Council for Nuclear Fuel Cycle · WATANABE, Shu Member of the House of Representatives YAMAMOTO,...

Opinion

No More Innocent Logic “Plutonium Equals to Nuclear Weapons”

Focus

Security in Northeast Asia and Agenda for Japan

CNFC Report

Immediately Adopt Measures Whatever They Are for Safety Sendai Nuclear Power Station

-- Japan’s First Reactor to Have Restarted

Council for Nuclear Fuel Cycle

Spring 2016 No.84

ISSN 0919-9748

Contents

• OpinionNo More Innocent Logic “Plutonium Equals to

Nuclear Weapons”

• FocusSecurity in Northeast Asia and Agenda for Japan

Satoshi Morimoto

• CNFC ReportImmediately Adopt Measures Whatever

They Are for SafetySendai Nuclear Power Station -- Japan’s First Reactor to Have Restarted

• Info-ClipHighest Intensity Registered at Sendai NPS Was 3 in

the Kumamoto EarthquakePlutonium Management in Japan

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Spring 2016 No.84

Date of Issue : June 14, 2016

Designed by QB System Co., Ltd.

Council for Nuclear Fuel Cycle

Miya Bldg. 8th Fl.4-3-4, Kojimachi, Chiyoda-ku,

Tokyo 102-0083, JapanTEL : 81-3-3239-2091FAX : 81-3-3239-2097

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PublisherJun-ichi Nishizawa

Editorial Offi ceCouncil for Nuclear Fuel Cycle

CNFC Members of the BoardChairman

NISHIZAWA, Jun-ichi Emeritus President, Tokyo Metropolitan University Emeritus Professor, Tohoku UniversityActing Chairman

TSUSHIMA, Yuji Former Member of the House of RepresentativesDirectors

HATOYAMA, Kunio Member of the House of RepresentativesKIMURA, Taro Member of the House of RepresentativesMORIMOTO, Satoshi Chancellor, Takushoku UniversityNAKAMURA, Kishiro Member of the House of RepresentativesTORII, Hiroyuki Former Professor, Tokyo Institute of TechnologyWATANABE, Shu Member of the House of RepresentativesYAMAMOTO, Yuji Member of the House of RepresentativesAuditors

ASANO, Shuichi Certifi ed Public AccountantSHIMOYAMA, Shunji Former President, Japan Chapter Institute of Nuclear Material Management

Kifune Shrine (KYOTO)

The valley between Mt. Kurama and Mt. Kifune is called okuzashiki, liter-ally an inner room, of Kyoto, where you fi nd many restaurants nestling in a row. The area is called Kifune. In summer, they lay wood fl oors called kawadoko, literally fl oors on a river, over a crystal stream of the Kifune River, to enjoy a cool breeze. The fl oors are placed low enough for guests to be able to reach almost the surface of water with their hands or feet. The guests enjoy Kyo-ryori, or Kyoto cuisine, on the kawadoko.Kifune Shrine located there is said to be founded 1,300 or 1,600 years ago. Ryujin, literally dragon god, which is a god of water, is enshrined there. Ryujin is an important god for Kyoto, which is located in a basin, as it protects the source of water for the basin. The shrine, built in the valley, is not big, but its dignity, which I wonder if, is because of its long history, impresses visitors.The Kifune River is a short river. It runs 3 kilometers and joins the Kurama River; the river further joins the Kamo River, the (another) Kamo River (the same name as the last one but written in a different Japanese kanji character), and the Katsura River, and changes its name every time it joins another. Finally, it becomes the Yodo River in Osaka and fl ows into Osaka Bay.

1Plutonium No.84 Spring 2016

Plutonium, an element with the atomic number 94, named after Pluto, has six isotopes, or, brothers and sisters, pluto-nium-238, 239, 240, 241, 242, and 244. Of these, the most famous is plutonium-239, which was used in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki and has still been used in a number of nuclear weapons today.

In the reactor of a nuclear power plant, non-fissile uranium-238 absorbs neutrons emitted from nuclear fission of urani-um-235 and transmutes into uranium-239, then neptunium-239, and finally pluto-nium-239. This plutonium-239 undergoes nuclear fission in the reactor, generating heat, which accounts for about 30% of total electricity produced in the nuclear power plant. In a nuclear reactor, not only pluto-nium-239 is produced; but also its brothers and sisters, plutonium-238, -240, -241, and -242 are produced naturally. As the degree of the burnup of uranium fuel increases, so does the percentage of these siblings.

Besides plutonium-239, plutonium-238 also has other practical applications. In deep outer space where no sunlight reaches, plutonium-238 has been used as a material that makes up a fuel cell in space probes. In the U.S., plutonium-238 had played an important role in medicine: It had been used as a battery source of heart pacemakers until high-performance lithium batteries replaced them.

Technically, it is very diffi cult to isolate

each species of plutonium spawned from uranium fuel in the reactor; so, we must deal with them as a non-separable family of plutonium. To increase the percent-age of plutonium-239, in other words, to produce plutonium suitable for the use in nuclear weapons, you must have another small uranium burning reactor dedicated for the production of weapon-grade pluto-nium. You cannot simply extract what you want from the fuel burnt in the reactor for four years for generating electricity. All nuclear-weapon states have such weapon-grade plutonium production reactors.

In the 61st Pugwash Conference on Sci-ence and World Affairs held in Nagasaki in November 2015, some nuclear disar-mament experts expressed concerns over plutonium in the fuel spent in light water reactors (LWRs). Before that, at the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly held in the UN Headquarters in New York on October 20, 2015, Chinese Ambassador for Disarmament Affairs in his speech also expressed concerns over plutonium contained in the fuel spent in Japan’s LWR nuclear power plants. Fur-thermore, in a public hearing held by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 17, 2016, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State expressed concerns over plutonium extracted in reprocessing the spent fuel of Japan’s nuclear power plants. These remarks were addressed to

Japan by nuclear disarmament experts, the disarmament ambassador of the nuclear-weapon state which possesses as many as 250 nuclear weapons under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and the high-ranking government official of the state which knows everything about the properties of uranium and plutonium, hav-ing conducted as many as 1,032 nuclear tests in the atmosphere, undersea, and underground. These remarks were not necessarily made for the fi rst time – some of them were old but restated. Even the nuclear weapons and national defense experts did not seem to understand the properties of reactor-grade plutonium; or if they did understand the properties correctly, they probably gave these state-ments for political reasons. We do not know the background of the statements for certain; but in either case, statements of these kinds from such experts and poli-ticians were really surprising.

The U.S. conducted a nuclear test in 1962 at Nevada Test Site, using reactor-grade plutonium, that is, plutonium ex-tracted from nuclear power plants. The U.S. made public the results of the test on June 27, 1994, nearly 30 years after that. It is more realistic to conceive that all nuclear-weapon states conducted similar tests rather than to consider that only the U. S. did this kind of nuclear test; and, that country made public the fact, either

No More Innocent Logic “Plutonium Equals to Nuclear Weapons”

Opinion

2 Plutonium No.84 Spring 2016

based on the federal Freedom of Informa-tion Act (enacted in 1967) or with some political intention toward nuclear non-proliferation.

The publicized information revealed the result of the successful underground nu-clear test, which confi rmed the feasibility of manufacturing nuclear explosives with the yield of less than 20 kilotons using reactor-grade plutonium. Furthermore, it states that this fact had been declassi-fied as early as in July 1977, which was 15 years after the nuclear test, suggesting that the information had been considered not as important as that must be kept clas-sifi ed indefi nitely.

This publicized data also recorded the question and answer sessions with mass media held on June 27, 1994 upon this announcement. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Energy, responding to a question from the media, told them that the U.S. government regarded plutonium containing no more than 7% plutoni-um-240 as weapon-grade, which had been actually used in making nuclear weapons. The radioactivity of reactor-grade pluto-nium (this announcement did not contain any information about the specific con-tent; but, it seemed to indicate plutonium containing greater than 20% plutoni-um-240) was extremely high, which made it hard to design and manufacture weap-ons as well as to store it. It was expected to increase radiation exposure to military service personnel, requiring much larger facilities for remote handling, etc. For these reasons, it concluded that reactor-grade plutonium was not suitable for the use in nuclear weapons.

The spokesperson did not disclosed the composition of plutonium used in this test

in view of concern over nuclear non-prolif-eration, but mentioned the supply source; the plutonium used in this test was provid-ed by the UK. The nuclear power plants in operation in the UK before 1962, the year in which this test was conducted, were Calder Hall Nuclear Power Station (60 MW x 4 reactors) and Chapelcross Nuclear Power Station (60 MW x 4 reactors). They both had a type of reactor called Magnox, which was a carbon dioxide cooled, graph-ite moderated reactor, fueled with natural uranium. These two were built as military facilities, to produce electricity using heat generated while producing plutonium for nuclear weapons (both stations were shut down in 2003-2004).

The U.S. is believed to have conducted this underground nuclear test using pluto-nium of these Magnox reactors provided by the UK. Since then, the country did not seem to have conducted nuclear tests using plutonium extracted from LWRs. Perhaps the U.S. government have con-sidered further tests unnecessary.

It is estimated that at present, the five nuclear weapon-states designated under the NPT -the U.S., Russia, China, the UK, and France- possess close to 10,000 nuclear warheads in total and the other de facto nuclear weapon-states possess about 300 nuclear warheads. To maintain the prestige of being nuclear weapon-states, they must keep a large number of nuclear weapons with great care in a safe manage-ment in the future as well. On top of that, they will also have to bear an enormous amount of associated cost and work, such as those for periodical maintenance and material and parts replacement, in order to ensure the safety of nuclear materials and related complicated devices.

If you are lavish of time and money, you will probably be able to build “de-vices” that induce nuclear explosions even with reactor-grade plutonium; however, such devices will likely to be bulky ones equipped with secure radiation protection and cooling devices that are rarely found in general nuclear weapons. Moreover, reactor-grade plutonium, containing a great amount of plutonium-240, which undergoes spontaneous fission, is likely not only to deteriorate more precious plu-tonium-239 but also to destruct itself by self-detonation. No country or organiza-tion has ever been willing to make such bulky and potentially dangerous devices and keep them for a long time; and we do not expect to see countries willing to do such an absurd thing in the future as well. Reactor-grade plutonium can only be re-used as fuel for generating electricity – or rather, we should use our technology to transmute non-fi ssile uranium-238, which accounts for 99.3% of natural uranium resources, into fi ssile fuel plutonium and then use it for generating electricity. This is the foundations of peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

Nuclear weapons will never be made from plutonium extracted from LWR fu-els. This principle was manifested by the US-DPRK Agreed Framework signed in October 1994, where North Korea agreed to freeze and dismantle its graphite-mod-erated reactor which was constructed in its homeland. Within this framework, the Ko-rean Peninsula Energy Development Orga-nization (KEDO) was established in March 1995 jointly by Japan, U.S., and South Ko-rea, and in return for the above-mentioned obligation, the construction of two LWRs with a capacity of 1,000 MW each was


Opinion

started in North Korea. This framework also provided annual 500,000 tons of crude oil for North Korea until the completion of the construction. However, as you know, following the declaration of the posses-sion of nuclear weapons by North Korea in February 2005, KEDO in November 2005 suspended the LWR construction, 34.5% of which work had been advanced by then. If nuclear weapons can be made from plutonium extracted from the spent fuels of LWR, the U.S. should not have entered into the agreement of building the LWRs in North Korea in the fi rst place.

While coping with the increasing world population, we have to tackle with economic development, opportunity of education, and improvement of healthcare and welfare services in developing coun-tries. And it is essential to maintain stable energy supply more than ever for these purposes. Besides that, to alleviate global

warming, which has been becoming obvi-ous along with increased consumption of fossil fuels, and to prevent overconsump-tion of oil, a fair share of which should be left for our future generations, the utiliza-tion of nuclear power and renewable en-ergy sources must be increased. The nu-clear power development policy must not be shortsighted; that is, the energy policy must not be chosen by the preference of some groups of people in advanced indus-trialized countries, because of anti-nuclear power movement, or for the benefit of particular political parties.

Necessity of nuclear power not only comes from the energy policy. To accom-plish the abolishment of nuclear weapons, which has long been the hope of mankind, various measures must be taken, including the bestowment of the Nobel Peace Prize. Ultimately, fi ssile materials of dismantled nuclear weapons must be eliminated in

one way or another. The most efficient method for eliminating fi ssile materials is to consume them as fuels in nuclear power stations. Nuclear power stations in the U.S. have already implemented a project that consume Russian fi ssile materials as fuels.

