Today marks the third anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters that killed 15,884 people and left 2,636 unaccounted for in vast areas of the northern coast of Japan.
Yet there is something surprising in the radioactive wreck that is the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant: opportunity.
To clean it up, Japan will have to develop technology and expertise that any nation with a nuclear reactor will one day need.
Eyeing dozens of ageing reactors at home and hundreds of others worldwide that eventually need to be retired, Japanese industry sees a profitable market for decommissioning expertise.
It may sound surprising, given all the ongoing problems with the coastal Fukushima plant, including huge leaks of contaminated water and other mishaps that followed its devastation by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
But many experts and industry officials say the experience and technology, such as robotics, being developed can be used in any decommissioning in the future. That could represent new opportunities for Japan Inc, which has lost some of its global clout to competitors from countries such as South Korea, China and the United States.
“There is decommissioning business here beyond Fukushima and it’s a worldwide business,” says Lake Barrett, a former US nuclear regulator who headed the Three Mile Island clean-up after a partial nuclear meltdown occurred in one of the two nuclear reactors in Pennsylvania in 1979.
“I think it’s an exciting new area,” he says. “Japan can be a world leader again.”
Japan’s government hopes an offshoot will create a boom in the country’s nuclear technology exports.
The country has struggled to rebuild tsunami-hit communities and to clean up radiation from the nuclear crisis and has earmarked ¥25 trillion (Dh918.2 billion) for reconstruction through March 2016. About 50,000 people from Fukushima are still unable to return home due to concerns over radiation.
Despite the meltdowns that experts say are far more challenging to deal with than the Three Mile Island accident, the prime minister Shinzo Abe is eager to sell Japan’s nuclear plants and technology overseas. He claims Japan can offer the world’s highest safety standards that reflect lessons learned from Fukushima.
More than 400 nuclear reactors are already in operation in more than 30 countries, with dozens more under construction. More new reactors are expected, including hundreds planned in China alone by 2050.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), the utility that runs Fukushima Dai-ichi, is setting up a separate company next month to clean up the plant.
Tentatively called the Decommissioning Company, it is to be overseen by the government’s economic ministry and could evolve into a decommissioning organisation for other plants at home and abroad. Academics, construction giants, electronics makers and risk management firms are rushing to get on board.
Japan also created the government-funded International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning, or Irid, last year. It brings together nuclear plant operators, construction companies and organisations of nuclear experts to promote research and development of nuclear decommissioning technologies, as well as cooperation between international and domestic organisations.
Irid has received 780 proposals for funding from around the world for ideas and technologies related to the treatment and management of contaminated water, as well as 220 others about retrieving the three melted cores.
Japanese companies including Toshiba, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Hitachi have been developing robots that can monitor radiation, decontaminate, remove contaminated debris or repair damage and some of them have been mobilised at the plant.
Standard decommissioning has been largely carried out by human workers. The Irid managing director Kazuhiro Suzuki says the robotics technologies being developed to probe and remove Fukushima’s melted fuel could benefit ordinary decommissioning, not just severely damaged reactors.
“Decommissioning of aging reactors is an imminent task that all nuclear plant operators face,” he says.
Use of robotics and other advanced technologies not only helps to reduce worker radiation exposure but also could make a cleanup faster and cheaper, said Barrett, the Three Mile Island expert who now advises Tepco and Irid.
Experts in Japan are eying a British model, the national decommissioning agency, founded in 2005 to be in charge of decommissioning and clean-up of nuclear plants and radioactive waste management.
Tepco is decommissioning four reactor units crippled by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami and will later scrap the remaining two that survived. Three suffered meltdowns and one was damaged by hydrogen explosions. The decommissioning of the four will take about 40 years.
The total clean-up cost for the severely damaged Fukushima reactors could be as high as 10 times a standard decommissioning that normally costs about ¥70bn per reactor, Mr Suzuki says.
Having completed decommissioning of 10 regular reactors and the Three Mile Island clean-up, the US government and nuclear industry see a profitable market too.
Last month, representatives of 26 American companies came to Tokyo for presentations and business talks with 50 Japanese companies during a two-day decommissioning and remediation forum, co-sponsored by the governments of Japan and the US
“We can work together and do so much more,” says Austin Auger, an executive at CB&I, which worked with Toshiba to assemble one of the earliest treatment units for contaminated water at Fukushima.
But not everyone is happy about Tokyo’s efforts to address the Fukushima problem or the nuclear ambitions of the government.
Banging on drums and waving “Sayonara nukes” signs, thousands of people rallied in a Tokyo park and marched to Parliament on Sunday to demand an end to nuclear power.
Participants at the demonstration, one of several across cities in Japan, said they would never forget the March 11, 2011, nuclear disaster, the worst since Chernobyl.
They also vowed to block a move by the government to restart some of the country’s 48 idled reactors and backpedal on the commitment by the previous government to aggressively reduce the nation’s reliance on nuclear power. Oil imports have soared since the disaster, hurting the economy.
Katsutoshi Sato, a retired railway worker at the rally, was holding a fishing pole with a picture of a fish dangling at the end to highlight his worries about radiation contaminating the rivers.
“The protests are growing,” he said, noting he was taking part in his third anti-nuclear demonstration. “All kinds of people are joining, including families with kids.”
Protests like Sunday’s have popped up across the nation over the past three years, as the usually conformist Japanese public begins to question the government’s assurances that nuclear power is safe.
The movement has also drawn celebrities such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, who shared an Oscar for The Last Emperor score, and the Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe.
The Fukushima Dai-ichi plant continues to spew radiation into the air and sea.
Robert Geller, a seismologist at the University of Tokyo, says it is troubling that after three years there is no full explanation on what went wrong at Fukushima, and how to avoid a recurrence.
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