Our government has been telling they would restart any nuclear power plant once Nnuclear Regulation Authority:NRA judges it as legitimate according to their regulation. NRA declares they won't guarantee its safety if they legitimize it. They insist they just judge it regulated properly. Our government says, however, NRA would guarantee the safety. Both of them, especially our government, are trying to avoid the responsibility for the safety issue.
In case of any serious accident at nuclear power plant, an actual serious problem is how the local people could evacuate from collapsed nuclear power plant. Compared with the plate type earthquake, an mega earthquake directly above the focus is known to damage the roads around there even more frequently. It would deprive the people there of the way to evacuate from the radio active substance contamination. Evacuation is supposed to be planned by the local government. Either central government or NRA won't concern about it. There is no financial and technical capability to plan for their evacuation in local governments. Evacuation of the people is abandoned from the beginning
Of 54 nuclear power plants in Japan, 5 are located in the Kansai Hokuriku area. They have 13 reactors in total. Here is the map, although it is described in Japanese. All of them are within 50km of distance. A mega earth quake could damage multiple reactors of these 13. Or a domino effect could cause serious accidents to all of them.
There is only one trunk road to those plants. It is highly suspected that this route could be damaged by the earthquake or tsunami. It means that there would be no way to have the people evacuated or to rescue and manage the damaged plants.
The large cities like Kyoto and Osaka are located within 100km in radius from those nuclear power plants. There could be serious radio active substance contamination over these areas. We should remember, in the case of Fukushima, most of radio active subvstances have flown away to the Pacific ocean with the land spared with the contamination. If Kyoto and Osaka areas are highly contaminated, there would be tens of millions people evacuated from there. I guess it almost means our country won't survive any longer.
Shin San,
ReplyDeleteI have read your words on Nuclear Reactors before, but this one sheds more light on the probability of serious consequences if a reactor failure occurs. This area you speak of is definitely not in a good position if failure would occur rapidly. As you said the accident from some time ago, it was fortunate that contamination and problems was avoided only because the winds directed it out to sea. However, there are very few locations both in Japan and here in the USA that do not have an available ocean and it is probable that things would contaminate large area's. I agree with your statements and wonder why those in charge want to evade the whole issue. But I know from our experiences that no local or even regional or national govenrment is prepared to evacuate their people without expense to the people being moved. Nor are they prepared for such a disaster and how to approach resolving the issues that will arise. My experience with local government years ago showed me that they were merely pacifying some of people and they knew this was the case. Yes, they had made some small plans, but none that would help if a huge disaster were to occur.
A lot was learned when Russia had a problem, but how much of the truth got out we do not know, only that they did move people out of the area and it is still sonsidered uninhabitable. We need to encourage our safety people to make disaster plans that will help in the event of a nuclear disaster.
Thanks,
Bob Gates.
Bob,
DeleteThanks for a very interesting comment. I am surprised to hear the risk management for a serious nuclear power plant is not so different from our situation over there.
I believe it is very costly for them to prepare possible serious accidents. it is almost impossible to have an evacuation plan for the local people. Even at such a risk, they would run plants. Because it costs them much money just to keep plants off work. They would have them run at any rate.
It was a local governor who stated about the much damage on the roads by an earthquake directly above the focus, which hinder evacuation of the people. Now, people are aware of that problem. The government may try to pacify their opposition with some sort of subsidies etc. I guess they won't trade their safety with those money.
As you say, we must appeal on the defect in evacuation plan as a real serious issue for the people.
Shin