To promote future global energy policy and accomplish the abolishment of nucle-ar weapons, uses of present LWRs must be promoted. The advocacy that nuclear weapons can be made from plutonium ex-tracted from electricity generating power reactors would be a too innocent notion; and it would be a shame to take advantage of such oversimplified non-nuclear logic and use it as a political agenda. We must end this kind of nonsense. Nuclear disar-mament experts and politicians in nuclear-weapon states should have already known what we say here.

(Editorial Offi ce)

According to the seismograph installed in Sendai Nuclear Power Station, which has been in opera-tion since its restart, when the main shock of the Kumamoto earthquake struck Kumamoto at 1:25 am on April 16 (a magnitude of 7.3 and an intensity of 7 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale), an intensity of 3 was registered at the fi rst fl oor of the re-actor auxiliary building, the surface of the ground, and the lowest fl oor of

the reactor auxiliary building (on the bedrock) in Sendai NPS.

In Gal, which indicates the magni-tude of earthquake shaking (ground acceleration), 12.6, 30.3, and 8.6 were registered at the fi rst fl oor of the re-actor auxiliary building, the surface of the ground, and the lowest floor of the reactor auxiliary building (on the bedrock) respectively. The preset values, at which the nuclear reac-tors would be automatically shut

down, were 260 Gal in the horizontal direction at first floor of the reactor auxiliary building, and 160 Gal at the lowest floor of the reactor auxiliary building (on the bedrock). This means that the above registered values were nearly one twentieth of the preset values at the fi rst fl oor of the reactor building as well as on the bedrock.

We do appreciate continued safe operation at Sendai NPS and ongoing power supply to the affected area.

Highest Intensity Registered at Sendai NPS Was 3 in the Kumamoto Earthquake


Focus

Overview – Present Status Quo

The Middle East including Gulf States and East Asia have been two major areas of international confl icts for 70 years since the beginning of the Cold War era. There is no fun-damental change in this regional propensity today.

In fact, several small-scale con-flicts occurred in Africa, Central America, and Europe: for instance, the Namibian War of Independence, the Eritrean War of Independence, the Congo Crisis, and the Nicara-guan Contra War, in the Cold War era; and the Yugoslav Wars, the Bos-nian War, and the Somali Civil War, in the post-Cold War era. In con-trast, large-scale wars and conflicts involving a number of countries oc-curred primarily in the Middle East and Gulf States, which has been

referred to as the “weapons depot of the world”: examples include the Arab-Israeli conflict (as many as four wars), the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, and the Syrian Civil War.

A number of factors contributing to political instability in the Middle East and Gulf States in the Cold War era used to be primarily cen-tered on the Arab-Israel relations. In contrast, political instability since the Arab Spring has spread across extremely broader regions, because of various reasons: expan-sion of the ISIL activities, the Iraq-Syria situation, the Iran-Saudi Arabia relations, and the interven-tion by Russia, Turkey, the U.S., and some European Countries. Fur-thermore, the instability has spread to Europe by the inflow of a huge number of refugees and immigrants.

The situation has put the entire re-gion in chaos.

A ceasefi re agreement was reached and became effective in Syria in the end of February 2016. However, neither ISIL nor Al-Nusra Front has participated in this agreement. The situation makes us wonder how ef-fectively this truce will function and lead to the stability in Syria. Nego-tiation between the Syrian Govern-ment and the rebels began in March 2016; but, the situation has so far provided no clear view of the region’s future, including the future of Syr-ia’s political regime. Furthermore, the Iran-Saudi Arabia relations has begun to involve Yemen and other Gulf States, creating new tension. There have been growing concerns over the future development.

Several international confl icts also occurred in East Asia after the Ko-

Security in Northeast Asia and Agenda for Japan

Satoshi Morimoto

Chancellor, Takushoku University

Mr. Satoshi MORIMOTO is a specialist on national security and defense policy, Chancellor of Takushoku University, former Minister of Defense and Director of Council for Nuclear Fuel Cycle.

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Plutonium No.84 Spring 2016

rean War: for example, the Vietnam War, the Cambodian Civil War, the Sino-Vietnamese War, the Kashmir conflict, and the Sino-Soviet border case (the Damansky Island Inci-dent). Most of them were, however, local confl icts and did not evolve into larger ones that could potentially involve the entire East Asia. More-over, most of them sought after sov-ereignty over areas under dispute with neighboring countries for his-torical reasons. Religious and racial factors contribute less toward the background of confl icts as compared with disputes in other regions.

In East Asia, a regional frame-work for solving regional disputes has been underdeveloped and the United Nations has not been very functional in providing solutions. This is quite similar to conflicts in other regions. However, the prior-ity of East Asian countries has been the development of each country’s domestic economy and their confl icts have never evolved beyond the scope of confrontation between the Soviet Union and the U.S. These factors have played a key role in localizing their conflicts within certain geo-graphical boundaries in East Asia.

If we can think of a developmental or growth process of a country by di-viding into stages like modern, pre-modern, and post-modern, East Asia has countries that fall in all these three stages. Therefore, greater re-gional variation has always existed in East Asia, and fundamental or root causes of regional confl icts have never been eradicated there. More-

over, in the post-Cold War era, China has had an increasing tendency of exercising its power in the surround-ing regions, thereby bringing about military instability there. This is a new situation, as compared with the Cold War era, which must be fac-tored in.

On the other hand, economy in East Asia has developed rapidly during the post-Cold War era. Eco-nomic interdependence within the region has been so markedly devel-oped through economic cooperative agreements that East Asia has been called a hub of world economic de-velopment today. The development and growth of East Asia has been so remarkable that it has been driving an increasing number of people to seek after a richer lifestyle, avoid-ing regional conflicts if possible at all. This trend has been reinforced by the development of democracy, market economy, and information technology.

In the meantime, countries belong-ing to this region have been facing a number of risks: for instance, slow-ing down of growth speed associated with an economic structural change, environmental pollution, increasing social security cost along with aging society with decreasing numbers of children, economic disparity, sustain-ability of energy resources, and dis-putes over territorial waters. The ex-tent of these risks varies by country, though. Characteristic of this region are still remaining communist or ty-rannical regimes: for instance, those in China, North Korea, Vietnam, and

others. These regimes, confronted with the said problems, may be tempted to exercise their military power in the surrounding regions to strengthen their ruling of their na-tion. Domestic problems tend to be a negative factor for regional stability. This trend seems to linger in this re-gion in the future as well.

East Asia, which has developed ec-onomically thus far as I mentioned, is still facing challenges in national security. Instability of the regional waters due to territorial disputes and competition for the acquisition of natural energy resources has spread across the region as a poten-tial cause of confl icts. Besides that, as compared with the past, there seems to be a growing possibility of increased atypical risks: for instance, increasing military expenditure of countries in the region, expansion of territorial waters accompanied with modernized weapons, nuclear weapon and missile development, risk associated with the develop-ment of nuclear energy, interference and competition in cyber and space technologies, terrorism, as well as large-scale disasters.

Why have not these seeds of con-flicts evolved into regional military confl icts similar to those often found in the Gulf States or Eastern Eu-rope? Because democracy spread across the region and the region’s public opinion prioritizing eco-nomic development through market economy have played a key role in preventing regimes from exercising their military power.

Focus


What I just mentioned, however, suggests a yet existing tendency that some regimes which are seldom affected by democracy or the public opinions may initiate provocative military operations. Challenges that we face is how we can suppress these seeds of conflicts and prevent them from developing into actual confl icts; or, even if they occur, how we can counteract them at an early stage and minimize the consequences.

From this point of view, the pres-ence of the U.S., which had contrib-uted greatly toward the prevention of large-scale confl icts in this region, has been the foundations for the re-gional stability. The U.S. has been promoting the rebalance policy in Asia, but in the meantime, there has been a growing public opinion in the U.S. that favors a more cau-tious approach to the intervention in confl icts in Asia. Under these cir-cumstances, I think that a key to the regional security is how the follow-ing two strategies will evolve during the next presidency of the U.S.: the steadily-developed traditional multi-lateral security cooperation centered on the U.S. initiative, and the third offset strategy that has been pro-moted as a new defense strategy of the U.S.; and another key is how al-lied countries will be able to cooper-ate in this new direction.

The U.S. seems to regard Russia, ISIL terrorists and other violent non-governmental organizations, North Korea, Iran, and China as its security threats as nations. Japan regards North Korea, China, and

Russia as its short-, medium-, and long-term security threats as na-tions respectively; in addition, ter-rorism by ISIL or other violent non-governmental organizations is kept under 24-hour surveillance. Besides these threats, there are other risks, such as those in cyber-terrorism and leakages of information, space, or large-scale disasters. These risks are of common concern to both Ja-pan and the U.S. An important chal-lenge for Japan is how to share un-derstanding of this kind of threats with the U.S. and extend defense cooperation within the framework of the Japan-U.S. alliance.

Situations in East Asia and Relations

among Countries

1. South and East China Sea Disputes

When China began to hold its territorial insistence in the South China Sea in early 50s and in the East China Sea in early 70s, China’s motive seemed to be ensuring its maritime interests, which includes offshore natural and energy re-sources. In particular, the acquisi-tion of offshore resources in parallel with the development of domestic economy has been a very important priority in the political agenda of the nation, which has become a net importer of natural resources in early 90s. Lately, China has put the South China Sea among its pivotal national interests.

Moreover, China insists that the South China Sea has been part of Chinese territory since ancient

times. (A remark made by President Xi Jinping in the China-U.S. Sum-mit talks. Sun Jianguo, the Deputy Chief of the People’s Liberation Army General Staff Department, once mentioned “the South China Sea has been part of China for 2,000 years”, but has never provided evidence to support his insistence.) China does not seem to be insisting a similar claim for the East China Sea. In any case, China probably re-gards maritime territory and cyber- and space technologies as unsettled domains in terms of national terri-tory under international laws, and therefore considers that expansion toward such “vacuum” enlarges the territory of China, leading to the benefi t of China’s national interests. This policy quite resembles Stalin’s expansionism that he promoted in the beginning of the Cold War era. Other reasons of China’s expan-sion strategy for maritime interests probably includes the protection of maritime transport routes that sup-ports China’s economic development, strategic approach to the integration of Taiwan, and ensuring security of China’s strategically important na-val bastions.

The most important interest among others for China is a stra-tegic interest gained by securing territorial control over the South and East China Sea. China delib-erately interpreted international laws for its own benefi t in prepar-ing Chinese domestic laws, and has claimed sovereignty over the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) as

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China’s maritime territory. Prob-ably China intends to designate the area within the First Island Chain as an area denial (AD) zone, protect its “alleged” sovereignty, and essentially transform the area into its “domestic” waters to en-sure safety of China’s strategically important naval bastions. Even if China’s motive when it began to hold its territorial insistence over the Senkaku Islands in 1971 used to be the acquisition of offshore re-sources, its objective today seems to be establishing sovereignty over the EEZ, and by doing that, to eliminate or disrupt the defense power of Japan and the deterrent power of the U.S. deployed along the First Island Chain.

These series of Chinese actions were unacceptable in view of in-ternational laws. China, however, expedited the construction of an ar-tifi cial island by land reclamation in the South China Sea, which China started in the beginning of 2014, and also did so the deployment of its armed forces in the waters. China has been advancing the process of establishing an Air Defense Identifi -cation Zone (ADIZ) along the Nine-dotted Line of the South China Sea. The development of this process far outpaced our predictions, which is part of the reason why the U.S. was late to respond.

If China is trying to complete this process by the end of 2016, its politi-cal reason behind this may consist partly of a political and military demonstration aimed at easing the

frustration or insecurity of the pub-lic at large in China, but if the rea-son is external, this may be revealed intention of China, who wants to establish as many “facts” (of effec-tive control) as possible before the tribunal decision for an arbitration case under United Nations Conven-tion on the Law of the Sea brought by the Philippines against China, or before the result of the U.S. presi-dential election is known.

China claimed that undefi ned wa-ters under international laws was part of its territory, undertook land reclamation works, and deployed its armed forces on the waters to defend its “alleged” territory, which is noth-ing but using power to change the status quo. For Australia, Japan, South Korea, the U.S., and the ASE-AN member countries, this move is likely to compromise the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and deteriorate the regional stability and security. China, however, seems very unlikely to stop or give up its move whatever other countries say.

