Japan Quake Alerts World to Nuclear Risk

At 2:46 p.m. Japan time on March 11, 125 kilometers off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck. Its immense power was 400 times greater than that of Taiwan's 921 Earthquake of 1999.

The temblor triggered a 20-meter-high tsunami that sped landward at 800 km an hour, virtually leveling coastal areas of the Tohoku region including Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima, and Ibaraki Prefectures as well as the towns of Minamisanriku and Sendai, causing severe damage. With 8,928 deaths and 12,664 missing as of March 22, the casualties far exceed those of the Kobe earthquake of 1995.

Japan is facing its harshest crisis since World War II. On day six of the crisis, Japanese emperor Akihito broke precedent and addressed the Japanese people, appealing to them not to abandon hope, but to help each other and to face the future with strength.

Taiwan, also located in a seismically active region, identified with Japan's losses. The government immediately announced donations of NT$100 million, and offered aid including rescue teams, search and rescue dogs, medical teams and medical supplies. Moreover, donations from the Taiwanese public have topped NT$1.2 billion.

Electricity generation energy sources, 2008

But in the wake of the havoc of the earthquake and tsunami, a more alarming situation reared its head. Waves seven stories high battered the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, partially destroying the cooling system for the reactor core and causing serious consequences including hydrogen explosions, the partial melting of the reactor core, and the release of radioactive substances. As Japan succumbed to disaster, people all around the world were horrified at the prospect of a nuclear catastrophe.

According to international standards, each person on average absorbs about 1.6 millisieverts of radiation per year from the natural environment (human health would be affected at 500 times this dose), but radiation levels close to Reactor 4 of the Fukushima I plant were tested at 0.4 mSv per hour. Thus, spending 10 hours in that high-radiation zone could be fatal.

Of particular concern is that radioactive dust has escaped into the atmosphere, where it is impossible to control. In response, the Japanese government expanded the evacuation radius to 30 km, estimating that around 130,000 people need to withdraw from Fukushima. In Tokyo, 217 km from Fukushima, radiation levels have increased by a factor of 21 (roughly equivalent to 60 chest X-rays).

The event raised fears among the people of Taiwan, living more than 2,000 km away, who are concerned about whether radioactive fallout from Japan might drift across the ocean.

Climatologist Peng Chi-ming has conducted air current simulations for East Asian nuclear power plants, studying emergency contingency systems for atmospheric radiation dispersal. He notes that air currents carrying radiation from nuclear plants in Shanghai and Guangdong Province have a 7-12% probability of reaching Taiwan, with an average time of 46 hours, while the corresponding figures for radiation reaching Taiwan from Korea and Japan are 10% at 72 hours. He stresses that Asia's monsoons are the main factor governing atmospheric diffusion, and that Taiwan would only be affected under a certain set of meteorological conditions. As it happened, within a week after the nuclear catastrophe in Japan, Taiwan was affected by a Mongolian high pressure system and air currents from Japan were blowing to the east. Thus there was not much cause for concern.

On day 10, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency announced that radiation monitoring stations in California had detected radioactive isotopes blowing in from Japan, but the dose was minute, at about one millionth the level that the human body normally absorbs from natural radiation sources such as rocks, masonry and the sun. This is not enough to pose any danger.

Over several days, the Tokyo Electric Power Company and crews of firefighters kept dousing the plant from both the ground and air to cool the reactor, and labored to install an electric cable to restore power so the cooling system could be restarted. The US Department of Defense sent over a 450-person taskforce specially trained to handle nuclear accidents, to initiate a cleanup effort in the contaminated areas. By late March, good news of preliminary control was finally released.

However, the radiation leaks at the plant shocked the world, rekindling misgivings among people around the world regarding the issue of nuclear safety.

Are Taiwan's nuclear power plants safe? Could they withstand an earthquake of the magnitude of the one that struck Japan?

Indeed, Taiwan's No. 3 Nuclear Power Plant experienced a hydrogen leak and explosion in 1985, and in 1994 there was a leak of radioactive wastewater. Thankfully these were properly managed with no lasting effects.

The No. 4 Nuclear Power Plant is still under construction, but Plants 1, 2 and 3 are already 32, 30 and 25 years old respectively, necessitating enhanced inspection, repair, maintenance, and reviews of earthquake-proofing design. In particular, the reactors for Taiwan's Plants 1 and 2 are of the same boiling-water reactor type as Japan's reactor: water is the medium of heat exchange, carrying heat from the reactor core to drive the steam turbines that generate electricity. Taiwan must take heed.

Taipower says that Taiwan's boiling water reactors are of the fourth generation, while Japan's are of the third, and all four of Taiwan's nuclear plants are designed at sufficient heights to withstand tsunamis eight to 11 meters high. Taiwan's plants also have three more emergency generators with which to start the cooling system than the Japanese plants do. In addition, they each have a 40,000-cubic-meter water pool, and unlike Japan's diesel-powered water pumps for emergency cooling, Taiwan's emergency cooling systems are powered by gravity and gas turbines.

