Asia and the Atom: Willing--and Wary

At a modern nuclear power plant nestled amid the pines, workers in protective white suits and masks scrub away a fine layer of sodium snow. The crystals are the last traces of an accident in December that caused the reactor’s indefinite shutdown--and froze one of the world’s most ambitious nuclear power programs.

Tadao Aoki, a veteran nuclear engineer, removes his mask and goggles and reveals the pained eyes of a man who has seen his life’s work put on hold. “We made a big mistake,” he says, not of the accident here on Japan’s north-central coast but of the cover-up that caused one shamed official’s suicide and shook the public’s confidence in reactors that officials had portrayed as “100% safe.”

“It made the technological problem into a social problem,” Aoki says, peeling off his double-layered latex gloves. “The technical problem we can fix. But, psychologically, I don’t know if we can undo what we have lost.”

Public unease is spreading about the nuclear power industry in Asia--the one region of the world where the promise of atomic energy has never until now lost any of its luster. For booming Asian nations with limited natural resources, burgeoning populations and polluted skies, nuclear power always has held special appeal. Some portray it as the only choice for fulfilling soaring power needs. And unstated but never forgotten, for countries hoping to quietly build a nuclear arms program, material for reactors can be converted for weapons use.

That enthusiasm for atomic power is pushed along by European and North American power-plant builders who see Asia as their greatest potential market--and after having no new orders to build U.S. plants in 23 years, perhaps their last hope.

But many of the same problems that derailed nuclear power in the West are threatening Asia as well.

Take the shutdown of the Japanese fast-breeder plutonium reactor, named “Monju” after a Buddhist goddess of wisdom who harnessed the power of a lion.

The leak of a ton of sodium coolant was nowhere near as grim as what happened at the notorious Chernobyl nuclear reactor in Ukraine. But the incident here galvanized latent anxieties about Japanese officials’ grand plan to dot the country with plutonium plants to ensure energy independence. Authorities in Tokyo now say the Monju accident has prompted a rethinking of Japan’s plutonium policy for reasons that are economic as well as political and safety-related.

But Asia still is power-hungry. “China alone can use up the world’s oil and gas resources in 30 years,” says Liu Jinhua, a director of the China National Nuclear Corp., which oversees the new French-built Daya Bay plant. China plans to put up 100 nuclear power plants by 2050, while the United States, by contrast, plans to shut down 25 plants by the end of the decade.

“In Asia,” Liu explained, “we need this kind of power. Otherwise, we cannot exist.”

And so, a decade after the explosion and fire in the graphite core of a Chernobyl reactor chilled nuclear power plans in the West, Asia is firing up. On the 10th anniversary of the worst nuclear accident in history, China signed contracts with companies from France, Russia, Canada and Japan to supply it with nuclear power equipment and expertise.

“Asia is the only area going gangbusters” for nuclear power, said a spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, an independent oversight commission based in Vienna. “If there is business to be done, Asia is the place to be looking right now.”

The reason? Put simply, it’s due to huge demand for energy in a part of the world where governments traditionally have had little tolerance for popular opposition. Asian leaders must provide power for the factories and office buildings of their nations, which are growing at an average annual rate of 8%; in China, an even faster-growing economy has been racing past its energy supply, so much so that in 1994, factories reported that they needed 20% more electricity than was available.

So where will all the electricity come from, say for China’s 1.2 billion people who are acquiring their first refrigerators, TVs and air conditioners, causing energy use to skyrocket? And how to do it without becoming hostages to oil producers’ price whims or filling the air with more coal dust and smog?

Cheap coal, oil and hydroelectric power probably will remain primary resources. Even in fourth place, nuclear power in Asia will grow tremendously, experts say.

And, unhampered by the powerful anti-nuclear lobbies, expensive regulations and competitive utilities that led to the industry’s stagnation in the United States, strong governments in China, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan have embraced atomic energy as an important power source.

Despite the inherent safety risks, high start-up costs and long-term waste disposal problems, China--with three operating facilities already--has mapped out plans for its 100 future plants, which would make it the largest user in the world by 2050.

South Korea is the fastest-growing nuclear nation, deriving 40% of its electricity from 10 plants; it has blueprints for 15 more.

Japan is the region’s current leader, with about one-third of its electricity generated by 49 plants.

The United States has 109 commercial reactors.

Nuclear power is clean, say advocates, who insist that even its troublesome toxic byproducts can be contained more easily than the fossil fuel wastes that pollute air and water. “It’s cleaner than conventional power,” says Chinese scientist Liu.

“Look at this blue sky and the blue sea,” he says, gesturing to the resort-like landscape at Daya Bay, just northeast of Hong Kong. “I’d like to live at the power plant myself.”