China’s ambition for expanding its territory does not seem to be limited. The modernized Navy and Air Force of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has expand-ed the area of operations beyond the First Island Chain to the open sea since 2008, and even to include Hawaii in 2011. The PLA’s access to the open sea has increased in frequency. As the PLA Air Force activity approaching Japan’s ADIZ has increased, the number of Ja-pan’s counteraction against China’s

violation of Japan’s airspace has increased sharply since 2014. Chi-nese threatening actions accompa-nying the approach to the Senkaku Islands have also been becoming more openly aggressive.

In 2008, China proposed the Com-mander of the U.S. Pacifi c Command an idea to split the Pacifi c Ocean be-tween China and the U.S., in which the eastern Pacifi c Ocean was to be controlled by the U.S. and the west-ern half by China. The U.S. declined to consider the proposal. Later, Chi-na came up with another proposal of building the two Silk Roads con-necting China to Europe (One Belt, One Road). For that, China founded the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which is supposed to provide the framework for funding regional development.

An idea behind these is believed to be China’s ambitious plan, which is to control the world ocean that covers two-thirds of the Earth sur-face. The idea will drive China to expand the area to include the Arctic Ocean sooner or later. Mari-time security is a lifeline for Japan. Once you think of that, it is obvious that China’s strategy will be the greatest threat to the future of Ja-pan. Especially, there seems to be an increasing possibility that China press Japan with its armed forces for sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands by making up a story that Japan has taken a provocative move fi rst. This is likely to constrain Ja-pan’s operations in the South China Sea to a certain extent.

Focus


2. Nuclear and Missile Development

of N-Korea

North Korea conducted the forth nuclear test on January 6, 2016, and the regime seemed to have suc-ceeded in the development of a rein-forced nuclear bomb. If this nuclear bomb is a model almost similar to the reinforced nuclear bomb devel-oped by the U.S. in the 1950s, there is an undeniable possibility that North Korea has already succeeded in miniaturizing nuclear warheads. Furthermore, in the ballistic missile test conducted on February 7, North Korea successfully completed the launch of the Taepodong-II-derived missile with a range of longer than 10,000 km that can reach the main-land U.S. With this result, it would be unreasonable to preclude the possibility that North Korea will conduct tests of ballistic missiles carrying a nuclear warhead in the next test just as the U.S. and China both had tried before. Kim Jong-un in the past suggested tests of ballistic missiles capable of carry-ing a nuclear warhead. If he does this test, there will be a new grave threat to neighboring countries in-cluding Japan.

The UN Security Council, led by the U.S. and China, had spent about two months to come to a resolution that would impose sanctions against North Korea for its nuclear test and launch of ballistic missiles, which was eventually adopted on March 3. This Security Council Resolution included unprecedented sanctions against North Korea, such as ban

on visit of people to and from North Korea, ban on import of mineral resources from North Korea and export of fuel to North Korea (ex-cept for jet fuel); and restriction on port access of North Korean-fl agged ships and providing financial loans to North Korea. The sanctions ef-fectively stopped the flow of most people, stuff, and money except for food and medical drugs; however, it still remains somewhat unclear if and how we can ensure and monitor the implementation of the sanctions.

The impact of South Korea’s deci-sion to stop operation in the Kae-song Industrial Zone has also been substantial, which has curbed the fl ow of foreign currency to the North Korean administration considerably, which in turn stopped salary pay-ment to the workers. Food aid by the World Food Program (WFP) has been so far focused on refugees in Europe, causing a decrease in North Korean quota. These are the toughest-ever encirclement for North Korea.

North Korea has been taking pro-vocative actions against the sanc-tions these days. The question is how long they will last, or put it different-ly, how much North Korean adminis-tration can withstand the sanctions imposed by the UN and countries concerned. The U.S.-South Korean Joint Military Exercises, which has begun since March 2016, starts off with about 10-day command post exercises, followed by about one-and-a-half month-long field training ex-ercises until the end of April, where South Korea and the U.S. conduct

joint military practice based on the Operations Plan 5015 drawn up by the two countries. During this joint military exercise, tension will be built up in this region, because both South Korean and the U.S. armed forces will be readily responsive to any event and it may respond di-rectly to North Korea’s move if North Korea stage up its provocation. It is also a risky move for North Korea. However, I would like to draw your attention to the move of the Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un after the U.S.-South Korean Joint Military Exer-cises: What kind of action he is going to take in order to demonstrate his leadership and supremacy within the country, especially toward the Work-ers’ Party Conference scheduled on May 9. In any case, it is fairly cer-tain that tension in Northeast Asia will be built up to an extremely high level until May.

The question afterward is how North Korea’s development of nu-clear weapons and ballistic missiles can be prevented. The deterrence by the U.S. is important, but none-theless it is becoming necessary to reevaluate seriously how the U.S. deterrence works against the North Korea’s nuclear development pro-gram and what else can be done.

3. Russia’s Strategy for the Far East

and China-Russia Accord

Since 2013, Abe administration has aggressively pursued a way to improve the Japan-Russia relations and advance them to the next stage, which includes talks on the Kuril

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Islands issue. The administration had Japan-Russia Summit meetings in 2013, 2014, and 2015, and it plans the visit of Prime Minister Abe to Russia by around May 2006. It has been reported that the U.S. does not welcome Abe’s visit to Russia be-cause the U.S. Government thinks that the visit may raise the political status of President Vladimir Putin. Japan has its own national inter-ests, and therefore has no intention to follow solely what the U.S. Gov-ernment wants in forthcoming talks with Russia. However, Japan needs to grasp what Russia really has in its mind.

President Putin does not seem to be positive about the Japan-Soviet Joint Declaration of 1956 (the re-turn of Shikotan and the Habomai Islands), let alone the four islands over which Japan has insisted its sovereignty. President Putin’s inter-est now is his re-election in the next presidential election. For that, he is probably concerned with deepening economic relations with Japan; espe-cially, by increasing Japan’s import of Russia’s natural resources (oil and natural gas) and Japan’s loans and investments for the development of the Far East Russia, he wants to make them contribute to Russia’s national fi nance. Negotiation of ter-ritorial disputes is a lure here, but a lure is a lure and not else.

In fact, Prime Minister Medvedev visited the Kuril Islands accompa-nied by the ministers concerned. Russia has developed a number of new infrastructures and military

facilities, encouraged Russian people to purchase land there, suspended Japanese people’s visit to the graves on the islands, and banned free visit of Japanese people. It has been re-inforcing its effective control over the islands. Russia has been further increasing the deployment of its armed forces, and conducting fre-quent military exercises and train-ings. Scrambling of jet fighters by the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force against the intrusion to Japan’s air-space by Russian planes occurs more than 400 times a year. Detention of Japanese fishing boats by Russian authorities has never been stopped. Because of this kind of strained Japan-Russia relations, we must improve them further. However, this will entail strategically long-enduring diplomatic negotiation. There has been a widespread view that the threat of Russia had rapidly decreased in the post-Cold War era. However, even if its threat has been reduced, risk remains.

In particular, Russia has often become a factor impeding solution of international problems, by sid-ing China over various disputes, not only of Northeast Asia but also of international community, and show-ing cautious attitude toward voting for the UN Security Council Resolu-tions, or opposing the U.S., stand-ing on the Chinese side. Presently, the cooperation between China and Russia has been used as a leverage of their strategies against the U.S., over which I have to worry.

4. Relations among Northeast Asian

Countries

When it comes to interrelations among China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Russia, and the U.S. within Northeast Asia, there have been certain stages of development in economic, cultural, or academic ex-changes among them, but there still remain various lingering problems among each other in terms of politics, diplomatic relations, and security, because of historical backgrounds.

If you take a step back and look at the relations among these countries from a distance, you can see China and Russia contemplating strategic cooperation from the perspective that they share on their relations with the U.S. China and Russia have used their military power and attempted to alter the status quo of today’s international order, causing concern among neighboring coun-tries. Furthermore, both countries have started to side with North Ko-rea, which has been causing grave concern in international society. The situation has complicated the administration of the UN Security Council. A potential cause of politi-cal instability in East Europe and the Middle East, primarily exempli-fied by problems in Ukraine and Syria, lies in the lack of effective function of the UN Security Council, and usually only available solution has been some initiatives by the co-alition of the willing.

Since the first day of the Park Geun-hye Administration until fall 2015, South Korea had considered

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the relations with China important, but since North Korea’s nuclear test in January 2016 and subsequent launch of ballistic missile in Feb-ruary 2016, South Korea has lost enthusiasm in the relationship with China. As a result, the previous state of close cooperation among Ja-pan, South Korea, and the U.S. has been being restored slowly. I have not been able to analyze thoroughly what kind of background factors had brought about this shift of diplo-matic policy, but several factors that I can think of are: failure of South Korea’s projection of its promoted China-dependent economic develop-ment plan along with a sharp de-cline in South Korea’s trade to and from China and its investment in China since fall 2015; strong pres-sure from the U.S. in the South Korea-U.S. Summit in October 2015 and the South Korea-U.S. Defense Minister Meeting in November 2015; increasing anti-China sentiment in South Korea as a result of persistent crude pressure from China on South Korea to suspend the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area De-fense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile system in the United States Forces Korea, which had been in progress between South Korea and the U.S.; realization of China’s determination against North Korea that was not as serious as South Korea had hoped in preventing North Korea’s nuclear and missile development; and sug-gestion of correcting President Park’s strategy against Japan from her close advisory group.

In any case, South Korea’s policy shift is desirable for Japan and the U.S. A basic agreement on the wartime “comfort women” reached in the Japan-South Korea Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in December 2015 was also a favorable achieve-ment. Whether the South Korean Government will be able to remove the “comfort women” girl statue in front of the Embassy of Japan in Seoul is a great challenge. We must leave it to the hand of the South Korean Government and be pa-tient. Although South Korea’s dip-lomatic policy has sharply changed since 2016, taking a distance from China and returning to cooperation among Japan, South Korea, and the U.S., it is yet too early to determine whether the Japan-South Korea re-lations will improve. To judge that, we will have to wait for the result of the South Korean legislative elec-tion scheduled in April 2016 and the future development of North-South relations. If North Korea should re-spond differently from what we as-sume, there will be a chaotic situa-tion in the Korean peninsula. If this should happen, the most important will be cooperation among Japan, South Korea, and the U.S.; especial-ly, cooperation between Japan and South Korea will have to be immedi-ately ensured. Regardless of the his-tory between the two countries thus far, the two must collaborate leaving resentment aside, if any, behind, to maintain the stability in Northeast Asia; without that, the two will not be able to maintain security of their

homelands. For that, the two must establish a communication chan-nel that may be minimum but must be sufficient for communication between policy makers of the two governments. This is a minimum re-quirement for the nation’s survival.

Although China and Japan made a four-point agreement in the high-level China-Japan meeting in No-vember 2014, it is perhaps not very correct to say that China-Japan relations has enjoyed a good line since then reflecting the agree-ment. The China-U.S. relations and Russia-U.S. relations are seriously bad at present, but may turn into a new direction, depending on the policy of the next U.S. administra-tion. Let us hope for that. In any case, deteriorating China-U.S. rela-tions overshadowed current China-Japan relations. Especially, China has resentment toward Japan’s close collaboration with the U.S. over the South China Sea disputes. Because of this, there has been virtually no progress in the China-Japan rela-tions for a while. The Japanese gov-ernment has no intention to make any compromise in the China-Japan relations. I think that the govern-ment of Japan should be well pre-pared and know what to do if China should make any provocative move in the Senkaku Islands dispute.

Traditionally, countries in North-east Asia has a great diversifi cation, and interests or strategic goals of each country differ considerably. Hence, multilateral cooperation in the region is not an easy task to ac-

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complish, but the accomplishment of peace and stability in Northeast Asia is an important goal not only of Asia but also of global community at large. In this connection, the shift of diplomatic policy of South Korea since 2016 is a desirable change from the perspective of cooperation among Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. However, if there should be any serious provocative move by North Korea or any drastic change in North Korea accompanying do-mestic disturbance, it is yet unclear how such North Korea’s situation will impact the relations between North and South Korea and among countries concerned (China, Japan, Russia, and the U.S.).

5. Japan’s Commitments to Regional

Politics in Northeast Asia

Under the above-mentioned cir-cumstances of regional security, I would like to point out the following challenges that Japan should note in order to maintain the peace and national stability of Japan.

