Author: Kenta Horio, University of Tokyo

In this panel, panelists presented their own view to the Fukushima nuclear accident and lessons learned from it. The first panelist, Prof. Shuichi Iwata, stated the need of “Re-engineering of nuclear engineering” to overcome the limitation of existing sciences. He categorized existing sciences to 6 groups; observation science, experience science, theoretical science, computational science, data science and design science. All of them revealed their limitations by facing Fukushima accident. He emphasized the importance to associate knowledge from different fields and cases, with his regret of failure to apply knowledge from 1200-years-ago Tsunami experience and Indian nuclear facilities which suffered Tsunami in 2004. He concluded the presentation with mention to need to prepare good data of Fukushima accident which should be shared over the world.

The second speaker was Mr. Katsuhisa Furukawa, who focused on the Japan’s preparedness to the nuclear emergency. He considered the utility’s emergency response plan had inadequate assumption such as number of reactors in emergency situation or existence of external power source. Furthermore, he raised questions to the government of Japan, especially on its insignificant effort of annual exercise of emergency response plan and its decision not to implement original plan with Fukushima accident. In addition, he showed his own idea to create new international authority for nuclear safety regulation with pointing that IAEA has conflict interest between promotion and safety of nuclear energy.

Thirdly, Prof. Il Soon Hwang stated his observation of the impact of Fukushima accident. He mentioned to similarity of energy situation in Japan and in Korea, typically lack of fuel resources, fear of energy shortage and dependency to nuclear power production, and stated Japan as a role model. He emphasized the importance of nuclear energy business and the right decision to depend on nuclear power which was made by both Japan and Korea. He considered that one of the central issues raised by Fukushima accident was a failure of bureaucracy which might be important for Korea to learn. He proposed annually Fukushima forum at the end.

The last but not least, Dr. Tatsujiro Suzuki, vice chairman of Atomic Energy Commission of Japan, expressed his points. At first, he stated that Fukushima accident is not over yet though the title of panel is Japan’s Nuclear Program “after” Fukushima. Secondly, he emphasized the importance of clean-up and maintenance of areas suffered by radiation diffusion and the ensuring welfares of the people who once lived there and are evacuating at this moment. Moreover, he introduced governmental report on the Fukushima accident which released recently which already includes most of the points mentioned by other panelists. At the end, he pointed out the short term and long term challenges for the Japan’s energy policy. Ensuring the safety of existing nuclear reactors is the biggest problem for short term and regaining public trust to nuclear will be the major challenge.

Discussions with floor covered various points such as appropriate regulation of nuclear power plants, safety of building nuclear power plants in seismic areas and Japan’s nuclear fuel cycle and export policy.

* The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.
* The views expressed here are panel overviews of the Asan Plenum. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the author or the institutions they are affiliated with.