Former nuclear industry insider speaks out on lessons and disillusionment

The Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami that triggered an unprecedented nuclear crisis forced a former nuclear energy advocate from his home due to its proximity to the stricken nuclear power plant, leaving him disillusioned with an industry he had so willingly believed in.

Toshiro Kitamura, 66, now lives in a rental home in the Fukushima Prefecture city of Sukagawa. After he picked me up in his car at JR Sukagawa Station, we headed to Big Palette Fukushima, a large-scale convention center in Koriyama.

“It was so cold here,” Kitamura said as he got out of the car.

Immediately after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant broke out, upwards of 2,500 residents of the local municipalities Tomioka and Kawamura were evacuated to the convention center. Kitamura, who had been living in Tomioka for the past 12 years, evacuated there on March 16 and stayed for about a month and a half. At the time, he’d figured he be returning home soon.

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Kitamura found employment at Japan Atomic Power Co. (JAPC) in 1967, in the midst of a booming economy. It was a year after JAPC launched operations of Japan’s first commercial nuclear power plant, and the year that construction of the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant’s No. 1 reactor begun. The rapidly growing Japanese economy was demanding an increasingly more stable energy supply.

According to Kitamura, he had no interest in nuclear power as a college student. His degree was in economics, but he was more interested in going into work that would be of help to society than he felt going into business would. It was his search for just such a job that led him to JAPC.

Since 2005, after his retirement from the company, Kitamura has been serving as an advisor to Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (JAIF), an organization that conducts symposiums on nuclear power projects and recruitment events for the nuclear power industry. He no longer stands on the “front lines,” however, and had been enjoying life in Tomioka, Fukushima, when the quake disaster struck.

While at JAPC, Kitamura spent many years working at the Tokai and Tsuruga nuclear plants. He was primarily responsible for ensuring the safety of the plants’ workers, including checking the durability of handrails and footholds during inspections and before the construction of new plants. Through his job, he gained comprehensive knowledge of nuclear power stations. “Without seeing the whole picture, from the reactors to everything else, you can’t manage a plant’s safety,” he says.

Kitamura was exposed not just to the physical structure of nuclear plants, but to the multilayered relationships of the contractors that take on maintenance work, their subcontractors, and the subcontractors of those subcontractors. He also grew familiar with the insular nature of major power utilities and nuclear reactor manufacturers.

Nuclear power plants were often described as “apartments without toilets,” and as such, more spent nuclear fuel was being accumulated with nowhere to put it. The Monju fast-breeder reactor project, whose objective is to utilize reprocessed spent fuel to produce more energy, had been derailed by repeated accidents. More and more concerns regarding nuclear power generation continued to be put on the back burner for the ostensible purpose of securing stable power supply. Kitamura wrote articles for industry journals to sound the alarms that were becoming too loud for him to ignore.

“I thought that the nuclear power industry would reach a stalemate at some point,” Kitamura says. “But never did I imagine that such widespread radiation contamination would occur.”

Kitamura had experience going to community information sessions to explain the safety of nuclear plants to local residents. He once told a group of residents that “the probability of an accident was very low, at about 1 out of 10,000,” to which one attendee responded: “That means there’s a possibility that an accident could occur tomorrow, right?” Kitamura had been at a loss for words.

“Now that I think about it, my theory of probability was flawed,” Kitamura says, looking back.

After the Fukushima disaster emerged, Kitamura says he was criticized repeatedly by his wife, who told him: “You were so sure that ‘an accident on the level of the Three Mile Island accident would never happen in Japan.’ I understand that you’d tried to warn the industry, but still.” Kitamura says her words stung.

It’s easy to say with hindsight on one’s side, but even a layperson could’ve imagined the possibility of nuclear plants being damaged by major quakes and tsunami in a quake-prone country like Japan with long coastlines. So why couldn’t the experts?

“You know why?” Kitamura began, taking another breath before continuing. “It’s because experts reached conclusions based merely on statistics that ‘in Japan, the country with the world’s best record of non-interrupted power supply, it would be very difficult to imagine having no power supply for long periods of time,’ and refused to entertain other possibilities. They did not go to the scene to check for themselves whether power could actually be restored. Therein lies the major problem.”

Kitamura also points out that the government and power companies dismissed any lessons that could have been learned from the Chernobyl accident, citing the different types of reactors used in the former U.S.S.R. and Japan. As a result of underestimating the potential for disaster, emergency drills were oversimplified, and residents failed to maintain a disaster-ready mentality.

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Temporary municipal government offices of the village of Kawauchi and the town of Tomioka are located within the grounds of Big Palette Fukushima. Temporary housing units for those who have evacuated due to the nuclear crisis have also been built there. As we walked among the prefab housing, our conversation turned to Kitamura’s life as an evacuee.

Confronted with the reality of the nuclear crisis — including rations of bread past their expiration date, lack of information from the government, the hollow response of the officials from Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the operator of the stricken plant, and the fear of never being able to return to life as he once knew it — Kitamura found he could no longer continue to hold on to his old views.

“Having experienced a disaster of this magnitude, isn’t it clear that nuclear power is not worth the economic cost? We’re entering an age of a declining population, which means dropping demand for energy. No matter how you look at it, it’s going to be extremely difficult to make a convincing case for nuclear energy,” says Kitamura.

Hopes of living with his wife and cats, in a house with a yard, surrounded by nature, had brought Kitamura to Tomioka 12 years ago. He also found appealing the excellent services provided by the municipal government, made possible by subsidies given to the town by the central government for hosting the Fukushima No. 2 Nuclear Power Plant.

Entry into a 20-kilometer radius of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant is not permitted, and Kitamura, whose home falls into that area, has only been able to make three short visits to his home since his evacuation. He estimates that the radiation levels around his home will reach at least 40 millisieverts per year, which eliminates any possibility that he’ll be able to move back.

“My house is worth nothing now,” says Kitamura. “I was planning on selling it to fund our eventual move into a nursing home.”

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How ironic is it that this former nuclear energy advocate has lost both his current life and future life plans to nuclear energy?

“As someone who once promoted nuclear power, and also as someone who has suffered from the disaster, I believe that I should continue sharing my experiences,” Kitamura says. “I have a responsibility to do so.”

Since the nuclear crisis emerged, Kitamura has been receiving a greater number of invitations to give lectures. It was only after he became a victim of a nuclear disaster that he finally came to understand the horrors of the non-critical promotion of nuclear power. The guilt he feels for having been party to that is what propels him now to speak up.

JAIF, where Kitamura now serves as advisor, comprises nuclear power-related companies and municipal governments. Because of this, some anti-nuclear advocates may accuse him of siding with the pro-nuclear camp.

“I anticipate such criticisms,” says Kitamura. “But I think it’s important for me to criticize the problems of nuclear energy from the inside.”

This past October, the former JAPC board member published a book titled “Genpatsu suishinsha no munen” (The disappointment of a former nuclear power advocate).

“Until now, the industry did not have a culture of lending an ear to internal criticism. After the book was published, I received encouraging letters from former insiders of the nuclear power industry thanking me for writing what I did.”

Mainichi Daily News