(1) If we look at Japan’s national security policy at large, what it val-ues most is to develop well-balanced diplomatic and national security policy; that is, while enhancing the deterrent and responsive function based on the Japan-U.S. alliance as well as Japan’s own defense power, to extend aggressive diplomatic efforts through talks or variant international exchanges. Policy of the Japanese Government for each basic objective has already been ex-

pressed in the strategies of national security of Japan. Anything beyond that must be dealt with appropri-ately in response to a respective se-curity environment then.

The legal systems that are neces-sary to deal with these political ob-jectives have been almost completed through a series of Legislation for War Contingencies enacted under the Koizumi Administration and the Legislation for Peace and Security under the Abe administration.

However, it is desirable to have a legal system that allows us to respond to the state of national emergency and conduct crisis man-agement, especially, a comprehen-sive legal framework to respond to incidents that fall in a “gray-zone” of the current law. If it is politically immature to realize the revision of the Constitution of Japan, it is also desirable to have a legal system such as a basic national security law that will bridge the gap between the Constitution and the existing legal system. We cannot exclude the possibility that we will encounter a situation that we will not be able to deal with within the framework of the existing legal system, and if it is indeed the case, I am fairly cer-tain that we will have to constitute some appropriate acts on special measures to deal with the case; our system must be prepared for that. Especially, possible scenarios in the Korean Peninsula may not always be dealt within the framework of the present laws of Japan; hence, every time when it is necessary, we must

be prepared for making necessary laws to respond to the state of emer-gency based on the discussion with South Korea and the U.S.

Moreover, although the function of the government of Japan to imple-ment these policies has been widely improved in recent years, a sort of bottleneck rests with our national intelligence. The organization of Japan’s national intelligence is di-vided into several branches; since each of them has its own unique his-tory and raison d’etre, it is not easy to integrate into one organization of national intelligence. However, there should be an established insti-tutional framework that ensures the utilization of information collected by each intelligence branch in im-portant policy making processes by the government. In this connection, an international counter-terrorism intelligence collection unit launched by the Japanese government in December 2015 is an institutional organization that almost complies with this purpose. If this unit in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is found to be successful, there is a possi-bility that the model will further evolve into an independent national intelligence institution. Some raise questions about the foundation of a foreign intelligence agency. It may not work properly if it involves only the foundation of a new institution without reorganizing the faculties of existing intelligence organizations.

(2) Should there be the state of emergency in East Asia, swift and

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appropriate response is required under the complex circumstances involving many countries, but gener-ally speaking, it is unlikely for us to be able to respond to the situation based on the adopted resolutions of the UN Security Council. Hence, there must be room for possible other measures to be taken even before the occurrence of emergency. However, under the present political climate in Asia, a regional frame-work that is designed to respond to regional conflicts or the state of emergency is unlikely to function properly. If this is indeed the case, a possible measure left for us is the coalition of the willing. However, this is not easy to accomplish, either. I do not think that many countries in this region share their national interests and views each other. So, after all, a solid foundation that Japan can rely on is the Japan-U.S. alliance, and therefore, Japan has maintained this alliance for a long time. Japan cannot find solution anywhere else. Having said that, I believe that Japan should not rely only on the U.S.; Japan should try to establish a more self-contained framework of national defense, and meanwhile, Japan should always bear in mind several options of al-ternative cooperative scheme, such as the cooperation among Australia, Japan and the U.S.; India, Japan, and the U.S.; Japan, South Korea, and the U.S.; or Japan, the U.S., and some ASEAN member countries, and build international relationship and strengthen mutual cooperation with

those allied and friendly countries, which may supplement the Defense Innovation Initiative -a third offset strategy- that the U.S. has been try-ing to implement. The priority of ad-ministration changes every election in the U.S.; hence, to maintain and promote consistent forward-looking policy, it is desirable that Japan become less dependent on the U.S. and be prepared for supplementing the function and role that the U.S. had assumed with some cooperation schemes among allied and friendly countries so that Japan’s security policy will be able to adapt for the future U.S. situation and policy.

(3) Japan and the U.S. have enjoyed the most successful alliance for near-ly half a century now through mutu-al effort. However, this alliance has had an intrinsic unilateral nature from the beginning, which has not been completely solved. Therefore, an endeavor to solve this intrinsic problem by setting specific goals is still and will be required in the fu-ture. The revision of the Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation and the establishment of the legisla-tion for peace and security have in-deed contributed toward strengthen-ing the alliance, but in practice there still remain many tasks to be ad-dressed in the future, which include how to establish the mechanism of alliance coordination and plans of collaborative operations.

Once the legislation of peace and security takes effect, any fi elds that will require Japan-U.S. collaborative

activities will have to be added to the list of just mentioned tasks.

Japan’s effort to rectify the unilat-eral nature of the Japan-U.S. Secu-rity framework includes providing solution for the U.S. military bases in Japan, bearing the cost of station-ing the U.S. Forces in Japan (includ-ing the share of the cost associated with the relocation of part of forces to Guam), and the procurement of made-in-USA weapons. Unlike what Republican presidential candidate Mr. Donald Trump claimed, the pres-ent situation is not “a pretty one-sided agreement” that forces the U.S. to foot the bill; but, Japan needs to take into consideration frustration similar to what he said among the U.S. citizens, and continue its efforts to maintain the Japan-U.S. alliance in a healthy state.

Contemplating the outlook of the construction program of the Futenma replacement facilities in Okinawa, I expect many twists and turns along a winding road until we see the completion of Henoko facilities. No matter what outcome we are going to face, Japan and the U.S. should further make efforts to expand shar-ing of existing military bases both in Japan and in the U.S. as part of the above-mentioned Japan’s continuous efforts to maintain the state of the Japan-U.S. alliance. Also, we have to study a management system in which Japan essentially control the U.S. military bases in Japan.

When it comes to host nation sup-port (HNS), it is necessary to study an idea of regional host support

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advocated by Diet member A. Na-gashima, which is a regional frame-work in which the rebalance cost of the U.S. is shared among allied and friendly countries in Asia. Presiden-tial candidate Mr. Trump is demand-ing an increase in Japan’s HNS, but the framework in the present agree-ment may not allow the same. We must therefore introduce a new idea that will be able to adapt a change.

Another challenge has been intel-ligence sharing between Japan and the U.S. to strengthen the Japan-U.S. alliance. To do this, Japan must improve first its own information management system before increas-ing the information exchange with the U.S.; otherwise, it will certainly cause problems that may jeopardize the reliability of the alliance.

On the other hand, since Japan has kept purchasing made-in-USA weapon systems, spending under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS; in practice, procurement of fi nished products of weapons) accounts for the major portion of Japan’s military equipment procurement expense, squeezing the profi t of domestic de-fense industry in Japan. To solve this problem, Japan will have to ei-ther promote domestic production of original made-in-Japan equipment or increase the licensed production of equipment in Japan through col-laborative development or increase the number of participating com-panies. To do that, Japan must im-prove its competitiveness in technol-ogy in relevant fields, which is not easy to accomplish shortly.

(4) The course and priorities of the reinforcement strategy of Japan’s defense power are presented in the National Defense Program Guide-lines and the Medium Term Defense Buildup Program of Japan, and any effort must be kept in line with these guidelines. However, the situation of Northeast Asia has been quite rapidly changing ever since 2013, the year when the political situation was assessed to prepare the MTDB Program; therefore, I think that Japan must review the Program as soon as possible. In doing so, Japan is supposed to implement strategies to boost naval and air defense power more than ever before.

In particular, the necessity for in-creasing the capacity of frigate ships and submarines and air defense pow-er has increased. Also, in deploying the ground defense forces on islands along the First Island Chain, it is desirable to improve offshore control capability by enhancing the capabil-ity of anti-ship ballistic missile on the islands. All three Self-Defense Forces of Ground, Maritime, and Air should try to reduce the number of knots for relaying commands by re-ducing staff in the headquarters in organizing groups of each force. Di-viding all units of the Ground, Mari-time and Air Forces into several re-gional joint task forces and assigning the command will help reduce staff at the headquarters and improve the operation of the joint task forces. It is also necessary to improve coopera-tion with the U.S. Pacifi c Command, develop an alliance coordination

mechanism, and establish a system that will allow a close cooperation in the functions of commanding and coordination.

When it comes to the missile de-fense system, it will be necessary to reevaluate the missile defense sys-tem that will be able to counteract the threats of ballistic missiles of North Korea or China, and if nec-essary, consider building regional missile defense systems. As for the defense equipment management scheme, Japan should, while de-veloping the equipment in collabo-ration with other technologically advanced countries and encourag-ing companies to participate in the development, consider the enact-ment of security aids to promote the cooperation in equipment with the ASEAN countries, for example. In connection with that, Japan should start reevaluating the Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment re-vised in April 2014. To expand the international contribution of the Ja-pan Self-Defense Forces, it is time to consider using not only the military base in Djibouti but also other bases in the ASEAN member countries such as the U.S. Naval Base Guam, or other military bases in the ASE-AN member countries, such as the Philippines and Vietnam.

(5) China’s maritime expansion, es-pecially that with an arbitrary inter-pretation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to as-sert its expanded territorial waters, aimed at not only strengthening its

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effective control over the occupied artificial islands created by land reclamation in the South China Sea, but also expanding its effective con-trol over the entire South China Sea by establishing the ADIZ, is an act of changing the order established un-der the UNCLOS, which will under-mine regional stability and peace. Similar to this act is Chinese viola-tion of Japan’s territorial waters and airspace around the Senkaku Islands. Japan scrambled jets more than 460 times in this past year against Chinese aircrafts approach-ing the ADIZ of Japan. The possibil-ity that China will sooner or later take a chance to invade the areas that China claims its sovereignty is not small. Japan should enhance its capability of suppressing and coun-teracting China’s expansion that is anticipated in the future, and in the meantime, undertake negotiation to establish mutual trust among coun-tries in the region including China and implement measures against any accidents or for damage control, for instance, by establishing com-munication channels, and try to con-clude an agreement for concrete pre-ventive measures against accidents. Japan also should take initiatives to prompt parties concerned to reach an agreement for the Code of Con-duct in the South China Sea.

North Korea should be invited to rejoin the Six-party Talks soon on the condition that North Korea pledges to honor and execute the previous agreement made by the Six-party Talks. North Korea’s nuclear

and missile development has been part of the greatest military threat in Northeast Asia, in any case. Just neglecting the present situation only gives time to North Korea. To prevent that, the parties concerned should reevaluate the mandates of the Six-party Talks. Furthermore, they should consider some measures that will have North Korea partici-pate to discussion without giving compromise to North Korea.

We should also expand opportu-nity for multilateral cooperation and training to counteract accidents by human errors, such as the Fukushi-ma nuclear disaster and the EP-3 in-cident (the Hainan Island incident), devastating natural disasters, such as the great earthquakes in Indone-sia and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake (the Great East Japan Earthquake), and atypical risks, such as the ISIL terrorism or cyber-attacks.

In doing so, we should create op-portunity to exchange opinions about the response of each country or lessons they learned. To enhance security at sea, it is necessary to conduct multilateral information ex-change and trainings, and if neces-sary, multilateral patrols. It is also meaningful to start joint patrol in Asian Pacific Waters or joint mine-sweeping training at sea among Aus-tralia, India, Japan, South Korea, the U.S., and the ASEAN member countries. We should also promote discussion through the ASEAN Re-gional Forum (ARF) over a general principle to ensure security at sea.

When it comes to the development

of nuclear energy, Japan should seek cooperation from international community to conduct smoothly the post-accident measures, and imple-ment the procedure fast. We should also study the framework for the nuclear fuel management and safety control of nuclear development fa-cilities, such as ASIATOM, in the future. Whatever it will be, Japan’s top priority is to create an environ-ment suitable for extending auto-matically with no strings attached the Japan-U.S. Cooperation Agree-ment for Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy, which is due to expire in 2018. Especially, Japan should also take initiatives in promoting nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. In this connection, the G7 Summit of 2016 is a great opportunity. Surely, nuclear materials and dirty bombs have spread, I believe.

The most important challenge for international community to face is how to eliminate or decrease the pos-sibility that terrorists will acquire those and use against humanity.

Moreover, Japan will assume a non-permanent seat on the UN Se-curity Council for two years from 2016. Japan’s contribution to in-ternational peace has not attracted attentions of media these days. Promoting the reform of the United Nations and the UN Security Coun-cil while expanding Japan’s inter-national contribution and support for peace is quite evidently Japan’s top priority that will have to be ad-dressed before the 2020 Olympic in Tokyo, Japan.


