My Nuclear Nightmare by Naoto Kan Jeffrey S. Irish

Author:Naoto Kan, Jeffrey S. Irish [Naoto Kan, Jeffrey S. Irish]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Historical, Political, History, Asia, Japan, Political Science, History & Theory, World, Asian, Social Science, Sociology, General, Disasters & Disaster Relief, Technology & Engineering, Power Resources, Nuclear
ISBN: 9781501706110
Google: Vk83DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2017-01-09T04:04:42+00:00

Good Fortune

Why had the pressure in Unit 2 dropped so quickly? Most certainly a hole had formed somewhere, allowing steam, gases, and large quantities of radioactive substances to escape. The release of this radioactive material is certainly not excusable, but thanks to this inexplicable hole, a major explosion of the reactor containment vessel was avoided. If one continues to blow up a rubber balloon, it will eventually burst, unable to retain its original form. If, on the other hand, one blows up a paper balloon, at some point the paper’s fibers will give way, causing a hole to form and the air to escape. A paper balloon deflates or shrivels up. It doesn’t burst. Like a paper balloon, when a hole formed somewhere in reactor Unit 2, the “air” inside was released.

This was neither a part of the Unit 2 design, nor was it accomplished by following a procedure in the manual. No one intentionally opened up a hole as part of a last-resort scheme. Some portion of the structure had probably aged and weakened. When the pressure grew, a hole formed. I am not downplaying the efforts of the workers at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant or the Self-Defense Forces, the fire department or the police, all of whom were putting their lives on the line, so please do not misunderstand me, but I believe that this nuclear accident did not reach a level causing Japan to collapse because of a convergence of good fortune. One piece of good fortune was the inexplicable drop in pressure in the Unit 2 reactor. If the nuclear reactor in Unit 2 had burst like a rubber balloon, no one would have been able to go anywhere near the area.

Another piece of good fortune was that water remained in the spent-fuel-rod pool in Unit 4. Because the periodic testing of Unit 4 was behind schedule at the time of the accident, the reactor core was full of water. It is thought that for some reason this water flowed into the pool.

We had been saved by good luck. There is no other way to sum it up. But I do not believe we will have such good fortune in the future. Of course, there are ways to prepare in anticipation of a severe accident of this nature. There are manuals, and if we had trained enough, we might have been able to contain the accident and kept it from reaching crisis level. But the fact that we were able to contain it without such preparations—that can only be explained as good luck.

Those who believe that because we were lucky this time, nuclear power plants will be fine in the future are like the members of the Japanese military who thought that because a divine kamikaze wind had saved Japan at the time of the Mongol Invasion [late in the thirteenth century], we could not lose the war in the Pacific.

The release of large quantities of radioactive substances from Unit 2 and the explosion in Unit 4 caused a great deal of anxiety.

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