Sunday, April 1, 2012

UK's The Observer: "And the nuclear power station at Fukushima very nearly suffered a meltdown"

In the article that was published on March 31, 2012 not April 1 on The Guardian/The Observer, Will Hutton of Oxford University says:

It is the question – not only in Japan but, I would argue, in Britain. In Japan the devastating earthquake in Tohoku 12 months ago has made it even more acute. Three hundred and forty thousand people are still without homes. At least 19,000 died. And the nuclear power station at Fukushima very nearly suffered a meltdown

So there was no meltdown after all at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant? It came close but didn't happen?

I always thought there were three meltdowns, and three "melt-throughs" as the corium in Reactor 1, Reactor 2, and Reactor 3 are most likely to have melted through the Reactor Pressure Vessels onto the concrete floor of the Containment Vessels, and at least partially eaten into the concrete. I thought both TEPCO and the Japanese government admitted it.

We have worried for nothing for over 1 year!

Other than that, Mr. Hutton's article reads like it is from the Prime Minister's Office of Japan.

From The Guardian (3/31/2012; emphasis is mine):

What's the story of the next decade? The rebirth of Japan

The country's urge to reset its business culture is a lesson to Britain in finding the way back to prosperity

Will Hutton
The Observer, Saturday 31 March 2012

It is a small thing, but it says a lot about the country. At Tokyo's Narita airport, when you take off your shoes at the security screening check, the guard hands you a pair of leather slippers. The message is obvious: this airport cares for your wellbeing and recognises your need.

In Japan, taxi doors swing open automatically; toilet seats are electronically warmed and cleaned; and the extraordinary variety of food is presented exquisitely. There is a passion for satiating every imaginable human want and a joy in embracing the science, technology and innovation that might help deliver just that.

For 40 years, between 1950 and 1990, this passion was a key ingredient driving one of the most remarkable periods of growth in economic history. But for the past 20 years, Japan has been stricken by stagnation. In the late 1980s-90s, it suffered a financial crisis nearly as severe as our own. The economic model – the Ministry of International Trade and Industry guiding Japanese companies; the keiretsu networks of loosely conglomerated firms and associated banks; the great global brands – suffered an implosion.

Yet this remains a $5trn economy, the third largest on the planet. The Japanese themselves are desperate to recover the elixir of growth, and understand that economic conservatism – in Japan just as in Britain – leads to disappointment and heartbreak.

In 2009, the Democratic party of Japan was elected by a landslide, pledging a root and branch reform of every bureaucratic, corporatist and anti-democratic element in Japan's broken system. It also pledged to recast economic policy to serve the people. Despite some epic mistakes, notably its handling of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, it still holds an opinion poll lead over its rival, the Liberal Democratic party (LDP).

However, forces within the government are very much open to pondering where it should go next. Ten days ago, I was invited by the DPJ government to go to Tokyo to contribute to this ongoing conversation.

Cabinet members wanted to discuss what a 21st-century social contract might look like, respecting both necessary labour market flexibility and security. They wanted to understand the contribution that open innovation ecosystems and an entrepreneurial state can play in driving forward innovation and investment. Above all, they asked: how could Japan reinvent its stakeholder capitalism of the second half of the 20th century so that it was more democratic? And they thought there might be something in my ideas rehearsed in the books The State We're In and Them and Us. In short, how could Japan do good capitalism?

It is the question – not only in Japan but, I would argue, in Britain. In Japan the devastating earthquake in Tohoku 12 months ago has made it even more acute. Three hundred and forty thousand people are still without homes. At least 19,000 died. And the nuclear power station at Fukushima very nearly suffered a meltdown.

At the time of the crisis, Japan hoped that, with the DPJ in power, there would be a decisive change from the way such matters had been handled in the past – obfuscation, delay, inactivity and anxiety to protect corporate interests. Yet the new government bounced off the secrecy of Tokyo Electric Power Company, the bureaucratic ministries, a muzzled media and the enveloping tentacles of the employers' organisation, the Keidanren, as if nothing had changed. Prime Minster Kan became party to delivering inadequate and late information via the impenetrable state and corporate networks; many Japanese became devotees of BBC World News as the only purveyor of truth. Kan was forced to resign last summer.

But the Japanese electorate is not ready to return to the status quo. They know they need nuclear power which just 12 months ago provided more than a third of their electricity needs; but as power stations are being closed down for safety inspections local communities are vetoing their reopening. In May, the last nuclear power station operating will also be mothballed.