Taipower chairman Edward Chen states that the company is carefully observing the effectiveness of the measures being taken to manage the Fu-ku-shima nuclear plant crisis. If the Fu-ku-shima plant is able to weather this crisis, then in the event of a similar emergency in Taiwan, should all other means fail, then perhaps the use of sea water to lower the core temperature could be considered to prevent a meltdown.

With an estimated three tenths of its electric power coming from the country's 55 nuclear power plants, Japan is the third-largest consumer of nuclear energy. Japan, which sustained atomic attack at the end of WWII and understands the fear of nuclear catastrophe better than anyone, should have been extra cautious in this area, but Tokyo Electric Power Company underestimated the gravity of the situation that had just occurred, even hiding a portion of the catastrophe, to the dissatisfaction of other nations.

Following the explosions and the accompanying fear of things nuclear, countries around the world began to review their plans for developing nuclear power. Switzerland, for instance, has announced that it will shelve its plans to build three new reactors, and Germany temporarily shut down seven older nuclear plants.

According to the World Nuclear Association, there are currently 443 nuclear reactors in the world, supplying 13.5% of the world's electricity. There are plans to build another 158 reactors, most in Asia. Of these, 62 are under construction, 27 of which are in mainland China. Now China's State Council has ordered a freeze on new applications and is launching an inspection of all nuclear plants under construction, with work to halt on any that do not meet safety criteria.

Climatic anomalies over the past several years led to calls for more low-carbon power, changing official attitudes toward nuclear energy in many developed countries, which included it as part of their plans for future energy sources. After this nuclear crisis, issues of the use and safety of nuclear energy have come under debate. The good thing is that development of renewable energy sources may be sped up, but in the meantime, in the attempt to make up for the loss in available power, it may be all the more difficult to reduce global dependence on fossil fuels.

Once Japan's nuclear crisis is under control, the next test for Japan will be reconstruction. Meanwhile, the ruptures in Japan's industrial chain due to inestimable economic losses caused by the earthquake will also affect Taiwan.

The World Bank projects that the damage from this catastrophe may surpass US$235 billion, affecting Japan's economic growth rate, which would bring Japan's economic growth rate down by four percentage points. That is to say, Japan's GDP growth may fall to zero or go negative this year, resulting in yet another "lost decade" for the country.

Power rationing measures are being implemented in Japan due to an overburdened power supply. This will cause production difficulties for factories in the Tohoku and Kanto regions, which, combined with shipping problems due to inadequate transport and unstable power supply, will result in considerable impact on Taiwan's trillion-NT-dollar silicon wafer and optoelectronics industries, and on makers of midstream electronic component and 3C electronic products, all of which are heavily dependent on Japan.

A report issued by the Industrial Economics and Knowledge Research Center (IEK) of the Industrial Technology Research Institute states that Mi-tsu-bi-shi Gas Chemical and Hi-ta-chi Chemical, both located in the stricken region, are respectively the world's largest and second-largest suppliers of materials for integrated circuit boards, chiefly supplying BT epoxy, needed for cell phone chips. Other key components such as anisotropic conductive film for Taiwan's flat panel industry, substrates and lithographic equipment needed for the optoelectronics industry, rolled copper foil for the circuit board printing industry, precision machinery, automobiles and much more are pretty much all supplied by Japanese companies. Taiwanese companies with inventory on hand to weather the supply shortage can first source domestically or from other countries, but firms need to prepare in advance to adapt their manufacturing processes to changes in materials if they wish to minimize the impact.

IEK deputy director Zhang Chao-qun appeals to Taiwan's companies to recognize that before entering into next generation products, they should join hands with local companies, and together develop autonomy in producing key materials, components and equipment in the up-, mid- and downstream levels, so that they will no longer be so dependent on imports.

In the wake of this crisis, the Executive Yuan called together an emergency conference on disaster contingencies, inviting representatives from various ministries to discuss disaster prevention policies regarding earthquakes, tsunamis and radiation. Interior minister Jiang Yi-huah said that this year's military exercises, both national and local, will include nuclear safety drills, and disaster prevention route maps will be printed to inform the public where to go in the event of an emergency.

Also, Japan's Earthquake Early Warning system, which issues an emergency bulletin to Tokyo area residents, is an example Taiwan plans to follow, which would provide immediate instructions on where to take refuge in the event of quakes of magnitude 5.5 or above.

As the English poet John Donne wrote, "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

The world is a global village, so nobody goes unaffected when a country experiences calamity. In this age of uncertainty, the world is a living community, and any slight change may snowball out of control; we must be vigilant yet hopeful.

Nuclear energy development worldwide

Note: "Planned" means reactors already under specific planning or for which a site has been selected, and expected to become operational 15 years

sources: International Energy Agency, International Atomic Energy Agency, World Nuclear Association (2011)