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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