The terms for their restarting are tough. Local communities, fired up by a new citizen activism, want effective oversight, transparency of information and commitments to meet international safety standards. It is Japanese good capitalism, driven by citizen demands from below.

Faced with this new phenomenon, the LDP is at a loss, while the DPJ itself seems to be re-gathering its conviction that its reform agenda is the only way forward. At an open meeting in the Japanese parliament, I was struck by the interest DPJ MPs showed in discussing innovative ways of kickstarting credit flows – as anathema to the Bank of Japan and Ministry of Finance as they are to the Bank of England and Treasury.

The Bank of Japan has just expanded a version of the Bank of England's quantitative easing programme; but abstains from the activism it used to show in the great days of Japan's growth. The conclusions are obvious. Japan's financial system is broken; an activist state has to restart bank lending by assuming some of the risk – just as it must in Britain.

If Japan could reset its macroeconomic policy, there is an enormous pool of dynamic hi-tech medium-sized firms that could immediately grow very fast. Consultant Gerhard Fasol argues that in areas like LED lighting or mobile phone payment systems, Japan is 10 years ahead of the rest of the world. The Fujitsus and Toshibas of tomorrow are in the wings. What Japan needs is for the increasingly sclerotic giants to be challenged by these many insurgents, who need new institutions to support their ambitions to go global. A new entrepreneurial, accountable state could drive a second phase of powerful Japanese growth.

These debates are foreign to our primitive business culture, which undervalues service and innovation and scarcely thinks about a more productive capitalism. There is a long list of British companies that have tried to break into Japan's market and failed. Observers say the common theme is wholesale insensitivity to the need for service and innovation, the precondition for any success in Japan.

Britain and Japan are two island economies, both mired in private debt with stricken financial systems. Although Japan has a long way to go, it is becoming obvious, confirmed by last week's British budget, which of the two countries is most likely to create the 21st-century framework for growth and prosperity. The Asian story of the next decade will be Japan's renaissance and China's relapse.

LED lighting and mobile phone payment system under an activist government. That should help end "Lost Decades".

Both the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP; the word "liberal" in the party name is not what you think in the US) have been scraping the bottom when it comes to the poll numbers, though LDP still has an edge over DPJ, contrary to what Mr. Hutton says.

Jiji Tsushin shows the numbers for March 2012 as follows:

DPJ: 9.2% (February 10.1%, January 11.6%)
LDP: 11.7% (February 12.3%, January 13.3%)
Komei Party: 3.9% (February 3.4%, January 3.7%)
Japan Communist Party: 1.3% (February 1.6%, January 0.8%)
Not supporting any: 70% (February 68.2%, January 67%)

I think Mr. Hutton may want to watch the DPJ minister (Goshi Hosono) being shouted down by angry Kyoto residents who used the imperative form of speech to tell him to go back to where he came from (central government at Kasumigaseki, Tokyo). It was not "Please go back" but "Go back!"

(Or was this April 1st special after all? Or was this set up by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?)

20 comments:

Atomfritz said...

They really should start up a Green party.

Anonymous said...

Tosh like this makes me ashamed to be British.

Mike said...

I am unacquainted with the author's work, but that article contains so many false and absurd statements that I can only imagine it is an April Fools' Day joke.

Anonymous said...

The Absurder is a Rothschilds rag!

Anonymous said...

OT but somewhat related to the claptrap from Hutton above:

Climate Catastrophe/Global Warming Pushing World Government and will be big at a UN June 2012 Conference.
http://www.analysis-news.com/Gdetailfolder/Goldsmiths-238.htm

Anonymous said...

F--k the lyin' limy British!

Anonymous said...

& nobody died as a result of radiation from Fukushima, the following yout! explains how http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3jrWVp2L7U

Anonymous said...

--------------------------------------------------
TOPIC: WHERE'S THE CORIUM; WTF DID HOSONO SAY?

Laprimavera,

PBS did a story back on June 7, 2011,"Report: Puts Fukushima's Radiation Release at 1/6th of Chernobyl's", wherein Goshi Hosono discusses the location of the melted fuel. [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/jan-june11/japan1_06-07.html] Note that, at the link, there is audio of Hosono speaking Japanese with English voice-over translation; the written English transcript is as follows:

...GOSHI HOSONO, special adviser to Japanese prime minister (through translator): "At present, there is damage to the bottom of the reactor container. We call this core melting in English. PART OF THE FUEL FELL INTO THE DRY EARTH FLOOR, and it is possible that it is still lodged there".