CNFC Report

Kagoshima Is the Electricity Exporting

Prefecture

Satsumasendai is a city located in the northwestern part of the Satsu-ma Peninsula in Kagoshima Prefec-ture, on the Kyushu Island of Japan and faces the East China Sea. The city is populated by 99,589 people (at the time of the 2010 Japan Census),

which makes it the fourth biggest city in Kagoshima Pref. in terms of population. All sections of the Ky-ushu Shinkansen bullet train line be-tween Hakata Station and Kagoshi-ma-Chuo Station became operational on March 12, 2011. The Shinkansen takes you from Hakata Station to Sendai Station in Satsumasendai in one hour thirteen minutes in the

shortest time. This fully operational Kyushu Shinkansen shortens the “distance” between Hakata and Sat-sumasendai, and changes both cities “within a commutable distance,” if you put it in the words in the Kanto metropolitan area. The first Kuma-moto earthquake of a magnitude of 6.5 and an intensity of 7 on the Japa-nese seismic scale struck the area at 21:26 on Thursday, April 14, 2016 and derailed an out-of-service Shink-ansen train, which suspended entire Kyushu Shinkansen service for a while. The Shinkansen service was restored in all sections two weeks later on Wednesday, April 27, 2016. Aftershocks are expected to continue for a while, and there are many chal-lenges in the region’s restoration and reconstruction. However, news of res-toration of the Kyushu Shinkansen indeed elated people in Kumamoto and Oita Pref.s, and entire Kyushu.

The Sendai River, the second lon-gest river in Kyushu, fl ows from Mi-yazaki Pref. to Satsumasendai and runs across the city center. A large river running near mountain forests has abundant water and forest re-sources. Traditionally, many paper

Immediately Adopt Measures WhateverImmediately Adopt Measures WhateverThey Are for SafetyThey Are for Safety

Sendai Nuclear Power StationSendai Nuclear Power Station– Japan’s First Reactor to Have Restarted– Japan’s First Reactor to Have Restarted

Immediately Adopt Measures WhateverThey Are for Safety

Sendai Nuclear Power Station– Japan’s First Reactor to Have Restarted

CNFC Report

Mr. K. Yonemaru explained in details.

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CNFC Report


mills choose such a location to build their factories. In Satsumasendai, Chuetsu Pulp & Paper Co., Ltd., which is Japan’s ninth largest paper company in terms of turnover, built its Sendai paper mill in 1954. The mill produces 270 thousand tons of various paper products annually.

Sendai Nuclear Power Station is located at the Sendai River’s mouth to the East China Sea. The nuclear power station sits in the south bank of the river, facing the sea. On the opposite side, that is, the north bank of the river mouth, about 3 km away from the nuclear power station, is Sendai Oil-fi red Power Station (500 MW x 2 units) of Kyushu Electric Power Company. Unit 1 of this pow-er station began generation of elec-tricity in 1974. Unit 2 with a similar generating capacity began operation in 1985 supplying electricity to an increasing demand in Kyushu.

Sendai Nuclear Power Station on the south bank of the Sendai River has two pressurized light water reactors built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. as the prime contractor of the construction. The construction of Unit 1 began in January 1979 and Unit 2 in May 1981, two years later than Unit 1. The construction cost was JPY278.7 billion (at the time of construction) for Unit 1 and JPY228.7 billion for Unit 2. Unit 1 began commercial operation in July 1984 and Unit 2 in November 1985. The electricity gen-erating capacity is 890 MW for both Unit 1 and 2, totaling to 1.78 GW.

Total nominal capacity of all power stations in Kagoshima Pref. is 3.3 GW in 2011 before the 2011 Tohoku earthquake (also known as the Great East Japan Earthquake). The capacity by source is as follows: geothermal 1.8%, internal combus-

tion (electricity generation using a diesel engine, etc., often used in re-mote islands) 6.5%, water and wind turbines 7.6%, oil-fired 30.3%, and nuclear 53.9%. Nuclear power ac-counts for more than half of the elec-tricity consumed in Kagoshima Pref.

The combined electricity produc-tion of oil-fired and nuclear power stations both located in Satsu-masendai accounts for 84.2% of total electricity production in Kagoshima Pref., which makes Satsumasendai literally the heart of Kagoshima Pref., “pumping electricity out” to the whole prefecture. Since two nuclear reactors of Sendai Nuclear Power Station produce more than enough electricity to support the demand in Kagoshima Pref., the prefecture may be considered a net exporter of electricity that sell nearly half of the electricity outside Kagoshima Pref. However, the prefecture does not ac-tually distribute electricity to other prefectures, which is of course a job of Kyushu Electric Power.

The restart of Sendai Nuclear Power Station enables us to stop op-eration of fossil-fuel power stations that have substituted the suspended Sendai Nuclear Power Station, thereby allowing us to reduce the amount of fossil fuel consumption. According to the estimate made by Kyushu Electric Power, the amount that can be saved is expected to reach JPY10 billion a month, total-ing JPY120 billion annually. The restart of Sendai Nuclear Station will contribute toward reducing the outflow of Japan’s foreign-exchange reserves, and ultimately toward improving Japan’s trade balance. Moreover, what we think is fortu-nate is that the restart of Sendai Nuclear Power Station last year has enabled safe uninterrupted supply of

electricity in the midst of the series of Kumamoto earthquakes that had occurred since 14 April, which is es-sential to our life. We do appreciate careful safety operation by the staff of Sendai Nuclear Power Station and their extraordinary enthusiasm in the midst of the earthquake crisis.

Kyushu Electric Power’s Safety

Operation Technology and Maintenance

Sendai Nuclear Power Station is known to be the first nuclear power station in Japan that has been ap-proved to restart its operation under the new regulatory standards set by the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), the authority newly founded af-ter the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. Unit 1 resumed electricity generation on August 14, 2015 and commercial oper-ation on September 10, 2015. Likewise, Unit 2 resumed electricity generation and commercial operation on October 21 and November 17 respectively. Unit 1, of which operation was suspended at the time of regular inspection on May 10, 2011, which is the year of the Tohoku earthquake, started opera-tion for the fi rst time in 1,558 days (a little longer than four years and three months); Unit 2, of which operation was suspended on September 1, 2011, started operation for the first time in 1,512 days (a little shorter than four years and two months).

What made Sendai Nuclear Power Station of Kyushu Electric Power the first nuclear power station to restart in Japan? In this survey, we found several distinguishing points for Sendai Station: the excellent past operation record up to now seemed to contribute toward helping the station be chosen as the fi rst model station to restart; staff ’s determination to pur-sue improving operation and mainte-

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CNFC Report


nance work for more safety operation; a fast decision-making process and implementation for necessary modi-fication works; and the staff ’s pride, confi dence, and passion for the work.

You can tell excellence in opera-tion of Sendai Nuclear Power Station just by looking at the number of sus-pended operation due to trouble in its history. The operating period of this power station is 30 years, total-ing to 60 reactor years if two reactor systems are combined. During this period, the number of scrams (auto-matic shutdowns) due to some de-fects was, amazingly, just once, and the number of manual shutdowns due to some events was as little as three times; so, total four shutdowns. The one scram event was in fact due to a breakdown in the hydraulic sys-tem of the turbine that drives the generator, which occurred in 1999 and the operation was suspended for nine days. According to recent over-seas data, the average number of scram is about 0.5 times a year per reactor. Once in 60 reactor years for two reactors is equivalent to approx-imately 0.01-0.02 times a year; if we include the manual shutdowns, it is equivalent to approximately 0.06-0.07 times a year, which is an order of magnitude smaller. Needless to say there was no trouble or accident associated with the release of radio-active substances.

One of the operational practices that have helped maintain this ex-cellent operation record is proactive periodical replacement of machinery and equipment to prevent defects from occurring. We understand that Sendai Station has been actively ad-vancing replacement of main machin-ery and equipment of nuclear station with newest models. Examples of replaced items include large ma-

chines such as a steam generator and a steam turbine, the rotors and sta-tors of generators, the upper lids of reactor vessels, transformers, and so forth. Most of the replacement have been solely determined by Kyushu Electric Power, and performed regu-larly as active measures. The steam generator of Unit 2 reactor and the rotor of the generator of Unit 1 are to be replaced, which is programmed in the occasion of regular inspection scheduled about once a year.

Renewed and More Strict Safety

Measures

New regulatory standards estab-lished after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident put more emphasis on natural disasters, such as earth-quakes, tsunamis, and tornadoes, than ever before, and require further improved safety measures against these disasters.

One of the problems encountered in the Fukushima accident was emer-gency cooling water. After the ac-cident, some nuclear power stations created additional reservoirs. Sendai Nuclear Power Station has a freshwa-ter pond called Miyamaike within the station site. The pond is surrounded by the reactor buildings of Unit 1 and 2, the turbine building, and the exhibition hall. Miyamaike has been in the present location since the days even before the power station was constructed. Waters from springs and streams fi ll up the pond, which has as much as 260,000 tons of water.

At present, Unit 1 and 2 are in full operation. Under normal operation, these reactor units need 1,000 tons of industrial water, all of which is pumped from this Miyamaike. Water in the spent fuel pools as well as wa-ter used in the reactors are originally

from this pond. Super pure water is made of the water of Miyamaike and used in the station. The freshwater from Miyamaike is to be supplied to the reactors in case of emergency. For that, the pond is equipped with necessary water supplying facilities.

This area has never been hit by tsunamis in its recorded history. There is no active geological fault in the power station site as well as in the neighborhood area. The bedrock is made of very firm conglomerate. This very large freshwater pond Mi-yamaike on site gives an additional advantage to this power station.

Measures against Tsunamis

– Sendai N-Station at the Second

Highest Altitude in Japan

Major facilities of Sendai Nuclear Power Station, such as reactor Unit 1 and 2, turbine building, and gen-erator, are situated on the ground bedrock at 13 m above sea level. The highest altitude of the main buildings of nuclear power stations in Japan used to be 15 m of Onaga-wa Nuclear Power Station of Tohoku Electric Power Company. Although the ground level of Onagawa sub-sided by 1 m to 14 m because of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake (occurred on 11 March 2011), this ground level kept the tsunami from flooding the station and prevented a catastrophic event like the Fukushima accident. Despite the land subsidence by 1 m, Onagawa Station sits on the ground of the highest altitude in Japan.

Main buildings of Sendai Nuclear Power Station are built on the ground of altitude 13 m, which is the second highest after Onagawa. An ocean-facing seawater pump build-ing is located at a ground down be-low the 13 m high site of the main

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buildings, which is 5 m above sea level. The pump facilities use sea-water to cool the fresh water (cooling water) that was used to remove heat from the nuclear reactors, rotate turbines, or generate electricity; or to cool the water that was used to cool spent fuels. This is why the fa-cilities need to face the sea.

A traditional assumption for the height of the highest tsunami in case of a strong earthquake used to be 5 m at Sendai Nuclear Power Station, which is the same as the altitude of the seawater pump building. The power station has assumed that, if about a 5 m high tsunami, which is the same height as the ground of the seawater pump building, strikes the power station, the wave energy of the tsunami is likely to force seawa-ter to fl ow over the 5 m high ground, causing approximately 1 m high flooded seawater intrusion to the pump building. The power station has adopted protective measures against this assumption.

The area where Sendai Nuclear Power Station is situated is part of a town called Gumizakicho of Satsu-masendai City. The area has never been hit by a tsunami in its recorded history. Even if you check through an archive, you cannot find any re-cord of tsunami damage. There is an island called Kamikosikijima (part of Satsumasendai city) at 25 km to the west from the power station in the East China Sea. There is a town called Satomachi on a tombolo* sand area in this island. The town has a

ferry calling port, hotels, elementary and junior high schools, which is long and narrow, stretching 1,500 m in length and at the largest 1,000 m in width, being 2-3 m above sea level. This tombolo has been inhabited by people for more than 1,000 years, and has no historical record of tsunami.

