they have to try to reproduce a US-style set of national laboratories. Where I have cited the US national laboratory infrastructure, the message should be that there is a need for strong technical support. The ways in which this support can be developed and provided will vary from country to country.

It would be far neater and more satisfying, I suppose, if I could come up with an exact recipe for what the Japanese should do. However, I can't. I may have developed a pretty good understanding of some areas of Japanese activity related to my own interests, but I'm not sufficiently expert in all the ramifications of the Japanese government personnel system or the entire spectrum of the research community to give precise formulas for anyone to follow. Specific measures need to be developed with inputs from experts in all these areas.

What I hope my previous posts have done is to outline what I see as some fundamental concerns that I have had, and that others may share. My hope is that these insights can be useful at this time, when the Japanese are making many changes as a consequence of the events triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

***

Nuclear Regulatory Independence in Japan:

The Role of Technical Capability

One area that has been somewhat neglected in the discussions of regulatory independence in Japan is the role of the technical capability of the regulatory staff. In the long run, this factor is probably as important as the other factors that have been discussed, including the organizational independence and the implications of amakudari, and deserves more attention. I will try to make a few observations here.

One fundamental characteristic of the Japanese government is that the majority of the government employees are generalists. Although the Japanese government does employ some specialists in different fields, the majority of staff, even in highly technical areas, do not have technical degrees or experience in technical fields.

Furthermore, the government employment system operates much like the US military and diplomatic personnel systems operate--that is, over the course of their careers, individuals are rotated to positions throughout their agency, and sometimes to other agencies, in a deliberate career-building process managed by personnel departments. As in the US military and diplomatic systems, individuals "belong" to/have a lifetime employment promise from the agencies that hired them originally and a permanent transfer to a new agency, e.g. the independent regulator, raises complex career questions. (This helps explain why Japanese government reorganizations are very infrequent.)

One of the objectives of the process is for senior employees to have achieved a broad understanding of the full range of activities of their organization, rather than to have an in-depth understanding of any single part of the agency's activity. Thus, for an agency like NISA's parent agency, the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry (METI), which has a large scope of responsibility, an individual may move from positions dealing with the oil sector to the nuclear sector to the manufacturing sector to international trade to economic development, without ever becoming a qualified expert in any single areas.

As a result of this process, government agencies have come to rely heavily on committees of experts, mostly drawn from universities and sometimes including retirees from industry. These experts have in-depth technical training and are able to review technical matters and provide advice to government agencies. As far as I can tell, the advice is usually good. The problem is that the staff is overly reliant on the advice and is unable to develop any of their own independent assessments. Therefore, they may not be able to recognize it in the hopefully rare cases where an expert adviser makes an error. There is also a danger that accidental biases in committee selection could bias results and give less attention to certain issues.

In 1992, I was working at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and I was assigned to spend 6 months at the regulatory organization in the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), the predecessor to NISA in METI. My assignment was to monitor the Japanese efforts to license the GE Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR), which NRC was then gearing up to do. I remember once asking a staff member at MITI what the basis was for a decision they were making on the licensing of the ABWR. The answer I got was that an advisory committee member said so. When I asked how the advisory committee member had come to that conclusion, the MITI staffer did not know. It was sufficient that he had the word of the advisory committee member. I found it troubling at the time that he had absolute confidence in something that he could not, and did not try to, verify for himself. After all, anyone can make a mistake, even an expert.

Once again, as always, such technical independence is a matter of degree. People could point to the US NRC, and I suppose to every other nuclear regulatory organization in the world, and note that it gets a lot of technical input from outside. The NRC, in particular, has a statutory standing advisory committee, the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS), as well as other advisory groups. In addition, it contracts with the national laboratories, universities, and other organizations to conduct experimental research and to provide technical reports on a number of subjects.

Nevertheless, there is a critical difference--the staff at the NRC, which has about the highest percentage of advanced degrees of any agency in the US government--is capable of independently reviewing and understanding the advice and reports it receives. When an NRC staffer stands up before the Commission or other body to discuss a study produced under a contract he or she managed, that staffer can explain the technical basis for the conclusions of the study.

Like amakudari, the practice of staffing government agencies with generalists is embedded deeply within the Japanese government system and will be a difficult one to overcome. However, the government does employ a small number of technical specialists, so there is some recognition that people with such capabilities are necessary. It seems to me that, along with the the other reforms to the nuclear regulatory system that the Japanese is considering, provisions should be developed to increase the percentage of technically trained staff in the new regulatory organization. Such a change will go a long way toward addressing one fundamental barrier to true regulatory independence in Japan.

***

Fukushima and Coverups:

Eraser Society

I am now going to risk compounding the error of working outside my area of expertise. In a recent blogpost, I talked about the revelation that TEPCO engineers were concerned about a GE decision on the placement of the diesel generators at Fukushima, but that nothing was apparently done about their concern. I attributed this to a social tendency no to want to make waves. I can't tell whether the engineers are to be "blamed" for not raising the issue, or whether the issue was raised, but TEPCO management is to be "blamed" for not challenging GE. Whatever the case, I noted that the behavior fits with the fact that I have learned that children in Japan are taught that "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down."

This started me thinking about whether there are other character traits that may influence safety at nuclear facilities, and I recalled the several instances of coverups that have been revealed over the years at different nuclear facilities. The most well known may be the Monju coverup, but there have been others, including one at Fukushima in 2002. Now, no one from any culture really wants to acknowledge a mistake, and in this case, I don't know what Japanese children are taught, but I do recall several experiences when I lived in Japan that make me wonder if there is a different tolerance for error. I do know that I was always taught that we all make mistakes. The point is to learn from them. Maybe Japanese children are taught that. Maybe not.

