Five years after the 9.0-magnitude Great East Japan Earthquake hit the island of Japan with its epicenter 45 miles offshore, it is time to brace yourself for an onslaught of bad news.
The events that followed the earthquake – the tsunami event that overwhelmed the backup power system at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear generating station – are etched into the memories of many people – especially those in the nuclear power industry, which has hit an ironic slump right at the time world leaders are pressing hard to map out a carbon-free energy future for a climate-challenged planet.
But five years after the March 11, 2011 earthquake, with the cleanup effort at the plant making steady progress, the world's media are proving to be a glass-half-empty bunch. With the underground infrastructure in place to create an ice wall to contain the groundwater seeping into and out of the devastated four-building area, the media are looking at that effort as a unrealized fantasy, given the sci-fi aspects to the endeavor and the point that the system has yet to be switched on. Others are pointing to the numbers of residents who have yet to return to the evacuated area surrounding the plant. Still others use photos revisit the buildings devastated by hydrogen explosions that occurred shortly after the power failed.
The Associated Press has published a report that looks at the hard numbers that point out the cleanup effort's shortfalls. A Reuters report starts out with the information that robots sent in to the highly radioactive areas of the crippled containment vessels have “died” in their efforts to document the interior damage.
In so many words, if the cleanup and decommissioning is going to take decades, stopping to review progress after five years is going to be a field day for pessimism.
Here are some numbers from the Associated Press: 164,865 residents of Fukushima evacuated their homes after the accident. To date, 97,320 have not returned to their homes. The glass-half-full data would point to the number who have returned – 67,545.
Of the 94 municipalities in Fukushima, 49 have completed decontamination work, AP reports. Another 45 are still working on decontamination, which has yielded, in total, 10.7 million 1-ton container bags of radioactive debris.
For the nuclear power industry in Japan, the most jarring numbers are these three: 54, 43 and 2. Those numbers are, respectively, the number of operating reactors prior to the events of March 2011, the number of rectors considered viable for restarting if clearance is granted by the Nuclear Regulatory Authority and the number of currently operating reactors in the country. Moreover, the number of operating reactors at this date was widely expected to be four. However, restarting Units 3 and 4 at the Takahama nuclear generating station hit both technical and a political hurdles.
Unit 3 was restarted in January and returned to commercial operations on schedule. Unit 4 was restarted in late February and went offline three days later with an automatic shutdown described as a “main transformer/generator internal failure.” On Wednesday, however, the Ostu district court issued an injunction on behalf of 29 area residents who claimed the plant operator Kensai Electric Power Company could not guarantee the plant's safety. The company said it would shut down the reactor on Thursday, today. The company also said it would appeal the injunction vigorously in court.
The implications for the industry are harsh, because it means that any accident at a nuclear power facility opens the industry up to an entirely new set of safety standards, which are already, arguably, the most strident of any industry in the world.
Currently, it is estimated that the decommissioning at Fukushima could take up to 40 years, which means, potentially, 40 years of negative stories – reminders of how quickly mother nature can turn the tide politically and technically when it comes to a power source with infinite promise and obvious risks.