A few months ago, I participated in a discussion of this PBS story with several members of Daily Kos (none of us speaks Japanese). Several people took Hosono's statement to mean that the melted fuel had escaped containment and was melting into the earth below the reactor. However, others thought there was a problem with the translation; they insisted that Hosono was saying the fuel had only burned through the reactor pressure vessel and fallen into the DRYWELL rather than into the "dry earth".

QUESTION: Can you make out what Hosono was saying? It would be amazing if you could translate the statement directly from Japanese to English. Many thanks.

JP
--------------------------------------------------

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

JP, it is extremely hard to make out what Hosono is saying, but as far as I can hear, Hosono was talking about core melt, and wasn't talking anything about the fuel fell anywhere. Hosono's words ended right when he was talking about "core melt".

He started out by saying "At this point, the Reactor Pressure Vessel..." (What's the "reactor container"? There is no such word.)

Then, "melted fuel, it is called "core melt"" and that's where his voice ends. ("We call this core melting in English" ?? There is "core melt" but not "core melting".)

So, from this particular segment, Hosono didn't say what PBS says he said. The translator doesn't seem to know what he/she is translating, not even knowing the terms. So, it is highly probable that he didn't say anything like "fuel fell into the dry earth floor".

I'll try to find where this quote came from.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

For that matter, neither Edano nor Matsumoto seem to be saying what PBS says they are saying. This is ridiculous.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

JP, I found the video clip that PBS probably used. It's from his press conference on June 7, 2011. He said the following:

"At this point, the bottoms of the Reactor Pressure Vessels are damaged [he is talking about Reactors 1, 2, and 3]. It is possible that part of the melted fuel, by the way melting of the fuel is called "core melt" in English, part of the melted fuel has dropped to the floor of the Containment Vessel dry well and accumulated, and that's how we describe the situation [in our report to the IAEA]."

Whoever the PBS's translator was, I hope PBS didn't have to pay much for the incorrect translation.

(Kyodo News video clip in Japanese: http://www.47news.jp/movie/general_politics_economy/post_4067/)

Anonymous said...

--------------------------------------------------
Laprimavera, many thanks for taking the time to accurately translate the foregoing statement from Hosono. It looks like the PBS account was waaay off! Perhaps the statement in context would tell us something more.

There were also some accounts circulating around about Hosono's June 19, 2011 press conference; wherein he discussed possible locations of the melted fuel. Hosono, reportedly, said there may be melted fuel in the reactor pressure vessel; in the containment vessel; or underneath the containment vessel. I've been wondering, was he any more specific with regard to the last possibility?

JP
--------------------------------------------------

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

JP, where did you get that info? Daily Kos? I didn't know they were interested in Fukushima at all.

I'll try to look for the video.

Anonymous said...

Unit 2 is a MESS !!! "Where is the core?" / "A fifty year battle"

Gunderson says Fukushima Daiichi was on fire before tsunami hit (AUDIO & VIDEO)
Published: April 2nd, 2012 at 12:11 am ET
http://solarimg.org/?p=2520
Download the 30-minute broadcast here
http://solarimg.org/shows/SolarIMG_podcast_Arnie_Gundersen_280312.mp3

Anonymous said...

Gundersen is saying TEPCO is pumping 5 to 10 tonnes of water a day?? Oh boy.

Anonymous said...

he meant Fukushima dai-ni obviously

Anonymous said...

Daily KOS is interested, they print pretty out front accurate depictions BUT on timid once in a blue moon schedule.

Anonymous said...

Not supporting any: 70% (February 68.2%, January 67%)

Maybe it's time for a japanese pirate party...?

Think yourself! Act now!

Mark_Eric said...

They are pumping 9 tons of water AN HOUR into #2 alone. Even with that, only two feet of water in reactor.

ENENews has had video of a possible fire at Daiichi prior to the tsunami. Even if there was no visible fire, we know at least #1 and perhaps others were in full meltdown prior to the tsunami, due to all of the piping that was damaged from the quake.

Link to ENENews story
http://enenews.com/host-fukushima-daiichi-fire-before-tsunami-hit-audio-video

Anonymous said...

arevamirpal,
here is a link for you in case you don't have it

http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Joieau

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