What kind of conditions justify this assumption of 5 m tsunami in the area that has never been hit by tsunami in a recorded history? The Ryukyu Trench (the Okinawa Trough), located to the east of Oki-nawa, is 1,000 km long, 200 km wide, and 7,500 m deep at the deep-est point, which is the deepest and largest trench in the East China Sea. Although no large earthquake occurred in the recorded history of this trench, the power station as-sumed that a large earthquake of magnitude 9.1, which is 1.4 times greater than the magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake on March 11, 2011, would occur. In the analysis, a possible tsunami associated with the earthquake was estimated to reach Sendai Nuclear Power Station within approximately 100 minutes and its height was estimated to be 5 m. The protective measures were prepared against this estimation.

Despite the assumption based on the above-mentioned elaborate and extensive research results, Sen-dai Station later decided to revise its protective measures, this time, against 15 m tsunami, which is the same height as the one that hit Fu-kushima Daiichi. The doors on the outside of the reactor buildings, the turbine/generator buildings, and the auxiliary machinery buildings that were located at 13 m above sea level were all replaced with water-tight doors, which are supposed to pre-vent water effectively from entering

the buildings from the outside. This kind of water-tightening of the out-side doors was implemented in all nuclear power stations in Japan.

Measures against Tsunamis on Altitude

5 m Site

The seawater pump area where the water intake and outlet are lo-cated is at 5 m above sea level, which is the lowest ground area in the sta-tion. When we visited the power sta-tion for this survey, both Unit 1 and 2 were in full operation, pumping 128 tons of saltwater to fl ow through the water intake and outlet per min-ute. It was not obvious to our eyes: we could not see any wave or fast river-like stream. That said, the vol-ume of water intake and release is said to be equivalent to an amount fi lling up a typical school swimming pool of 25 m by 16 m in 2-3 seconds, where the pool is estimated to be 1 m deep and hold 400 tons of water.

Seawater taken at the intake transfer heat of the steam, at the condenser, used for rotating the low-pressure turbine, and the now warm seawater is discharged from this outlet. This is a so called thermal effl uent. The difference of seawater temperature between the intake and the outlet is 6 or 6.5 degrees centi-grade. Heated water gives positive thermal load to the environment. The power station discharges the heated water from the height delib-erately at the outlet. This is part of an effort to lower the temperature of the heated water. Deliberately mak-ing large waves by falling increases the opportunity of heat exchange with atmosphere, which helps the heated water lose the temperature.

This area is at 5 m above sea lev-el. The power station has therefore

* Tombolo: A sandbar connecting a nearshore island to the mainland. It is made by sedimentation of sand and stone carried by coastal currents. The island connect-ed to the mainland is called “rikukeito” in Japanese, literally land-tied island. You fi nd many tombolos all over Japan. Hakodate, Kushimoto, and Kamikoshiki-jima are the three largest tombolos in Japan.

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predicted about 1 m deep inundation due to the force of tsunami if the predicted largest 5 m tsunami hits the area. To protect the seawater pump building, the protective flood wall has been installed. The wall is 300 m long, 10 m wide, and 3 m high, and encloses the pump build-ing. The change in the predicted height of tsunami to 15 m this time required the modifi cation of the fl ood wall, which has been now further covered by an additional 10 m high fl ood wall made of steel frames and plates. The pump building stores eight pumps that serves for Unit 1 and 2. The flood walls will protect these eight installed pumps from predicted tsunamis.

Measures against Tornados in a Place

Where’ve Been Non

The new regulatory standards this time have forced us to consider every possible type of natural disas-ters. For instance, we must prepare specifi c protective measures against not only earthquakes and tsunamis but also tornadoes, snow damage, flood, and mountain fires. Among these possible phenomena, unprec-edented new large-scale measures have been taken against tornados by Sendai Nuclear Power Station.

Occasionally tornado watch is is-sued in South Satsuma Area, where this power station is located, but local residents say they have never seen, heard or suffered a tornado for generations. That said, the new regulatory standards required the implementation of protective mea-sures against tornadoes.

Kyushu Electric Power conducted research on all tornadoes that oc-curred within 5 km offshore the coastline of Japan, and found that the

largest tornado ever occurred in Japan was a magnitude of 3 on the Fujita scale (F scale 3) caused by a 92 m/s wind. Is this maximum w i n d s p e e d large enough? To be suffi cient, a margin should be necessary. Sendai Nuclear Power Station set its design standards of tornado speed to 100 m/s, which is faster than the above-mentioned fastest speed. A 100 m/s wind blows at about 360 km/hour. Sendai Nuclear Power Sta-tion assumed that tornadoes that are faster than Shinkansen would pass through somewhere within the 1.45 million sqm site (1.3 times larger than the Imperial Palace in Tokyo), in preparing the protective measures against tornadoes.

The power station must assume that steel structures fl own from the inside or the outside of the station by unprecedented strong tornadoes may strike uncovered outdoor tanks. To protect these tanks, the walls and ceiling of the tanks are covered with seven or eight layers of steel frame structures and wire mesh, which ensures that the tanks will be intact whatever happens. This is like a birdcage that birds perhaps hate to be inside! Both fixed type and on-board mobile type emergency diesel generators are now equipped with more than one set of chain or wire at the four corners so that they can be fastened on the ground. Chain for the truck-mounted diesel generators can certainly be detached.

The four corners of outdoor ma-chinery and equipment were fas-tened with chain because of repeated advisory of potential risk of tum-bling or striking the adjacent other machinery and equipment in torna-does. The trucks are also tied with chain so that they will not move however strong tornadoes hit this site. Up until now these trucks had been proven to be resistant to large earthquakes, because their centers of gravity were sufficiently low and their suspensions and tires could absorb the vibration of such large earthquakes. However, the new reg-ulation forced them to consider not only earthquakes but also tornadoes, which produce strong wind pressure from the bottom as well as from the side and may move the trucks.

Updates on tornadoes including lightnings are fed to the central control room (CCR) from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). The CCR, responding to the updates at an appropriate time, starts up the generators to actuate the winder tension controllers of the chain that was connected to the four corners of each of the outdoor machinery and equipment. The generator produces

Protective Measures against Tornadoes Implemented to Heavy Machinery

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440 V electricity, which is supplied to seven control panels located in different areas at distance, where the supplied electricity is trans-formed to 100 V. Now this 100 V electricity is supplied to the electric motor reel and the winder tension controllers of the chain affixed to each of the outdoor machinery and equipment. Then, the winders auto-matically starts to roll up the chain. It takes about fi ve minutes after the instruction is given at the CCR to start rolling up the chain. It takes 15 minutes to complete the roll-up of the chain of all of the machinery and equipment.

The number of equipment fas-tened with chain is 80 in the power station. And the number of the chain and wire used to secure the equipment is 1,300 pieces. The in-stalled system rolls up everything in 15 minutes, which is impossible if they have to do this manually.

In case of emergency, these trucks with emergency diesel generators on board will be certainly mobilized. In such case, the shackles at the end of the chain or wire must be taken off. Without fastening with the chain or wire, it would be much easier and faster to mobilize the trucks; but, without them, the protective mea-sures against tornadoes would not have been approved.

People often ask whether this is fast enough to respond to an emer-gency. The answer is yes. There is a contingency plan that dictates the order of emergency response. If you follow the plan, mobilize the trucks removing the shackles or the chain by the indicated order deadline, and set up necessary apparatus at the destination, then you will have ample time to respond. The contingency plan is designed to do

so. There are predetermined time sequence for the emergency appara-tus: For instance, the sequence says at what time the apparatus must be actuated. This procedure can be implemented by the power sta-tion staff of 52 people at both Unit 1 and 2 at the same time. One of the inspection criteria by the Japanese government actually required a dry run to determine if this was feasible. The feasibility of the procedure was verifi ed by the inspection.

The measures against tornadoes like this have never been adopted by other nuclear power stations. Ev-ery power station has characteristic features. For instance, some nuclear power stations store emergency ma-chinery and equipment in tunnels that they make. There should be appropriate measures against tor-nadoes based on the characteristic features of each power station.

The dialogue with Sendai Nuclear Power Station made us wonder if it was really necessary to implement protective measures against tor-nadoes to this extent. It is easy to talk about. But, if we actually adopt these measures, we have no idea how much it will cost. We would guess it would be on the order of 1 billion yen.

Compliance with New Standards

– Multi-Layered Strategies for

Water and Power

The cause of the Fukushima ac-cident was ultimately a loss of prepared cooling water and power supply, due to the destruction by the tsunami. The accident prompted the government to adopt new regu-latory standards, which requires to implement new strategies for ensur-ing multi-layered backups of cooling system and power supply.

The newly implemented cooling method has first adopted various measures to protect firmly the fuel pit where spent fuel was stored. One of them is the deployment of large-capacity mobile pumper trucks, in addition to already exist-ing pumps. The pumper truck is capable of pumping up more than 1,000 tons of fresh or sea water per hour to the height of about 140 m. It, if coupled with a water cannon, can supply water to the roof of the reactor building, and also work as facilities to supply fresh or sea water to the air-conditioning cooling appa-ratus in the reactor vessel to lower the temperature or pressure.

Mobile electric low-pressure injec-tion pumps, which are mobile pumps similar to the mobile diesel injec-tion pumps but use different driv-ing force, are also introduced. The electric low-pressure injection pump operates as a pump by connecting to a generator. The diesel injection pump is equipped with a diesel en-gine. The diesel injection pumper

Water Cannon

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truck is very powerful mobile equip-ment, which, by connecting to a hose installed at the entrance of facilities, is capable of pumping 150 tons of water per hour to the height of 150 m. The strategy of the power sta-tion is to have more than one unit of each type of pumps that use differ-ent driving force and deploy them at more than one location. The power station ensures sufficient stock of necessary machinery, equipment, and materials so that it can respond to any type of events.

The same goes to ensuring power supply. The power station has more than one unit of DC power supply vehicle and AC power supply ve-hicle. The power station has been equipped with very large emergency diesel generators as backup power supply since it was built. However, the Fukushima accident gave them a painful lesson: The backup power supply was disabled by the tsunami. Therefore, this power station has installed additionally large-capacity mobile air-cooled gas turbine gen-erators in Unit 1 and 2 respectively. They are certainly systematized so as to be able to be remote-controlled from the CCR.

Multiple Backups of Power Supply for

Monitoring Stations

On March 14, a newspaper held an article, seemingly a scoop with writer’s name, of which headline says, “Half of radiation monitors around Sendai Nuclear Power Sta-tion found unable to detect the evacuation level of radiation.” It says about the environmental ra-diation monitors installed outside the power station by the local mu-nicipality, which have been moni-toring radiation for more than 30 years, and a number of new models additionally installed after the Fu-kushima accident. It claimed that half of these monitors did not func-tion properly. Scientifically speak-ing, it is unlikely that half of the monitors which have been measur-ing and sending out data become out of order all at once. It leads us to wonder if the writer might have suspected that the municipality had installed dysfunctional radiation monitors in the fi rst place.

It is perhaps more appropriate to consider that it was written by a reporter who was not familiar with the basic scientific features

of the monitoring devices. It is an over-interpretation to consider the article a politically motivated or intentionally biased report by the newspaper. The NRA and Kagoshima Pref. immediately re-sponded to the article with coun-terarguments. In the meantime, the NRA, expressing concern over misunderstanding among readers of the articles, has posted accurate information on its website.

The biggest mistake that the un-dersigned writer made may be best understood by the following example: You cannot fi nd the weight of a let-ter on the bathroom scale accurately, whereas you cannot fi nd the weight of your body on the postal scale. The writer could not tell the difference. The report was as if it claimed that half of the monitoring devices were defective and useless because he could not fi nd the weight of his body on the postal scale. However, local residents want to know the “weight of a letter” (low-level radiation) by using the “postal scale” (a low-level radiation monitoring device), which was dubbed “useless” by the writer. So does Kagoshima Pref., which are monitoring the environmental radia-

Large-Capacity Mobile Pump Mobile Diesel Pump

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tion. The high-level radiation moni-toring devices, which can measure the evacuation level of radiation, alone cannot promise safety.

There are environmental radia-tion monitoring apparatus on the roof of a building situated on the ground of altitude 28 m in the pow-er station. The apparatus contains two measuring devices for high-level and low-level radiation respectively. In case of emergency, electricity can be supplied to this apparatus from the emergency diesel generators. This backup power supply scheme has been implemented since the days even before the Fukushima accident. However, the emergency power supply in Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station did not work, which disabled radiation measurement or data transmission. To ensure power supply to the mea-suring devices, additional multi-layered power supply scheme was contemplated. Additional diesel generators have been installed next to the building where the radiation monitoring apparatus is located. If electricity to the monitoring devices from the power supply in the build-ing is cut, the additional diesel gen-erator installed next to the building detect it and will start to generate electricity automatically. The gen-erator stores 200 liters of fuel oil inside, which enables the apparatus to monitor radiation measurement and transmit data for four days without refueling. Kyushu Electric Power installed six sets of radiation monitoring apparatus, each of which contains two monitoring devices, one for high-level and the other for low-level radiation, at six different locations in Sendai Nuclear Power Station. The generators for the backup power supply are installed

in each of the six locations of the monitoring apparatus.

