Mar. 15, 2011 | Last Updated: Mar. 15, 2011 4:09 AM ET
Peter Goodspeed, National Post
For nearly four years, Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a leading seismologist from Kobe University, has been warning Japan's policy of placing nuclear reactors in the middle of an active earthquake belt could lead to catastrophe.
The senior advisor to the nuclear industry resigned in protest in 2005 from a national safety panel, saying guidelines for protecting nuclear reactors from earthquakes were too lax.
Since then, Prof. Ishibashi has documented three incidents at nuclear reactors in Japan between 2005 and 2007 where earthquakes "triggered tremors stronger than those to which the reactor had been designed to survive."
Nearly four years ago, he compared the country's policy of operating nuclear power plants in earthquake-prone zones to "a suicide bomber wearing grenades around his belt."
"Unless radical steps are taken now to reduce the vulnerability of nuclear power plants to earthquakes, Japan could experience a true nuclear catastrophe in the near future," he said in 2007.
Now, just weeks before the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Japan finds itself facing the possibility of nuclear meltdowns in three nuclear reactors damaged by earthquakes.
Two power plants have already exploded, serving as a testament to the calamitous scope of the natural disasters that have traumatized the country since Friday.
But the nuclear danger may also be a direct result of human hubris.
For decades there have been Cassandra-like warnings the nuclear industry was not paying enough attention to the potential dangers of nuclear destruction.
A long list of mistakes and failures, combined with a pattern of cover-ups and deliberate concealment, has left many people wondering just how bad the current crisis might really be.
The Japanese nuclear industry is probably the most advanced and intensive in the world -it has 17 nuclear power plants, 55 nuclear reactors and produces about 30% of the country's electricity. But it operates in a country that is highly sensitized to the dangers of radioactive disaster by virtue of the fact that Japan is the only nation in the world to have experienced a nuclear attack.
As a result, the combination of fundamental foreboding and industrial pride has resulted in a distinct lack of transparency in dealing with nuclear crises.
In August 2002, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPC), owner and operator of the Fukushima Daiichi power plants that are currently threatened with nuclear meltdowns, had 17 of its reactors shut down for emergency inspections after it was discovered the company had been systematically concealing nuclear safety incidents for decades.
Eventually, the company's top directors resigned and admitted to 200 occasions in which company officials doctored repair reports and submitted false data to the nuclear authorities.
In another scandal, the Monju fast breeder nuclear reactor in Tsuruga was closed for 14 years. It only re-opened last May, after an explosion and fire in 1995 severely damaged the nuclear plant.
Investigations of the incident revealed operators did not order a shut-down until two hours after the initial explosion, while the semi-governmental agency that ran the reactor falsified reports on the accident.
Officials went so far as to doctor a videotape of fire damage at the plant to downplay the severity of the accident.
In 2007, Hokuriku Electric Power Co. had to shut down a nuclear reactor in Shiga, on the Sea of Japan, after it admitted to covering up a 15minute uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction when a regular maintenance check went horribly wrong eight years earlier.
In 2004, four Japanese workers were scalded to death by superheated steam as they carried out routine maintenance on a nuclear reactor operated by Kansai Electric Power Corp. in western Japan. Investigations into the incident revealed that, in 27 years of operation, the steam pipe that ruptured had never been inspected or replaced, despite a warning by a subcontractor nine months earlier.
In 1997, in an incident ranked as Japan's worst nu-clear accident, an explosion in the country's only nuclear waste reprocessing plant exposed 37 plant workers to radiation and resulted in a release of plutonium into the atmosphere over the city of Tokai.
It was later revealed the plant's containment facilities did not function properly; workers were not evacuated until 24 minutes after the initial fire was noticed; and it took hours before officials reported any radiation leaks.
The nuclear incident that closest resembles the disaster now unfolding now at Fukushima occurred in 2007, when a 6.8-scale earthquake damaged the Kushiwazaki nuclear reactor in northwestern Japan.
That quake set off a fire that burned for two hours and caused a leak of radioactive water inside the plant.
TEPC, owner of the Fukushima and Kushiwazaki reactors, was later reprimanded for taking more than six hours to notify authorities of the nuclear leak.
When Prof. Ishibashi studied the Kushiwazaki incident, he discovered the world's largest nuclear plant had unknowingly been built directly on top of an active seismic fault.
He warned that Japan's nuclear safety policies are flawed and predicted a "true nuclear catastrophe," if nothing was done to improve the earthquake survivability of its nuclear industry.
"In the 40 years that Japan had been building nuclear plants, seismic activity was, fortunately or unfortunately, relatively quiet," he wrote in 2007.
"Not a single nuclear facility was struck by a big quake. The government, along with the power industry and the academic community, all developed the habit of underestimating the potential risks posed by major quakes."
He predicted a period of high-level seismic activity over the next 40 years and said that will pose a constant threat to Japan's nuclear reactors.
Last Friday's earthquake, the most powerful Japan has ever recorded, now threatens Japan with its worst ever nuclear crisis.
pgoodspeed@nationalpost.com
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