Japan’s efforts to cool Fukushima low-tech.
Published: March 18, 2011TOKYO — For a country that is known for its industrial robots, advanced cellphones and hybrid vehicles, Japan’s efforts to cool the hobbled nuclear reactors in Fukushima have seemed, at least to a world watching on television, to be decidedly low-tech.
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In the first days after the earthquake and tsunami last Friday damaged the power plants, employees from the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the plants, struggled largely out of view of the cameras. But after high levels of radiation made it too dangerous for workers to get near some of the reactors, the power company and the government have had to resort to a series of increasingly desperate, increasingly dramatic steps.
The company tried flooding the stricken reactors with seawater. The police tried using hoses to spray the reactors. Then military helicopters dropped water on the reactors using big buckets. On Friday, fire trucks arrived with high-powered water cannons. There are efforts to run a giant extension cord to the plant to power a cooling system.
With all of Japan’s technological prowess, was this the best it could do? Were these Rube Goldberg contraptions, cobbled together because everything else failed, or were they cannily improvised solutions to an increasingly dire problem? Just as important, can the measures cool not only the reactors but also the rising anxiety of Japanese who feel they are in harm’s way?
The answers to these questions depend on where you sit.
A number of experts in nuclear power and crisis management say that Tokyo Electric and the government were woefully unprepared to deal with the explosions in Fukushima. They were caught off-guard by the impact of the powerful earthquake and tsunami, they say, and the ad hoc nature of their response is a result.
“They are attacking the problem in a piecemeal fashion,” said Atsuyuki Sassa, the former director general of the Cabinet Security Affairs Office. “This isn’t crisis management, but a management crisis.”
But those whose views are more sympathetic, including some ordinary Japanese, take the government at their word: No one could have adequately planned for the twin blows of a huge earthquake and a giant tsunami. The response may seem scattershot, they say, but that is a function of the unpredictable nature of nuclear reactors when disaster strikes.
Appearances count, too, they say. The Japanese government has tried to reassure its jittery citizens that though the problems are severe, every resource possible is being thrown at them. In that light, the helicopters and water cannons do not register as hamfistedness in the face of a runway disaster, but rather as signs that no effort is being spared.
Politicians have tried to underscore their determination to tackle the crisis by ditching their blue suits and neckties and instead donning jackets favored by policemen and engineers. Even the governor of the Bank of Japan, Masaaki Shirakawa, whose role in the crisis has largely been limited to pumping money, has worn one at a press conference.
“The government would like to show it is doing whatever it can do,” said Masahiro Horie, the dean of international affairs at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies who worked for 35 years in the national government. “It’s natural that they try to keep people calm, do everything possible and not give any information that might cause a panic.”
The Japanese are not alone, of course, in having to improvise on the run. Last summer, Americans watched in horror as BP and a host of industry experts tried — and often failed — to get control of a gushing oil well on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. As in the Fukushima crisis, company officials initially thought they could seal the well in a way that would let them salvage it later. When that proved impossible, they resorted to more drastic steps, including pumping cement in to seal the damaged well, nearly five months after the initial rig explosion.
A solution to the catastrophe in Fukushima remains elusive. After failing on their own, Tepco officials have been forced to seek help outside the company. Having the police, firefighters and the Self-Defense Forces join the effort has reassured some people, but others saw them as signs that the emergency was spiraling out of control.
Indeed, on Friday, the Japanese nuclear safety agency raised its assessment of the severity of the problem, ranked on a 7-level international scale, to 5 from 4, the national broadcaster NHK reported. Level 4 denotes incidents with local consequences; level 5 indicates broader consequences. For comparison, the partial meltdown of the reactor at Three Mile Island in 1979 was rated a 5.
“Some people might think the arrival of the self-defense forces and helicopters mean that strong measures are being applied, but I think it’s the opposite,” said Tadae Takubo, who taught international politics and national security at Kyorin University in Tokyo. “They seem like desperate measures to me. It’s all too late.”
Sadly, some of the Tepco workers, policemen and others who have fought to cool the reactors may have been exposed in the process to high levels of radiation. In a nation that values selflessness and determination, it is not surprising that they have been lauded in the Japanese media as heroes for their willingness to sacrifice their health for the sake of the nation.
Though their improvised efforts have yet to succeed, the fact that someone was doing something — anything — was reassuring to some.
“I don’t know, I’m a little skeptical about dropping water out of a helicopter,” said Akiko Sato, 28, an office worker shopping in the Ginza district of Tokyo. “But I like to think what they’re doing with the water canons might be useful. I think they’re really trying.”
