In reply to Ron Dore:

Having engaged in friendly dialogue with Ron Dore for years, both on listserves and offline, I must say I am taken aback by the tone and the false accusations in Ron's posting. Let me reply (I apologize for the length caused by extensive excerpts from articles).

Ron falsely accuses me of "feed[ing] the nuclear phobia" by "misquoting the WHO report about Chernobyl."

This is completely untrue. Ron cited a book which, unbenownst to him did, in fact, mislead people about the WHO report by only mentioning the initial 50 deaths of workers and completely omitting WHO's projection of
4,000 eventual deaths (a projection later upped to 9,000). In response, I:
* pointed out the misquote by that book, quoted the secondary source cited by its author (who couldn't be bothered to use primary sources for a book published by an academic press)
* inputted the direct quote from WHO
* inputted WHO's comment that its projection was far smaller than some of the scenarios put out by the anti-nuclear crowd (which, from what I've seen, range from a couple hundred thousand deaths to a million)
* included URLs so that people could judge for themselves, and
* noted that even 9,000 deaths over a few decades is equal to just two years of deaths of coal miners in China due to mining accidents and a tiny fraction of the 2-4 million people, mostly in poor countries, who (and the thousands of people in the rich countries) who die of respitory diseases caused by oil, coal, cow dung, etc.

I don't know why Ron, who is usually more accurate and more gracious, sent the false "misquote" accusation in my direction.

RD wrote:

I don't know why Richard Katz...
persists in his charge that what people call the "nuclear viillage" (presumed to be people interested only in making money or protecting their backs) are the true villains behind the catastrophe."

What I actually said was that the nuclear village's history of lies and deceptions have created the distrust that prevents the nukes from being restarted.
Turning Aesop on his head, they were the boys who not only cried sheep but denied that wolves even existed:
i.e. what the Funabashi Commission called the "twisted myth" of "absolute safety."

Consider just two examples of deception.

1) TEPCO falsifies records; METI takes two years to act after whistleblower leaks finally emerge in the press

"Asahi - September 3, 2002
TEPCO heads to roll; inspections start

The Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) president and chairman said Monday they will resign over a long series of cover-ups that has forced emergency inspections of cracks around the company's nuclear reactors. President Nobuya Minami, 66, will step down in mid-October while Chairman Hiroshi Araki, 71, will resign at the end of this month. Minami on Monday did not attempt to defend the company's long-running system of faking repair reports about faulty equipment in three TEPCO nuclear plants....

TEPCO's announcement of the resignations follows allegations that TEPCO's cover-ups continued until last year and that more than 100 employees, including executives, were involved. TEPCO, the nation's largest utility, said it plans to shut down the potentially faulty reactors from this week to late October for emergency checks involving government inspectors. They are the Unit 4 reactor at the Fukushima First Nuclear Power Station, as well as Units 2, 3 and 4 at the Fukushima Second Nuclear Power Station. The company has already said it would shut down the Unit 1 reactor at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station in Niigata Prefecture. "

"Nuclear Fuel September 2, 2002
TEPCO's Plutonium Program on ice

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco)....management had consistently misrepresented inspection findings by consultant General Electric Co. (GE) at numerous reactors at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa and Fukushima sites for over a decade.

But observers said that statements attributed to METI thus far-including reports that whistleblowers had provided METI key information beginning in 2000 and that the agency had been working with Tepco management to resolve discrepancies in inspection reports since then-suggested that METI itself may be subject to scrutiny as to whether it colluded with industry in not taking legal action sooner and not making known to the public, parliament, and prefectural safety authorities that reactors which were routinely operating had filed falsified or incomplete inspection findings regarding damaged core components."

Was anyone even indicted, let alone jailed?

and 2) NISA fails to upgrade regulations to protect TEPCO from lawsuits

"NISA was aware of nuke plant weaknesses, but failed to revise regulatory laws, Asahi, March 24, 2012

The government's nuclear watchdog was aware of the vulnerability of some of Japan's reactors a year before disaster struck the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, but it did not take action. Specifically, it chose not to seek a revision of laws requiring operators of plants to draw up additional safeguards against a severe accident, according to records obtained by The Asahi Shimbun...The records were obtained under the Information Disclosure Law.

Experts say the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant last year could have been less severe if Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant operator, had been required to install safety steps stipulated by law.

NISA and the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization, a government-affiliated body, discussed efforts to improve preparedness at nuclear plants for a severe accident...One proposal discussed was to require operators to strengthen containment vessels, install equipment to contain nuclear fuel in the case of a meltdown and beef up the ability of emergency equipment to withstand major earthquakes. But the NISA was reluctant to push it due to fears the revision could give rise to lawsuits over design failings of some reactors that had been permitted to operate."

Ron Dore wrote:

"Taking a bet on the once in a thousand years tsunami not arriving, and putting the reserve generators underground were clearly mistakes, but I am prepared to believe that they were honest mistakes in the kind of risk assessment that anybody buildiing infrastructure has to make, not the result of knowing deception."

I myself raised the possibility that this was a reasonable decision based on their knowedge at the time in my March 27 post on Scenarios A, B, and C. In my April 2 post in which I cite Fukushima plant manager Yoshida's 2008 recommendation of a higher seawall to protect against Tsunamis--a proposal rejected by TEPCO--I didn't say TEPCO was either reasonable or unreasonaable; I'm not qualified to judge. What. I wrote was: "I have no idea how a truly disinterested group of experts would have assessed Yoshida's argument."

The main point is that TEPCO should not be the one that making these life or death decisions. It cannot be objective about the evidence. It has a history of falsification on safety issues as well as the unconcious biases that Nobel laureate Kahnamen says exist at most corporations. Letting it make these decisions is like letting Goldman Sachs design the rules for financial markets.

What is needed is a truly independent agency whose sole mission is safety, not agencies conflicted between two
bosses: nuclear promotion and nuclear safety. It needs to recruit and build up a staff that is able to prevent "regulatory capture" by the very interests it is supposed to oversee.

Lest there be any further misunderstandings, let me repeat myself: however dangerous and risky nuclear power it, it remains (so far at least) a lot less deadly than the other presently available alternative:
fossil fuels. Most authorities don't believe renewables or other alternatives will be ready for commercialization on a mass scale for a couple decades.

That said, nuclear could be made a lot less risky than it is. It is certainly possible that the Fukushima disaster might have been prevented had the corporate-government culture around nuclear power been different. The failure of Japan's nuclear village even to admit that risks can be reduced, its history of cover-ups, and repeated failure to make remedial steps is one of the main reasons that nuclear phobia has risen to such heights. Why would anyone expect the Japanese people believe assurances coming from exactly the same people who have lied to them so many times before? To claim that criticism of the nuclear village is feeding nuclear phobia is exactly the attitude that has produced such distrust. The stricter the controls over the nuclear village, the greater the possibility of a reduction in nuclear phobia.

I hope that future postings will be more civil. That is indispensable to the SSJ's ability to serve as a Roundtable.

Richard Katz
The Oriental Economist Report