Kagoshima Pref., where Sendai Nuclear Power Station is located, has increased the number of pre-fecture-owned radiation monitor-ing stations and posts by 67, which makes total 73 stations. This is a substantial increase. The farthest monitoring base is located in Amami Oshima Island, which is 400 km away from the station. Probably, Sendai Nuclear Power Station is the only nuclear power station in Japan that has as many as 73 monitor-ing stations and posts per station, said the power station staff. This is the accomplishment of Kagoshima Pref.’s persistent efforts to ensure environmental safety.

Measures against Hydrogen Explosion

In the Fukushima accident, hy-drogen explosions occurred in Unit 1 and 3. Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Station uses boiling water reactors (BWRs). The volume of the contain-ment vessel enclosing the reactor pressure vessel is about 6,000 to 7,000 m3. In pressurized water reac-tors (PWRs), such as those used in Sendai Nuclear Power Station, the volume of the containment vessel is about 80,000 m3, which is some tenfold larger than the BWR’s. This fact alone ensures dilution of hy-drogen even if it should be released from the core fuel.

However, the new regulation im-posed by the Japanese government requires implementation of addi-tional layers of preventive measures against hydrogen explosion. To cope with this new requirement, the preventive measures using two dif-ferent principles have been adopted here: one uses catalyst and the other does a heater. More than one of each

of the devices has been installed.A catalytic hydrogen recombina-

tion device is called a recombiner, which is a device that uses a cata-lyst to prevent hydrogen explosion. Vapors containing hydrogen rises upward by the funnel effect and come into contact with surrounding metal plate containing palladium platinum. A catalytic reaction be-tween hydrogen and palladium plat-inum replaces hydrogen with water, thereby reducing the concentration of hydrogen naturally.

The other device is so called an igniter, which is an electronic hy-drogen combustion device. In case of emergency, electric power supply turns on the heater of the device. When its temperature reaches about 600, it will force hydrogen in the surrounding atmosphere to burn. This system requires electricity sup-ply. These two kinds of devices that use two different scientifi c principles are installed in the containment ves-sel of both Unit 1 and 2.

Diversifi ed Storage of Equipment;

One-Week Fuel Stocks without Additions

Needless to say, if machinery, equipment, materials for important facilities are stored in one place, it is easier to manage them. It is also reasonable from an operational point of view. However, if you consider an emergency like the Fukushima accident, it is safer to have horizon-tally as well as vertically distributed storage. A good example of distrib-uted placement for safety reasons is the bases of the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the United States Armed Forces. Their bases are distributed in tens of locations in consideration of national security. There seemed to be lack of due consideration of

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safety before the Fukushima ac-cident, especially the idea of risk mitigation by vertical distribution of equipment.

Since the Fukushima accident, Sendai Nuclear Power Station has distributed and stored backup ma-chinery, equipment, and materials at six locations on the site of alti-tude 25 m in the station site. Water and power supply devices are also distributed to more than one loca-tion. Surely, each of the distributed storage items is equipped with the chain, which is the protective mea-sures against tornadoes. Conversely, none of these measures seemed to be taken or considered before the Fu-kushima accident. For some people, these measures may look too much, but these were implemented based on the painful lessons of Fukushima.

We said in the above that the large-capacity air-cooled generator and the large-capacity gas turbine generator were both added to each of Unit 1 and 2 reactors. In consid-eration of possible situations that impede fuel supply to these genera-tors, the new regulatory standards have imposed an additional require-ment that forces power stations to

have one-week fuel oil stocks within the station without refueling from the outside. The power station have already had a fuel tank for 3.5-day stocks, but installed a new large underground fuel reserve tank for emergency diesel generators, to com-ply with the new requirement. This is like building a large gas station within a power station.

Transportation of fuel oil from the underground fuel oil reserve tank to machinery and equipment in the station that consumes fuel, such as the emergency generators, requires tank trucks. The newly deployed tank truck has a tank capacity of 14 kiloliters, which is sufficient to be used by wholesalers to distribute fuel oils to gas stations. Sendai Nu-clear Power Station has two of this type of truck and two of another type of truck that has a tank capacity of 4 kiloliters, about one-third capacity of the former type. The power station has four tank trucks in total. These are driven by the power station staff who have commercial driver’s licenses to operate large vehicles as well as licenses to handle hazardous materials. However, the new regu-latory standards do not permit out-

door distributed deployment of these four tank t r u c k s ; t h e standards re-quire garages of which walls are 60 cm thick and ceilings are 45 cm thick to sta-tion the trucks. The power sta-tion built the garages to com-ply with this requirement.

Driving Heavy Machinery and Training

of Drivers

Sendai Nuclear Power Station ad-ditionally introduced large trucks and construction heavy machinery equipped with emergency genera-tors after the Fukushima accident based on the experience, but it faced a problem upon introduction: Out of the power station staff of 270 people, only one or two seemed to have an ap-propriate license to drive these heavy machinery. They wanted to respond to an emergency by driving these heavy machinery by their own staff rather than asking the staff of cooper-ative companies, because the former approach enables them to respond to it at any time with the fastest possi-ble reaction time. The power station manager encouraged the staff to get a driving license of heavy machinery. The staff who helped our survey this time is in charge of environmental protection. He also takes up duties on night shift. He is one of those who has been trained to drive heavy ma-chinery to transport equipment and materials or use them if there is any trouble during his night shift.

To drive these heavy machinery as well as other emergency devices and so on without any hesitation, regu-lar drills are essential, especially those focusing on the response to se-vere accidents. When we visited the power station for survey, we saw the staff attending such drills.

The drills include emergency wa-ter and power supply as well as the prevention of spreading of radioac-tive materials. They also include op-eration of diesel generator-equipped pumps and mobile electric low-pres-sure injection pumps that must be connected to a generator to function. Included in the drills are connecting A Container for Machinery, Equipment and Materials

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CNFC Report


the hoses for the above-mentioned pumps, moving vehicles, and driving heavy vehicles to transfer the mobile electric injection pumps. The power supplying drill includes both cable connecting and laying drills.

Water cannons are used for de-livering 1,000 tons of water per hour to a height of 70 m, which is beyond about 60 m high reactor buildings above ground. The drills include operation of the water can-nons. The above-mentioned drills are repeated, focusing some par-ticular elements, or combined with accident prevention drills, or as integrated drills. The cumulative number of drills conducted since the Fukushima accident has now exceeded 500 times.

Protection of Emergency Response Center

The emergency response center, which is important in an emergency, was built on a hill of altitude 25 m. Various types of natural disasters, including earthquakes, tsunamis, and tornadoes, were taken into ac-count in designing the response center. The building itself was built directly on a bedrock, where the ground was excavated by several

meters to reach, to ensure its quake resistance. The reactor buildings of Unit 1 and 2 are located at a dis-tance of about 500 m from the re-sponse center.

In the event of an accident in the reactor, the reactor building is ex-pected to become a source of very in-tense radiation. A staff of hundred people at most is assumed to stay inside the emergency response cen-ter for one week at an accident. To make sure the radiation exposure of the staff is below 100 mSv per per-son, sufficient mitigation measures against the exposure have been tak-en. Examples of the physical miti-gation measures include the center furnished with no window and the 60 cm thick ceiling and wall to pro-tect the interior against radiation.

Since particulate and gaseous ra-dioactive materials are also released in the accident, fi ltering devices for air-conditioning are installed on the outside of the center building. Clean fi ltered-air is supplied to the center, where the air-pressure in-side the building is maintained at 100 pascal higher than the outside by manipulating the degree of valve openness, which prevents the out-

door contaminated air from entering inside the building.

Multiple Backups of Power Supply for

Emergency Center

The emergency response center receives power generated in the station through the underground cables. The disruption of power supply to the emergency center will affect the commands. So, two emer-gency diesel generators (100 kVa) are installed for the emergency cen-ter. One of them can supply 100% of electricity demand in the emergency center. Even in a blackout, the power station can maintain power supply in the building of the emer-gency center by connecting these generators to the power supply box of the emergency center with cables. There is one more backup generator at another location, which affords the power station 300% backup power supply in total. The tornado protective measures are also imple-mented to these two emergency die-sel generators, which are therefore equipped with chains.

A telecommunication tower for the exclusive use of the emergency

Inside of the Emergency Response Center Air-Conditioning Filters for the Emergency Response Center

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center was also built. The tower has very important functions: satellite phones, satellite networks, telecom-munications, ordinary telephones, and communication network of elec-tric power companies. All of them have the S-class quake-resistance, which is the highest grade.

The emergency center may be the headquarters in accident manage-ment. The floor space inside the building is 170 m2. Even if it is in blackout, battery-powered LED light substitutes and lasts for five hours at 50% brightness. While the LED is providing light, power cable connection to the additionally installed outdoor diesel generator should be established to recover normal light.

There is a large six-partitioned display on the wall of the control room. The display is labeled the “Integrated Nuclear Disaster Pre-vention Network Television Confer-ence System,” which enables online simultaneous conference connect-ing, by a network, the Prime Min-ister’s Official Residence, the Off-site Emergency Center, Kagoshima Pref., Satsumasendai City, other local municipalities, and Kyushu

Electric Power Company. In the middle, there is another display labeled “Sendai Unit 1 and 2 Reac-tors Tsunami Monitor,” which keeps monitoring tsunamis. We under-stand that the monitoring camera for this display is equipped with an infrared camera, which allows staff to monitor the situation even at night. This is also part of newly installed equipment.

The first-ever nuclear disaster prevention drill in Japan after the Fukushima accident took place here in Sendai in October 2013. The building of this emergency response center was built then. The control room in this building, unlike the CCR inside the reactor building, is not equipped with switches or in-struments at all. Since the same data as the CCR inside the reactor building are needed for the staff here to strategize for the settlement of the accident, display on the wall can be switched to show the exactly same instruments as one in the re-actor building. The instruments can be monitored here, whereupon in-structions can be dispatched, or the control room can be taken contact with local municipal offi ces.

This control room is parti-tioned to sever-al booths, each specialized in radiation moni-t o r i n g , c i v i l e n g i n e e r i n g , ma intenance and repair, fuel supply manage-ment, etc. Each of them serves to ensure the backup opera-tion of the cor-

responding functions in the station. All the shelves and computers on the desks are fixed. Chairs only move. This building, built directly on the bedrock, has a quake-resistant structure and therefore sways little. However, to make sure no tremor affect electronic devices if it should happen, the building was construct-ed to have a “freely accessible” fl oor, that is, raised 5-10 cm from the foundations. We understand that the performance of electronic devices was tested by placing the entire building including this floor struc-ture on a shaking table and exerting vibration, and the test verified the devices’ immunity to vibration.

52 in One Shift Act at Emergency

Various measures put into effect include the installment of new de-vices, distributed storage of equip-ment and materials, the expansion of facilities for prevention of natural disasters, and associated necessary drills, but what is more important is how to deploy and organize person-nel that will respond to actual emer-gency situations.

The number of full-time Kyushu Electric Power staff who could work at the time of emergency in Sendai Nuclear Power Station before the Fukushima accident was 16, includ-ing those working for Unit 1 and 2. In addition to that, full-time staff of cooperative companies also work at some auxiliary facilities. The 16 full-time Kyushu Electric staff con-sisted of 4 leaders and 12 central control room staff, then.

At present, the above-mentioned 12 CCR staff and 4 leaders, who have been here since the time of the Fukushima accident, remain un-changed. Besides that, 20 staff have been added, making 36 staff in total. Generators for the Emergency Response Center

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Among the 20 increased staff, 8 are qualified to work in the CCR, and other 12 are trained to transport ma-chinery, equipment, and materials and capable of operating heavy ma-chinery. Besides the staff of the pow-er station, 16 staff of the cooperative companies are also working. These make up 52 staff in total. They work in shift to control Unit 1 and 2.

52 is the number of staff needed to respond to a serious accident in Unit 1 and 2 reactors occurring at the same time and put it under control without damaging the reactor con-tainment vessels. The response by such number of staff is approved by the regulatory authority of Japan.

