Alberto Clò - 16/04/2012

     A year has passed and we have almost forgotten the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station accident – the worst on record, along with Chernobyl 1986: how it followed on the catastrophic 11th March 2011 tsunami, waves 14 metres high knocking out emergency generators sited 5.7 metres aloft. How little it appears to have taught us! We now find a barely-concealed attempt by certain international bodies to pass it off as a tragic but one-off event; the idea that nothing need basically change when this energy source swings back into vogue; that the countries (like Germany) that dumped it or (like Italy) refused to go back were a prey to passing “emotional reactions” on the part of government and public opinion and not realistically aware that this technology needs far better safety measures than we currently possess. In actual fact Fukushima was a watershed in how public opinion perceived the design faults of nuclear safety systems and the failure to manage the aftermath of an accident – especially in terms of information about what was going on and the potential effects on the local population and the countries most exposed to radioactive fallout. In this latter regard, the plant management company, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, displayed all the errors of judgment, inexperience and cover-up mentality that a private entity is prone to.

     Into the bargain, within hours the inept Tokyo government had destroyed a worldwide myth about Japanese efficiency, floundering in jurisdictional confusion, bureaucratic obtuseness and lack of coordination, and even infecting the International Agency for Atomic Energy (IAAE) which initially broadcast the confused and misleading bulletins given out by TEPCO and only two months later sent its experts to Japan – where they promptly upgraded the accident assessment from ‘minor’ to ‘serious’ and then ‘catastrophic’. A full year later the real assessment is still shrouded in fog and may take years to fathom. Yet Fukushima has so many lessons to teach us. First: nuclear safety is a global issue which cannot be left to the independent management of an individual State, let alone the self-interest of a company concerned more for its profit margin than for public health. Second: in the last analysis one is not a nuclear-free country just because there are no power stations on one’s own territory.

     Regulation of safety standards, inspection and sanctions calls for more stringent and binding international control, over the head of individual State authorities. Fukushima showed, thirdly, how weak and hypocritical politics can be: beginning with the European Union, which is what concerns us most closely. There is culpable shirking of responsibility in Brussels, clearly evinced when individual countries are left to decide whether and how to take action. There can be no future for nuclear energy in Europe if public opinion is not given full guarantees of safety. Any shortcomings revealed by the stress-tests on 143 European power stations decreed by the European Council on 23rd March 2011 must be brought to book and the outcome made public within the next month or so. What we need, in short, is to get back to the 1957 spirit when the Euratom Treaty was signed.

     The founding fathers of the Community realized at the time that nuclear was an option to be pursued for its long-term advantages, but on the understanding that the cost, risk and complexity of the venture called for the tightest of European cooperation. That spirit was defeated by national egoism, but it needs reviving if we are to give the nuclear project a future. Japan’s crisis is everyone’s crisis. It proves that international cooperation is part and parcel of nuclear energy: it can only be regulated supranationally and demands common standards, concerting of national policies and constant exchange of information so as to enhance safety. That has only partly been achieved, for want of a control system and inspectorate continually monitoring the state of plants and instantly ready, in case of accident, to react with maximum efficiency. Only if this comes about can there be a future for advanced nuclear technology; only then can we say that Fukushima did not burn in vain.

Alberto Clò
(Bologna University)