What I do recall though, is several instances where I felt a Japanese person made an inordinate effort to "hide" an error, or even an apparent error. In one case, I was talking to an administrative person about arranging a trip. She was making notes in pencil as I laid out my plans. Several times, I started to propose one schedule, then changed my mind. It was my mistake, really. Each time, she industriously erased what she'd written and rewrote the corrected information. Finally, I asked what she was going to do with the paper. She was only going to use it to type out the travel authorization form. I was left wondering why she didn't just cross out the incorrect information.

I never got a satisfactory answer, but sometime later, someone left me a note telling me that the meeting room for an upcoming meeting had been changed. The note was written on yellow lined paper, but something had been whited out with a liquid erase product. You could see that a mistake had been made, but you couldn't see any more what the mistake was. Again, I wondered why not just cross it out? Why use this product, wait for it to dry, and rewrite over that.

Shortly after that, I was walking down a Tokyo street and a local gym was handing out a promotional product. Such handouts are a long-standing advertising commercial tradition in Japan, and the handouts include small useful items, such as packets of tissue, pencils, pens, and pads of sticky notes, all carrying the corporate name. In this case, I was handed what looked like a pencil, but when I got it home and looked more closely, it was an eraser encased in a plastic tube that could be pushed up as it was used up. I remember thinking at the time that pens and pencils would be good giveaways in the US, but I doubted that anyone would use an eraser. At that point, I jokingly started saying that the Japanese were an "eraser society."

(As an aside, one Japanese person to whom I'd made that statement retorted that their erasers were much better than ours! He was right. Their erasers never smeared the pencil lead. Which probably only reinforced my point.)

Now, perhaps I am blowing a few small observations out of proportion. Perhaps the admin person who erased her notes or the other person who whited out his mistake on a casual note were just a couple of unusually compulsive people. And as I already noted, no one likes to be caught making a mistake, and a lot of individuals will cover up mistakes if they think they can get away from it. I'm sure anyone can find dozens of instances in the US, in Europe, and everywhere else. But these small cases, and the eraser giveaway, and some of the well-publicized cases in the Japanese nuclear industry that went all the way to the top of their organizations, have made me wonder if there isn't something to my observation.

If there is, the response of the Japanese nuclear establishment should be to follow some of the examples outside Japan, where people are trained in the importance of not hiding problems, and there is a concerted effort to foster an environment where people are not punished for admitting errors. And, just as important, the Japanese nuclear establishment needs to see from the examples that the situation outside Japan is far from perfect in this regard. The importance of not covering up mistakes or errors is one that needs continual reinforcement, and maintaining an environment that allows people to come forward about mistakes without fear of retribution is a constant challenge.

***

Considering the Fukushima Accident:

Does Culture Matter?

I have given some more thought to the article I cited in my last blog about the placement of the diesel generators being a GE decision. The article stated that some TEPCO engineers were concerned about the decision at the time. It is not clear whether they expressed this concern. Even if they had, it is not clear what TEPCO would have done.

It occurred to me that the incident may reveal some elements of what is said to be the Japanese character. I may be way out of my league here, as I'm not a sociologist. Furthermore, I fully believe every culture and nationality has a full range of personalities. Not every American behaves like a cowboy, and not every Japanese conforms to the socially cooperative behavior supposedly associated with an agriculturally-focused society. Still, we saw in the aftermath of Fukushima that many Japanese did cooperate, share, take their turn, exercise patience, not loot or steal (even when they'd lost everything), etc., much better than we tend to think Americans would do in a similar situation. So maybe there are some tendencies that can be explored.

And I did live in Japan, which I hope gives me a little more insight into matters of national character. I do know, because a number of people have told me, that Japanese children grow up being taught "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down." By contrast, I don't know if we are taught in terms of such a homily, but I know that part of my upbringing was the message that "I was only following orders" was not a good excuse.

So I'm not terribly surprised to see that part of the issue in Japan may have been that the Japanese engineers didn't stand up to authority when they should have. Or, more insidious still, that they did stand up, but were ignored.

Clearly, every personality characteristic has its pluses and minuses, the times where the trait shines and the times where the trait fails the individual or society. Cowboys are independent and self-sufficient, but going it alone doesn't always work--either at nuclear power plants or anywhere else. Social conformity makes for more harmonious interpersonal interactions, but can discourage independence of thought or action where it is needed. So the point is not to change things 180 degrees, but rather to establish the conditions that can enable the appropriate behavior for each situation.

Challenging authority is always a difficult proposition, and I won't pretend that the situation is perfect in the US. But the US government has had a law since 1989 that provides for the protection of Federal whistleblowers, and in addition, the NRC has a system for handling differing professional opinions (DPOs). Whistleblowers in industry are protected by a variety of laws that are administered by the US Office of Whistleblower Protection. In Japan, such measures seem to be much newer and more limited. The Japanese Whistleblower Protection Act, which became effective in 2006, applies to both government agencies and commercial enterprises.

I do know that many people who have challenged authority in the US would say that these provisions have not been completely effective here. And it is still true that many Americans would talk themselves out of standing up to authority, even with these provisions in place. How much more difficult it must be in a culture where children are trained from their earliest days not to challenge authority.

Nevertheless, having specific provisions in place does encourage some people to step up with concerns and put pressure on organizations to address them. Further development of such measures may be a necessary step at in Japan, and training regarding their provisions, could help change the culture in the organizations building, operating and regulating nuclear power plants in Japan.

***