Japan Press Weekly

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2013 February 6 - 12 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

NRA cannot talk about ‘safety’ without full investigation of Fukushima accident

Akahata editorial (excerpts)

The government’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) has compiled an outline of new safety standards for nuclear power plants and started inviting public opinion on it. The cause of the Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident has not been fully uncovered, and measures not been thoroughly taken to bring the nuclear crisis under control. Under such circumstances, safety of nuclear power generation cannot be assured at all.

The new safety standards consist of three parts: guidelines for construction of nuclear reactors; measures to cope with severe accidents; and countermeasures against major earthquakes and tsunami. Following its examination of opinions from the public, the NRA will finalize the new standards by July. Citizens now have a significant opportunity to have their opinions reflected in the new safety standards.

The 200-page long outline has many inadequacies. If light-water nuclear reactors fail to secure cooling water, they would not be able to avoid core meltdown. The outline, however, does not mention this critical defect of light-water reactors.

Not only that, the outline accords with the electric companies’ demand that the government allow them to operate nuclear reactors even though they cannot set up alternative installations to deal with an emergency, such as a second control room to cool a reactor core.

Countermeasures against massive earthquakes and tsunami also have many problematic points. The government now prohibits a nuclear reactor from being built on an “active fault,” which it defines as having been active in the past 120,000 to 130,000 years. The outline follows this current definition. Furthermore, the outline suggests that a nuclear reactor can be built on an active fault as long as the fault is not visible on the surface. No one can assert let alone guarantee, however, that the fault hidden under the ground will never be active.

Without a pledge to depart from nuclear power generation, the compilation of the new safety standards only introduces a new type of nuclear “safety myth”.