February 6, 2013

Feb 6, 2013 | Fukushima Accident Updates

  • Tokyo’s Reconstruction Agency is being reorganized in the hope of speeding up recovery from 3/11/11. Created about one year ago, the Agency was supposed to guide all efforts in recovery from the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident. However, housing reconstruction for tsunami refugees has made little headway, although it was intended to be a major concern of the government’s efforts. Only 30 of the 23,000 promised housing units have been completed, and fewer than 2,000 are in a partial state of construction with most of them delayed due to local government issues. The main work of the agency has been with decontamination of the evacuated zones around Fukushima Daiichi, while the plight of the tsunami victims has been secondary. The new Tokyo government wants the Agency to address tsunami recovery with greater intensity. Prime Minister Abe says the Agency is being revamped with the former administrative barriers to tsunami recovery eliminated. An office in Fukushima City will oversee the decontamination effort and an office in Tokyo will cover tsunami recovery for the entire Tohoku region’s devastated coastline. Reconstruction Minister Takumi Nemoto says the Fukushima office will “implement reconstruction measures promptly, with a hands-on approach.” The Tokyo office will take assistance requests from the tsunami-hit municipalities to identify the most critical reconstruction zones for preferential tax treatment, distribute subsidies according to need and offer deregulation measures to bring companies back to the Tohoku coast. Soon after the Agency was started last year, local governments along the coast criticized it for its attitude relative to comprehensive reconstruction. Many local officials outside Fukushima prefecture said their requests for assistance were largely ignored. Since the new regime has come to Tokyo, things have changed for the better. Sendai Mayor Emiko Okuyama said, “The agency has come to aim for common goals with us.” Still, some officials fear the Agency will continue to move slowly and the redistribution of reconstruction subsidies will not be coordinated with local state and municipal budgets. Also, the region faces a critical shortage of civil engineers, architects and city planners, which makes the reconstruction effort move too slowly. Approximately 250,000 tsunami refugees from outside of Fukushima remain in limbo. (Japan Times)
  • Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority wants to set the world’s toughest nuclear safety rules while providing the greatest possible level of transparency. NRA Chair Shunichi Tanaka said the old rules were not as strict as global standards, so the watchdog will send officials around the world to get opinions on the proposed regulations issued last month. He added that recent resistance to the new rules will have no impact unless the opponents can provide valid scientific proof that their criticisms are worthy. Kyodo News mentioned that Tanaka was appointed by former Prime Minister Noda and he has yet to be formally approved by both houses of the Diet (congress). Approval proceedings will not begin until after this summer’s upper house election. In a related action, the NRA decided to prohibit staff from all unofficial contact with industry groups being regulated, including courtesy calls. This new guideline is due to the recent dismissal of an NRA officer because of the sharing of yet-undisclosed documents with a nuclear power company. (NHK World; Kyodo News Service)
  • The connection to an emergency battery was briefly shut off at the currently-operating Oi unit #3. The incident was due to operator error. During a training exercise, one of the trainees mistakenly switched off the power circuit to the battery. The circuit was restored in about one minute. During routine operation, the emergency batteries do not provide power to the plant’s circuitry, but the electrical connection is kept energized in case there is a loss of routine power sources. In such a case, the battery immediately becomes a necessary emergency power supply. The switching-off did not affect the operation of the plant and no nuclear system integrity was compromised. In accordance with existing procedure, the incident was reported to Tokyo and the local municipalities. The NRA inspector for the Oi station confirmed the incident and reported no adverse effects had been caused. (Kyodo News Service; NHK World)
  • Tepco has announced it will begin buying a large amount of shale gas from American companies in 2017. Tepco says it will import 800,000 tons of the fossil fuel annually. The company is also negotiating an additional purchase of between one and two million tons a year. The move away from conventional natural gas is due to cost. The current nuclear moratorium has forced Japanese utilities to reopen old gas-burning units to avoid power outages during the peak summer and winter seasons. Tepco believes the new deal will safe them over $500 million a year. Tepco estimates that their natural gas import costs could exceed $30 billion for 2013. (NHK World)