Furthermore, the power station has a backup to support response to serious accidents if they should occur in case of emergency; the sta-tion always has another group of 52 backup staff either within the power station or in the neighborhood, so that it can respond quickly even dur-ing the outside of the working hours such as holidays or night. This sys-tem has been implemented since June 2015, which was even prior to restarting operation at Sendai Nu-clear Power Station. The strategy is evolved based on the basic philoso-phy about ensuring security that a serious accident such as the one like the Fukushima accident, which had led to the damage of nuclear fuel, can in principle occur at any time.

The duties of a group of 52 staff after their shift work are taken over by another group of 52. Upon taking over, the succeeding staff receive vest-like identifi cation cloth-ing, called “bibs” in Sendai Station, from their predecessors. The Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) has its facility maintenance unit in Satsumasendai City, where the unit

works in shift and naturally there are day-to-day changes of shift. In implementing a new shift system in June 2015, the power station staff visited the JGSDF facility mainte-nance unit to seek some advice, and the following was given: “Carry out shift changes in a formal manner at a location that is as public and as conspicuous as possible. This is important, because it motivates the staff for the work.”

To demonstrate clearly the role and responsibility of the staff and motivate them for their job, the staff have been exchanging their “bibs” during the shift changes since June last year in Sendai Nuclear Power Station. Upon restarting Sendai Nuclear Power Station, a TV pro-gram broadcasted a scene of shift change, where the CCR staff wear-ing the “bibs” were checking the sta-tus by the finger-pointing method. When you have a chance to visit Sendai Power Station, the staff that you find wearing the “bibs” are one of 52 staff on the shift that day.

Long-Term Management Should Be for

Maintenance Facilities Just as for Power

Additional installment of vari-ous types of emergency response equipment entails an increase in the routine of maintenance. Even if the machinery, equipment, and materials are designed for accidents, you must make sure they can be readily mobi-lized at any time. Basic philosophy of Kyushu Electric Power staff for this additional equipment is to prepare a maintenance program for each of security facilities, machinery, equip-ment, and materials, and execute all the programs. For example, the maintenance program for the pumper trucks, which includes the timing of

overhaul and the number and fre-quency of driving and performance tests, is organized in a matrix form, which is then kept observed in ex-ecuting operation and maintenance.

Power stations must keep manag-ing and maintaining not only elec-tricity generating facilities of power stations but also a number of newly installed emergency security facili-ties concurrently for good. In study-ing the introduction of these mainte-nance facilities and in the process of actually installing them, the power station has prepared and imple-mented the maintenance program, of which appropriate workability has been verified, according to the staff. We were quite comfortable with their confidence in what they have done. It is quite diffi cult to do these based on the memory of human or some written notes of the project. Fortu-nately, we now have a system: if we systematize our job, we will be able to know clearly what has been done effectively and what has not.

Reaction of Local Community to

Restart Reactor

Before the restart of Sendai Nu-clear Power Station, Kyushu Electric Power paid annually about JPY 400 – 500 billion for fuel oil, which cov-ered oil-fired power stations oper-ated in place of Sendai and Genkai Nuclear Power Stations. The high-est bill for annual fuel cost paid in the last four years was more than JPY1 trillion a year. Kyushu Elec-tric Power has even borrowed money to pay the bill for fuel oil and there-by maintained stable power supply. Naturally, the company’s balance sheet had become deteriorated, but fallen oil prices and the restart of Sendai Nuclear Power Station has

27

CNFC Report


helped it lodge profi t at least on its profi t and loss statement.

Many members of the business community of Kyushu, including the chairman of JR Kyushu Railway Company, extended support to the restart of Sendai Nuclear Power Station. Certainly, the business community of Kagoshima Prefec-ture, the home prefecture of Sendai Nuclear Power Station, has ex-pressed warm welcome, which has served as strong support.

Efforts made by Kyushu Elec-tric Power in the restart of Sendai Nuclear Power Station is expected to make a positive ripple effect on the restart projects of other nuclear power stations. Visitors to Sendai often ask the same question: “What made Sendai the fi rst nuclear power station in Japan to restart?” The biggest factors contributing toward such an early restart of Sendai in-clude: early preparation of measures against predicted tsunamis, a swift conclusion reached in the study of earthquake energy experienced in Sendai by the design basis earth-quake ground motion, and so forth. Furthermore, the station’s higher altitude and strong bedrock founda-tions seemed to contribute toward the favorable review. These factors probably helped Sendai be chosen as a high-priority plant, and thereby reviewed intensively.

During the review process, a staff of almost 500 people of Kyushu Elec-tric Power had been completely tied up with this review-related work. About 300 staff had to be stationed in Tokyo and nearly the same num-ber of staff had to be involved in the pre-restart inspection at site. We were told that effectively all person-nel of Kyushu Electric Power had been involved in this review process.

Electric power companies are those who are regulated by authorities. If they keep working against the au-thorities claiming that imposed regu-latory measures are not necessary, there will be the slightest chance for getting approval of restart. The new regulations might be bitter pills to take, but without taking the pills, nothing would change; what is im-portant here is to pave the way for restarting their suspended nuclear power stations. We would guess that, being those who were regulated, they must have had many kinds of diffi-culty to face, many bitter pills to take.

However, accidents that should not occur did actually occur. We should not allow that kind of ac-cidents occur again in the future. There are still challenges in security issues to be tackled: for example, quake-resistant support buildings, and detour routes. “There is no particular goal in ensuring safety,” said a person in charge of security. He also said, “It is a privilege to run power station in this land. We will pursue the safety, even further.”

There was concern over local com-munity residents’ reaction. For example, more than 300 people live in a community that is most closely located to the power station, and some of them voiced concern over an accident similar to what happened in Fukushima immediately after the Fukushima accident. Power sta-tion staff at once visited them and explained in details the accident situation, difference in the design of reactor, protective measures taken in Sendai against earthquakes and tsunamis. Such frequent explana-tions have gradually removed fear from local community. At last, some residents even showed a slightly un-expected reaction. They even voiced,

“Sendai Nuclear Power Station does have nuclear fuel materials. When will it restart operation? If the power station has fuel materials, there is no difference in risk, whether the station is in operation or not. Would it be more sensible to restart it and make money, rather than to do nothing?”

Upon restart of Sendai Nuclear Power Station, anti-nuclear activists came from various places to Sendai and protest against the restart in front of the power station. Accord-ing to an organizer of the protest, 2,200 people gathered to attend the demonstration. However, there was no strong protest against the restart from the local community. “If there had been strong protest from the lo-cal community, we would not have been able to restart the station,” said a person in charge in Sendai Nuclear Power Station. The station has been in operation for 30 years without any serious troubles. It was when Sendai was promoting its expansion proj-ect to install the third reactor that the Fukushima accident occurred. The Fukushima’s accident response served as a lesson to Sendai, which implemented additional safety mea-sures. “During the preparatory pro-cess for the restart of Sendai Nuclear Power Station, people, the local as-semblies, and the leaders of local mu-nicipalities all made their decisions at appropriate time, which we really ap-preciated”, said the person in charge of Sendai Nuclear Power Station.

There is an expansion plan to build the third reactor in Sendai Nu-clear Power Station. It contemplates building a 1.59 GW advanced pres-surized water reactor (APWR) at a site within the station that is 300 m away from the reactor building of Unit 2. The application for the construction permission had been

28

CNFC Report


Japanese inventories of plutonium are made public once a year. Plutonium inventories existing at the end of December 2014 are as follows:

[The tables in parenthesis are previous year values.](Unit: kgPu)

1. Separated Plutonium• Reprocessing Plants

JAEA*1 JNFL*2

Plutonium nitrate, etc.(plutonium at all stages fromthe time it is separated after dissolution until it goesthrough blending and conversion)

577(664)

284(283)

Plutonium oxide(plutonium oxide laid up in storing containers)

131(84)

3,329(3,329)

Subtotal709

(748)3,613

(3,611)

• JAEA Facility for Plutonium Fuel Fabrication

Plutonium oxide(plutonium oxide laid up in storing containers)

1,974(1,937)

Plutonium in stages of experiment and fabrication

983(981)

New fuel products(in fabricated fuel assemblies)

446(446)

Subtotal3,404

(3,364)

• Reactors and Other Facilities

Joyo (experimental fast reactor) 134(134)

Monju(prototype fast breeder reactor)

31(31)

Commercial Reactors2,501

(2,501)

R&D (critical facilities, etc.) 444(444)

Subtotal3,109

(3,109)

Total10,835(10,833)

2. Separated Plutonium at Overseas(Foreign services are commissioned to fabricate most of them into MOX fuel for use in Japan’s light water reactors.)

(Unit: kgPuf)U.K. 13,939 (13,526)

France 10,572 (10,604)

Total 24,511 (24,130)

3. Separated Plutonium in Use (2014)(Unit: kgPu)

• Plutonium Oxide Recovered

JAEA reprocessing plant86(0)

JNFL Reprocessing plant0

(0)

Total86(0)

• Plutonium in Fuel Fabrication Processes

Monju, Joyo, etc.0

(0)

• Plutonium Loaded in Reactors

Reactors0

(0)

[Reference Data]Each state’s national holdings of civil un-irradiated

plutonium and of plutonium contained in spent civil reactor fuel published by IAEA under “Guidelines for the Management of Plutonium (INFCIRC/549 of March 16, 1998)” as of December 2013 are as follows: (Unit: ton Pu; Civil plutonium and plutonium declared excess to defense needs is contained.)

Non-usedPlutonium

Plutonium inSpent Fuel

U.S.A. 49 617

Russia 51.9 140

U.K. 123 31

France 78.1 268.9

China (13.8kg) ---*3

Japan 10.8 161

Germany 3 109.5

Belgium 1.4 38

Switzerland (<50kg) 18

*1: JAEA: Japan Atomic Energy Agency*2: JNFL: Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited*3: China published only its national holdings civil

un-irradiated plutonium.

Plutonium Management in Japan

submitted on January 12, 2011, two months before the Fukushima acci-dent. The 2011 Tohoku earthquake has put all the procedures on hold. At present, priority has been given to the review of many other nuclear power stations’ restart in Japan. The approval for the construction of Sendai’s third reactor is therefore expected to delay further.

Who will undertake stable energy

supply in Japan? Electric power companies should take the lessons of the Fukushima accident and deci-sively undertake due preparation for the restart of their nuclear stations. They are expected to undertake re-sponsibility for stable energy supply as they have done so far. Privatiza-tion of electricity production will certainly increase the number of retail power suppliers, which we are

afraid will affect the results of tradi-tional electric power companies, but in the meantime, we are also afraid of ongoing present situation that is gradually forcing electric companies to abandon many of projects based on a long-term future projection of power supply.

(Editorial Offi ce is responsible for the record.)

Editor's Postscripts

I still clearly remember the following remarks made by a Diet member at the beginning of his question in a commit-tee of the National Diet of Japan: “The best welfare is to protect peace.” Sev-enty years have passed since the end of the Second World War, and the political climate around Japan has been becoming increasingly disturbing. Up until now we have treated unsettling situations around us as if they are bad luck to ward off and nothing to do with us. I wonder if history repeats itself.

An earthquake of a magnitude of 6.5 and an intensity of 7 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale occurred at 21:26

(JST) on April 14 in Kumamoto Prefec-ture, followed by another earthquake of a magnitude 7.3 and an intensity of 7, 28 hours later at 1:25 on April 16. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) established the seismic intensity scale of earthquake (the scale runs from 0 to 7) in 1949. The fourth and fi fth earthquakes of an intensity of 7 on the JMA seismic scale since 1949 have been registered in this Kumamoto earthquake. Earthquakes of that intensity have never occurred consecutively. Earth-quakes of an intensity 7 occurred for the fi rst time in Kyushu island.

Kumamoto’s power supply, telecommu-nication services, and Kyushu Shinkansen

have been restored, and the restoration of city gas supply, expressways, and ordinary roads is on its way. The restoration of water supply, an important lifeline, is ex-pected to take considerable time.

The number of earthquakes of an inten-sity of 1 or greater in Kumamoto and Oita Prefectures reached 1,006 at noon on April 28. The earthquakes of this kind, which have been active in a broader area and occurred more than 1,000 times in such a short time, are unprecedented. The Japan Meteorological Agency has been recom-mending people to stay alert. I hope the earthquakes will subside soon.

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