Published on Apr. 27, 2015 : The Denki Shimbun (The Electric Daily News)
Shojiro Matsuura
Chairman of JANSI

What struck me at the recent 48th JAIF Annual Conference held in Tokyo on April 13 and 14, 2015, was that Mr. Yukiya Amano, Director General of IAEA and other guest or keynote presenters put more focus on outlook of increasing significance and usage of nuclear energy worldwide, especially in the Asian region. On one hand, I agreed with the presented details; on the other, I could not help but strongly feel a divergence from the nuclear-avoiding sentiment currently pervading the Japanese society.

How to address the non-conformity between the general public’s sentiments and the significance of nuclear usage is, needless to say, an issue of paramount importance today. The Annual Conference set this issue as a primary topic, and offered presentations and a panel discussion in Session 2 under the title: “Is Japan Doing it Right?”

In the panel discussion, I fully agreed with a comment that one of the panelists, who had extensive experience in public relations, had provided. I recall that in essence the individual said condescending approaches to urge understandings and acceptance from people would not prove effective; rather, a far more convincing approach to earn sympathy is by offering detailed, straightforward explanations beforehand about events that could occur ? and the judgement should be left to the receivers.

Just few months prior to the Great East Japan Earthquake, I was asked to give a keynote presentation at a particular study group on the root causes that render nuclear issues difficult to resolve. As I researched anew on Japan’s past nuclear accidents and non-conformities, I was stunned by what I found: In most cases, social non-conformities, rather than technological non-conformities, were what fundamentally resulted in long-lasting problems. Typical examples are the radiation leak in nuclear-powered ship Mutsu’s first power ascension test, as well as the sodium leak and fire that occurred during the prototype fast breeder reactor Monju’s intermediate power test.

The technological problems for both events were triggered by design-level inexperience or ignorance, which are not uncommon in the engineering development stage. These issues were not difficult to resolve from a technological standpoint, and the repair process was completed with ease. However, the accidents had a number of prior and subsequent non-conformities that caused the events to result in a major social issue.

The radiation leak on Mutsu occurred shortly after the ship, before gaining consent from the local fishermen, forced its way through the fishing boats that blocked the exit of the port. In response, the ?minato home port refused Mutsu to return, thereby leaving the ship adrift for some 50 days on the Pacific. It took around 20 years after this event for Mutsu to terminate its experimental voyage after gaining the understanding of local residents. This, in turn, put an end to Japan’s plans for nuclear-powered ships.

Turning to Monju, complacency in sodium confinement led to an absence of explanations to locals regarding sodium leak risk or the measures to take in response to these leaks. This was in spite of preceding countries undergoing several sodium leak events through their development processes. Moreover, inappropriateness existed in a few cases of post-leakage information disclosure, consequently turning the event at Monju into a major social incident. Steps to address sodium leaks subsequently completed, but several other issues had arisen to cause long delays in Monju’s development plan. The plan still remains in its construction phase today.

What primarily delayed both plans are not fundamental technology-oriented difficulties, but rather, it was the string of social non-conformities that the incidents had induced.

Other cases were on par with each other, although they differed in degree, in that social non-conformities were what primarily caused the events to linger. It goes without saying that technological aspects are critical for nuclear usage, but what is more essential is to learn and gain insight from experience in an effort to achieve social conformities. Quality assurance approaches have been applied to confront technological non-conformities, and this has yielded fruitful outcomes. Likewise, although social issues are far more varied and complex with regard to its features, similar approaches could be created to address them with integrating cause analysis of social non-conformance.

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