OPINION: Regulators should impose more strict nuclear safety standards

The two recent natural calamities that hit Japan -- the massive earthquake of 11th March and the subsequent tsunami -- not only resulted in massive loss of life and property damage but also resulted in the unfolding of the subsequent drama at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that is still to be satisfactorily resolved.

The loss of emergency diesel power resulting in a loss of coolant at the plant, a partial meltdown of the fuel in the reactors there and the radioactive leakage from the site to the neighboring prefectures have all not only resulted in anxiety over the suitability of nuclear power in Japan but also cast a shadow over the global expectation of a nuclear renaissance.

Not unnaturally, in India, where there is a program of vigorous expansion of nuclear energy generation, this has resulted in some doubts over the wisdom of relying on nuclear power to solve national energy demands.

Before analyzing the safety and reliability of nuclear power, it is necessary to pause and examine what really happened and did not happen at Fukushima.

Notwithstanding the severity of the earthquake and the age of the reactor, nearing its nominal lifetime, there was no structural damage to the reactor installation as a result of either the earthquake or the tsunami.

However, the off-site damage at the plant site, especially to the emergency diesel power generation system, resulted in the subsequent events and developments at the reactor sites that were the cause of the radiation leakages, explosions and the evacuation of people to a 20-kilometer exclusion zone.

In fact none of the 14 nuclear reactors on the eastern seaboard of Japan immediately above and below the Daiichi plant suffered any physical or structural damage as a result of the earthquake. Moreover all of them, except those undergoing periodic inspection outages, shut down automatically as per the regulatory requirements.

It is obvious, therefore, there is no reason, apart from other reasons elaborated below, to either doubt the safety of nuclear power reactors to withstand seismic shocks or give up the nuclear power option, especially for a country such as Japan which is woefully deficient in the national stock of conventional primary energy resources such as coal or hydrocarbon fuel or hydroelectric power potential.

The currently operating 54 nuclear power reactors in Japan contribute nearly 30 percent of the total electricity in the country and it is difficult to imagine alternate energy sources to replace nuclear energy taking into account the economics of other forms of electricity generation and the demands of clean energy.

To say this, however, is not to minimize the damage caused by the radiation leakage experienced by the Japanese economy. More than 10 prefectures adjoining Fukushima, primarily in the Tohoku and Kanto regions, have experienced severe levels of radiation fallout resulting in contamination of milk and vegetables in these prefectures and their being banned for consumption with obvious personal loss at household level as well.

All this coming at a time of general economic crisis calls for retrospection on the events leading to the calamity with a view to reducing their impact in future.

While a complete listing of lessons to be learnt will have to wait for a full enquiry into the circumstances leading to the accident, two immediate lessons come to mind.

First, the regulatory agencies must exercise due diligence and caution in fulfilling their obligations to protect the public. There have been reports that Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima plant, had been deficient in taking remedial measures suggested in earlier times by the regulator.

Secondly, in designing safety features, it is imperative that the regulator impose more strict standards, by setting requirements that go far beyond those required as a result of the international conventions on nuclear safety especially in the case of Japan, which is in one of the most volcanically active zones in the world.

In conclusion, however, tribute must be paid to the Japanese public who behaved in the most exemplary manner in carrying out the instructions issued by the health and public authorities to reduce and minimize to a great extent the potential damage.

(G. Balachandran is consulting fellow at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi.)

==Kyodo