Nuclear regulation in Japan 'amiable fiction'

You would think that of all countries, Japan would be cautious about nuclear power. But no, this is capitalism, stupid! Nothing must be permitted to stand in the way of profits, not even the threat of a catastrophic meltdown.

The consequences of the disaster at the Fukushima plant following the earthquake and tsunami are just coming to light. Radioactive iodine twice the safe level for babies has been found in Tokyo’s water supply, and there are bans on milk and food from a growing contaminated area round the stricken plants.

Three workers are in hospital after being exposed to excess radioactivity when a plume of radioactive steam rose from the plant on Wednesday. Many firefighters are wondering if they have a future at all, in light of what happened to those who fought the fire at Chernobyl. Japan’s farming industry is being devastated as countries including the US, Australia and South Korea, ban imports.

Japan’s prime minister was overheard accusing the plant’s operators Tokyo Electricity and Power Company (TEPCO) of even now not telling the truth about what is happening. TEPCO have a long history of lies and cover-ups, according to Citizens Nuclear Information Center (CNIC), Japan's largest anti-nuclear organisation.

In 2002, TEPCO’s president and four other executives resigned, admitting “dishonest practices”, after covering up the failure of a crucial piece of equipment in all its 17 reactors. In 2007 a TEPCO plant in West Japan was damaged by an earthquake and burned for two hours; hundreds of gallons of radioactive water leaked into the sea. The company claimed there had been just a small fire and covered up the water leak.

The Japanese state is more concerned with marketing TEPCO’s ageing nuclear technology abroad than with regulation. As Philip White, English language spokesman for CNIC, puts it: "There's no true regulation of the Japanese nuclear industry. It's just an amiable fiction."

Writing in the Guardian this week, George Monbiot explained how the Fukushima accident has, bizzarely, converted him to the joys of nuclear power. If old and inadequate reactors can withstand the biggest-ever earthquake with only a low level of leaking radiation, then nuclear power is OK by him, provided certain conditions are met:

“1. Its total emissions – from mine to dump – are taken into account, and demonstrate that it is a genuinely low-carbon option 2. We know exactly how and where the waste is to be buried. 3. We know how much this will cost and who will pay 4. There is a legal guarantee that no civil nuclear materials will be diverted for military purposes.”

Clearly, this particular nuclear power development is going to take place on Planet Dreamland. Unfortunately here on planet earth, the nuclear future is in the hands of profit-driven corporations, who have always lied about risks, accidents, costs and waste disposal, and governments who either don’t have the guts to stand up to them, or are actually in cahoots with them.

But Monbiot is not alone. Fuelling capitalist business as usual with nuclear power is proposed by an increasing number of otherwise serious green campaigners. This counsel of despair suggests that human society has no other option than to allow capitalism to go on raping and pillaging the planet, and that our role is to propose new ways for it to fuel its activities.

It suggests that the climate crisis – which is certainly caused by fossil fuel burning - exists in isolation from the existential crisis affecting the survival of the whole eco-system for a multiplicity of reasons arising from the capitalist form of production.

Their problem is liberal scepticism about the potential for change, which A World to Win does not share. Human beings have the potential to replace the current corporate-led governments with a global network of People’s Assemblies.

With democratic control of production, we can establish a rational relationship with nature, where production for need using renewable energy sources, replaces the present obscene multiplication of commodities. It can be done and it must be done.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Profits loom larger than cost of human misery

Analysts are at work trying to minimise the damage to the profitability of the capitalist system from the disaster in Japan. Never mind the towns and villages cut off from all contact without access to food or medical supplies or facing radiation poisoning - the bottom line is the priority.

Big business and the markets are asking what will be the net effect on the oil price if revolution erupts in Saudi Arabia, cutting its production, but demand in Japan falls? And what will that do to the prospects of a global double-dip recession?

In Japan, ports, airports, highways and most manufacturing plants have closed, and the government has predicted “considerable impact on a wide range of our country’s economic activities”.

The damage to nuclear reactors is beyond the worst of the worst case predictions. Eleven reactors are shut down, at least four are broken beyond repair. Swathes of economic activity are at a standstill, and more will follow. Oil imports are bound to soar, adding to the country’s crisis.

Japan is the world’s third largest national economy, having slipped behind China after two decades of unremitting recession. Throughout the period production by world famous brands like Sony, Mitsubishi, Toyota has been kept afloat on an ocean of debt.

After a series of failed attempts to kick start a return to growth, its accumulated national debt was already by far the world’s highest at 225% of gross domestic product. Government income from taxes covers less than half the budget, and pension funds are becoming net sellers of bonds to meet payouts to the elderly.

The Bank of Japan has made 21.8 trillion yen ($US265 billion) available to financial institutions and doubled its asset-buying program to 10 trillion yen, but it hasn’t been enough to stop a global collapse of share values. Japan’s banks are now vulnerable because of the subsequent fall in the value of their equity assets.

As the Financial Times reported: “Economists generally welcomed the central bank’s move as a measure to quell potential panic over access to funds in the wake of a major disaster. But some said the liquidity injection was not likely to be enough to counter the negative impact of the quake and tsunami on the Japanese economy, already weakened by a strong yen and deflationary pressures.”

As the tragedy unfolds, those who operate in the financial markets are weighing their options. Their only concerns are for how money can be made out of the destruction. Reconstruction will need to be funded from somewhere, and that means a big expansion of credit –at a price.

The cost of further borrowing is already on the rise as lenders pile the pressure on the distressed country, just as they are doing in Portugal (whose debt was downgraded last night), Ireland (desperately seeking to renegotiate its bail-out) Greece (paying a staggering 13% to borrow on the bond markets) and Spain (which needs an estimated €130 billion to recapitalise its banks).

The movement of the earth’s crust, hidden from view, has brought two things into even sharper relief:

- continued pursuit of a for-profit system of growth fuelled by oil and nuclear power is simply not sustainable.

- the historic necessity of creating a not-for-profit society in which people produce what they need in a way which repairs the damage to the planet’s eco-system resulting from decades of corporate exploitation.

Today’s unemployment figures in Britain, showing a 17-year high at over 2.5 million, add to the urgency to create an alternative path for humanity in every country.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor