Fukushima’s lesson is the need for effective nuclear regulation

It’s been a decade since March 11, 2011, when the strongest earthquake on record in Japan caused a tsunami and killed more than 19,500 people and displaced more than 230,000. It was the country’s worst natural disaster since 1995. The “Great East Japan Earthquake” or the “Great Tohoku Earthquake” is known as the “Fukushima nuclear disaster” and is often referred to as a document A in the nuclear power issue. Yes, the earthquake and tsunami caused the catastrophic failure of three of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant, leaving a contained radioactive mess that would take decades to clean up, and leading to a mass evacuation in which 2,313 people were killed. However, for all horror stories, the actual number of deaths or cases of radiation sickness due to the accident – take a deep breath – is zero. In conjunction with the tenth anniversary of the disaster, a United Nations scientific committee confirmed the results that there are no harmful health effects associated with exposure to radiation. No one died and no one became ill from the reactor accident.

This is not all. The popular narrative often neglects to mention that there are 11 reactors in operation – including the three located at Fukushima Daiichi – at four nuclear power plants in the area. They all shut down automatically, but the three at Fukushima failed to complete the process. Sixty kilometers away, three reactors at Onagawa were undamaged and safely closed, despite their proximity to the epicenter and suffering a stronger tsunami. None of this is to reduce the human, environmental and economic damage caused by the Fukushima accident, or indeed the risks arising from nuclear power plants; Just to set it straight. What we have is a case for more concern for safety and governance, not a fierce rejection of nuclear power as we saw in many Western countries shortly after the accident.

A fair assessment of technology and economics indicates that nuclear energy must be part of the civilizational response to climate change. In its latest report, the International Energy Agency noted that while wind and solar energy is already competitive compared to fossil fuels, nuclear energy “remains a distributable low-carbon technology at the lowest costs projected in 2025.” Renewable energy cost structure must include energy storage systems if it is to replace coal and gas for base load capacity. Even if in line with current projections, renewable energy economies become more attractive over time, nuclear energy will remain an important source of carbon diversity: as a country dependent on fuel imports, India should invest in renewable energy, but it cannot ignore nuclear energy.

Vaclav Smil, one of the world’s most thoughtful energy analysts, describes nuclear energy as a “successful failure” for its inability to garner public support despite its ability to achieve. Despite the facts, “Fukushima” is a one-word argument that has been put forward around the world to silence any discussion about building new nuclear power plants.

Failure to comply with nuclear energy is not a failure of technology or economics. It is a failure of public policy. In this sense, India’s Civil Liability Act 2010 is not unique in preventing further investment, innovation and development of nuclear energy. It is an almost universal phenomenon. Unlike Russia and China, which have seized the decade since the Fukushima accident to become world leaders in this field, nearly every country has adopted laws and policies that stifle the development of the nuclear industry.

India has done a good job of continuing to invest in nuclear power despite negative global sentiment, but the pace of action has been slower than expected, and most importantly, the industry governance structure has not been overhauled. Against the promise of producing 20,000 MW of nuclear power by 2020, India currently has an operating capacity of 6,780 MW, which is only 2.4% of the electricity generated. In addition to the eight under construction, the government has approved 12 additional reactors, targeting 2,480 megawatts by 2031.

In response to Lok Sabha’s question, the government stated that it has no plans to encourage domestic and foreign investment in this sector, which makes the Fukushima lesson particularly suitable for India. The causes of this accident have been traced back to a poor safety culture arising from organizational control and weak oversight. The interrogators blamed “a mentality that emphasizes hierarchy and submissiveness and does not encourage questioning.”

If India’s nuclear industry is to be run by the government for the foreseeable future, it is crucial to restructure its governance. The issue of the independent industry regulator and safety auditor of the Indian Atomic Energy Corporation has been evident since 1995, a point repeated in the 2015 review by an independent international group of experts.

The Narendra Modi government should restructure the civilian nuclear power corporation the way it did in the space sector last year: the structural separation between policy-maker, regulator, research and development, and commercial operators. Safety requires better and more timely information. Not everything has to be in the public domain, but an effective governance structure will give the government better quality information about the situation in the sector.

Nitin Bay is the co-founder and director of the Takashila Foundation, an independent center for research and education in public policy

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