I have written about the cozy relationship between business and government in the Japanese nuclear industry. There seems to be a universal pattern in countries with nuclear industries where the government supports the industry with subsidies, tax breaks and even state ownership of nuclear corporations. Regulatory agencies are in a confused position of having to both promote and regulate nuclear companies. Often, there is more promotions than regulation. In Japan, this intermingling of government and nuclear corporations is referred to as the “nuclear village.” The Japanese Prime Minister Abe of Japan has made nuclear technology exports a major part of his economic revitalization plan.
Minoru Tanaka is a well known Japanese journalist who has published many articles critical of the Japanese nuclear village. In mid-December, he published an article in the weekly Shukan Kinyobi about Shiro Shirakawa who he called “the last big fixer.” Shirakawa is the head of a company that “provides security systems for power stations owned by the electricity utility TEPCO.” In the article, Shirakawa’s business dealings with constructions companies, banks and nuclear industry companies are detailed in Tanaka’s article. The details in the article show that many of these business arrangements are questionable at best. Tanaka explicitly accused Shirakawa of using his political conditions and industry connections to reap undeserved profits from the Fukushima disaster. But his powerful connections in industry and government have allowed Shirakawa to escape serious censure and punishment for his shady business practices. Shirakawa has brought a libel suit against Tanaka for about eight hundred and twenty seven thousand dollars. Many say that this law suit is intended to intimidate journalists and reduce the number of articles critical of the nuclear village in general and the handling of Fukushima in particular.
Tanaka is a freelance journalist. As such, he does not enjoy much support from the official Kisha press organizations. Freelancers in Japan have often been harassed for reporting on the Fukushima disaster. The Japanese government is fearful that an aroused and angry public could call for a serious debate about Japanese energy issues and even an end to all nuclear power in Japan. This would definitely be a serious blow to Abe’s plans for a nuclear Japan. Shirakawa’s lawsuit is what the Japanese refer to as a “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation” or a “gag” suit. In this type of suit, a power well-connected plaintiff attacks an isolated journalist.
The Abe government recently passed a new secrecy law. It is supposed to be aimed at military issues but is written very broadly. There are severe penalties for bureaucrats who leak secret documents and journalists who publish them. Critics of the new bill point out that government officials have the authority to declare what “constitutes a state secret under categories from defense to diplomacy, terrorism and safety threats.” There is fear that without adequate oversight and provisions for transparency, the new law will be abused. If nuclear affairs are branded as state secrets by the Abe government, this new law would help hide the corruption and problems in Japan’s nuclear village.
Minoru Tanaka at his libel trial:
Arnie Gundersen says that nuclear fuel has been moved by groundwater at Fukushima Daiichi. enenews.com
Cesium-137 density in seawater has been increasing in Fukushima plant port since this June. fukushima-diary.com
Commissioning is about to start at Russia’s forthcoming fast reactor, Beloyarsk 4. world-nuclear-news.com
TEPCO released a brief report on the bent fuel assembly in unit 4′s spent fuel pool. fukuleaks.org
An environmental review of Duke Energy’s proposed Lee nuclear plant 40 miles southwest of Charlotte recommends that federal authorities issue it a construction and operating license. charlotteobserver.com
Last week the European Commission (EC) began an investigation into the support that the British government is giving to the project to construct a new reactor at Hinkley Point C in Somerset. The Chinese have bought into the project which has concerned some departments in the British Government that deal with foreign investment in British projects. Two Areva ERP reactor reactors are to be built by EDF, the French nuclear contactor. The new reactors are expected to be generating over three gigawatts of electricity by 2023.
The EC is questioning whether the involvement of the British Government in the project to ensure predictable revenues for EDF for the next thirty five years will violate European Union (EU) rules covering state aid for commercial ventures. The British government could end up providing as much as twenty seven billion dollars to EDF depending on actual capital costs that EDF incurs. EU law says that a member state can give support to a commercial venture only to the extent that that commercial venture could have gotten the same level of support from the marketplace.
The deal between the British government and EDF stipulates that if the future price of electricity drops below the agreed level, the British government will step in and pay EDF the difference. On the other hand, if the price of electricity rises above the market price, EDF will pay the difference to the British government. The British government explains that this will guarantee that the plant operator will “receive a fixed level of revenues and will therefore not be exposed to market risks for the duration of the scheme.”
The British government offers the same guarantee to low-carbon energy sources including renewables such as wind and solar. Each type has a set strike price which the government supports. However, nuclear power plants do not have the same sort of blanket guaranteed support. Each nuclear project has to considered individually.
The EC is worried that British governmental support could potentially distort the British energy market and even affect the entire EU energy market. This investigation is timely in that the British government has recently announced plans for a massive build up of nuclear power generation to bring sixteen gigawatts of new nuclear capacity online by 2030. If they provided the same sort of support for all the new reactors that they are planning for the Hinkley Point project, this could have a big impact on the EU energy market. In order to be successful, the investigation will need to have cooperation from all the public and private players involved in Hinkley Point.
In the United States and other nuclear countries, the sort of price support the British are offering EDF for Hinkley Point are being abandoned in favor of letting nuclear power compete in the open energy marketplace. This change is already making conventional investment source reluctant to bet on nuclear given that there is an oil glut in the international market and cheap natural gas is lowering the price of electricity. Even renewable electrical generation such as wind and solar are beginning to beat out nuclear in bids for new generation capacity. I have said it before and I will repeat it. Nuclear power is just not commercially viable.
Cutaway drawing of a U.K. ERP reactor:
