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8/6/2019 Securing Japan’s Clean Energy Future
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/securing-japans-clean-energy-future 1/4
Securing Japan’s Clean Energy Future
Posted on 24. Jun, 2011 by John Dos Passos Coggin in Asia Pacific , Latest
As Japan recovers from the spring tsunami and Fukushima nuclear station disaster,
plans for a clean energy future. It is tempting for its energy industry officials
categorize all the lessons of the nuclear crisis as specific to the atomic energy industr
Accidents happen, however, in all complex energy production systems.
Accidents in the most abstruse technology systems, from commercial airplanes
tankers to space shuttles to nuclear plants, can overwhelm even the most conscientioudesigners and operators.
As Japanese clean energy hardware makers Toshiba, Panasonic, and Sharp expan
production and design prototypes to meet a new national demand for renewab
energy, they should heed one of the lessons of the nuclear industry: keeping it simp
keeps it safe.
In Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies , Yale sociologist CharPerrow posits that modern technology systems contain so many connected, interactiv
parts that accidents are inevitable and natural during their operation. Thus he cal
these events “normal accidents.”
For certain, corporate malfeasance in the nuclear industry—falsification of safe
records, for example—is still culpable when it occurs.
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One of the most ignominious examples of nuclear industry negligence came in 1987
Philadelphia Electric’s Peach Bottom plant. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sh
down the plant when they found evidence of control room shenanigans during th
night shift: sleeping on the job, playing video games, and rubber band and paper ba
fights. The nuclear industry’s self-regulating body, the Institute of Nuclear Pow
operations, sent a letter to Philadelphia Electric’s board of directors. Its messag
echoed the sentiments of the public and the industry: “It is an embarrassment to thindustry and to the nation.”
Perrow’s point is that even under a perfect safety regime, normal accidents happe
when the technology is sufficiently complex. For certain high technologies like nucle
plants, “neither better organization nor technological innovations appear to mak
them any less prone to system accidents. In fact, these systems require organization
structures that have large internal contradictions, and technological fixes that increa
interactive complexity and tighten the coupling; they become still more prone certain kinds of accidents.”
When the U.S. commercial nuclear power industry began in the 1950s, many pla
owners wrongly assumed that coal and oil plant operation logs would tell them a
they needed to know about nuclear safety.
Yet, a typical nuclear reactor has forty thousand valves, ten times the number of a co
plant. Small actions produce unexpected consequences across feedback loops of suc
magnitude and variety as to be incomprehensible. In a recent column in Bulletin of th
Atomic Scientists , Jungmin Kang wrote of the Fukushima accident, “What rea
[emphasis in original] caused the accident, however, was that the power plant simp
ran out of electricity.” The loss of power spiraled out of control and panic ensued.
Consider historical nuclear plant accidents in the U.S. that began small but escalate
due to the integration of the system components. Three Mile Island, the prim
example, was the product of an improperly closed valve and a stuck water levgauge, among other errors. But there are many other examples.
In 1980, a worker at the North Anna Unit 1 reactor in Virginia accidently caused
reactor shutdown by catching his shirt on a circuit breaker. In 1975, a worker
Browns Ferry Unit 2 in Alabama used a lit candle to check sealant integrity an
accidently started a fire; the blaze damaged over a thousand electrical cables an
forced staff to shut down the reactor. In 1978, a worker at Rancho Secco Unit 1 react
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in California accidently dropped a light bulb, causing a short circuit and react
shutdown.
Even the slightest problems with piping can lead to disaster if radioactive water is se
to the wrong area of the plant. Most nuclear plants depend on cooling water supplie
by nearby rivers and bays—ecosystems full of animals and plants. Clam colonies c
stick to cooling pipes in nuclear plants, eventually clogging them. Then workers mu
clean the clams from the pipes while the plant is shut down.
Perrow’s theory merits study as Japan builds a new, greener energy policy. Energ
safety and security is paramount for wind, solar, hydropower, and other clean sourc
if their advocates are to gain the public trust and private investment required
expand.
Right now, all of these renewable sources are safe to operate. The most successf
stories seem to come from small, local production like solar roofs and geothermhome heating.
But their proliferation as base-load electricity sources will likely require mass sca
energy storage. Batteries, as we now know them, can explode, corrode, and ignite.
Sony’s introduction of the first lithium-ion battery in 1991 was followed by a quic
recall when a pack in a cell phone emitted hot gases that burned a man’s face.
Battery technology is certain to evolve and proliferate in fantastic ways as renewab
energy matures as an industry. Solar, wind, and geothermal technologies have muc
room to grow. In 2007, Japan generated only 6 percent of its primary energy fro
renewable sources. On May 25th, Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced plans to boo
that number to 20 percent by the early 2020s.
The Intergovernmental Plan on Climate Change recently calculated that more than
percent of global renewable energy potential remains unexplored.
As the clean energy industry expands, widespread battery use could threaten huma
health and energy security. By 2050, scaled up in grand fashion, the clean energ
industry could suffer from the tight coupling and interactive complexity that caus
normal accidents in the nuclear industry. We cannot conceive how complex the win
farms of the future will be—the number of moving parts, batteries, and circu
necessary to power not just towns but nations.
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Granted, no disaster at a solar or wind plant could match the horror of a nucle
meltdown. But blackouts are destructive enough to our economy and our health, an
can exacerbate other crises. And even if the renewable energy sector expands at th
rapid speed Japanese politicians prefer, the nation will depend on nuclear plants f
the short term to provide base-load electricity as renewables meet peak demand.
The dirty and clean energy industries are more interdependent than their leadewould care to admit when it comes to building a culture of safety. Japane
industrialists eager to guarantee a safe green energy future should study their nucle
past.
John Dos Passos Coggin is the Executive Editor of Foreign Affairs Journal.
Tags: Climate Change , Fukushima , Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Plant , Japa
Nuclear Regulatory Commission , Prime Minister Naoto Kan , Three Mile Island