The Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority today approved a new set of safety guidelines for nuclear power plants, possibly as a test of human wastefulness, overreaction and incredulity.
The draft guidelines, which will be finalised by July, include requirements for the construction of earthquake-proof command centres that have food and supplies to last a week without outside aid. Also required is the installation of filters designed to release pressure from containment vessels but filter out radioactive substances in the case of accident. The most absurd rule (in my view) is that plants build seawalls that can protect the site from the maximum predicted tsunami height.
Plant operators have estimated that upgrading existing reactors to comply with these guidelines will cost about 10.8 billion dollars.
Is it really possible that such overreaction can take place as a consequence of an accident that killed or injured noone? It's like some kind of surreal dream.
The seawall requirement I find to be particularly irksome. It was not the lack of a suitably high seawall that caused the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, it was simply the fact that generators that powered the cooling systems were not placed above flood level, leading to the meltdowns.
Building massive seawalls around every seaside nuclear plant in Japan will achieve nothing except the enrichment of concrete and fossil fuel companies. That Japan is ordering plant operators to prepare for a tsunami event that occurs every 800 years yet is easily mitigated by placing generators on higher ground is bad enough. Worse is the naked disrespect for actual people's lives this demonstrates. If the NRA really prioritized human safety, it would mandate the construction of seawalls around residential areas. In the current plans, the only thing that will happen in case of a disastrous tsunami is that the nuclear plants will be untouched while nearby residents drown in their thousands, which indeed is what happened in Fukushima two years ago.
Perhaps the NRA should consider the human implications of the construction of a 20-metre seawall.
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