Going nuclear can generate political power as well. Indonesia wants to use nuclear plants so it can trade its caches of petroleum and natural gas for hard currency. South Korea and Taiwan share Japan’s desire for a domestic power source that makes them less vulnerable to suppliers, a fear driven home by the 1973 “oil shock,” when petroleum prices skyrocketed and roiled the global economy. Japanese leaders reassured their nation with plans for a plutonium reactor that would guarantee self-sufficiency--the “fast breeder reactor,” which creates more energy than it consumes.

But the atomic miracle has a dark side. It is “a gift from Pluto with all the possibilities of the nether world,” former U.S. Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger said in a Chernobyl anniversary speech on nuclear safety.

Japan, the only country to have experienced the destructive power and horrible aftereffects of an atomic bomb, is especially sensitive to nuclear dangers.

The Japanese know that fear can seem to spread as fast as radioactivity and be as lasting. When an accident occurs, even a nonradioactive slip-up as occurred at Monju, public confidence is easily shaken. The message to Japan, the capital of “safety culture” and quality control, was that even the goddess of wisdom can’t keep the power in harness.

“Human error is at some point unavoidable,” says Jinzaburo Takagi, a nuclear chemist turned antinuclear activist. He predicted the accident at Monju more than 1 1/2 years before it happened, in an interview with The Times.

Although proponents say scientists are bound to discover safer ways to dispose of nuclear waste in coming decades, even today’s most secure method--in which the material is mixed with molten glass and buried deep underground--causes worries in quake-prone areas like Japan.

Further, plutonium and enriched uranium, which can be used in nuclear weapons, must be carefully guarded and accounted for; Japan’s plutonium plants, which can burn a combination of recycled fuels, must rely on European refineries to process the plutonium and ship it back to Japan--a procedure that critics say invites a terrorist hijacking.

While most governments made their plans at a time when support for nuclear power was at a global peak, and without much public debate, now they must contend with a small but growing grass-roots opposition. “Opposition goes along with democracy,” says John Willis, an organizer for the Tokyo branch of the environmental group Greenpeace. “As Asia opens up politically, the movement inevitably grows.”

In Hong Kong, opposition to nuclear power was an issue that brought people into the streets. After the Chernobyl incident, the Rev. Fung Chi-wood, a Hong Kong legislator, and others tried to get Beijing to shelve plans for a pair of reactors at Daya Bay.

Within three months, they had gathered 1.4 million signatures--one of every four people in Hong Kong--protesting the plant construction. Fung and other group members carried five cardboard boxes filled with petitions to Beijing and threatened a sit-in at the leaders’ compound unless a top official received them.

“China doesn’t usually have opposition,” says Fung, recalling his meeting with “an unhappy official.” “They built the reactors anyway. I don’t think Hong Kong people can have any impact on Beijing’s decisions.”

In Taiwan, though, people are finding they can influence government decisions.

The same March day that the Taiwanese held their first democratic presidential election, Taipei voters marked a ballot on whether their nation should go forward with its fourth nuclear power plant; 51% said “no,” this during a week when China had aimed missiles at Taiwan to try to spook residents about any notions of independence and voters had cited fears that nuclear power plants could become deadly targets.

At a later parliamentary poll, one hospitalized lawmaker insisted on coming in on a gurney to cast his vote. “Who needs nuclear weapons when you have a nuclear target?” asked one activist.

The fear is not unfounded, says a recent CIA report. Nor are concerns that countries can convert their nuclear fuel to weapons use or even lose plutonium to terrorists.

But governments are working to counter popular fears with intensive education campaigns.

The Hong Kong Nuclear Investment Co. distributes “You Are Radioactive,” a Swedish book meant to allay anxieties about nuclear leaks. The book’s cover shows a glowing boy sniffing a glowing flower and gazing at a glowing butterfly. The book illustrates the everyday doses of radioactivity people absorb from the sun, concrete buildings and TVs.

In Japan, the government launched a campaign featuring “our little friend Pluto,” a cartoon character who tells children that plutonium is safe enough to drink. (It isn’t, pointed out U.S. Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary, a critic of the campaign.)

The government has won support with huge pork-barrel projects in provinces that host plants. It builds roads and schools, even port facilities, as payback for cooperation.

Still, it’s not always enough. In the spring of 1995, a governor in Aomori prefecture refused entry to a ship carrying reprocessed waste from Europe until the central government promised not to store nuclear waste permanently in his area. In January, governors of the three prefectures that are home to 60% of Japan’s reactors demanded a halt to nuclear projects in their areas and a complete review of Japan’s plutonium program.

While plans to press ahead with the plutonium reactor program have stalled, government officials are quietly confident Japan will be back on track soon, once public concern has blown over.

“It’s just a matter of education,” says Gyo Sato, in Tokyo’s office of Atomic Energy Policy Research. “If local people continue to think the government forced the nuclear program on them, it’s just from a lack of effort to make them understand.”

Sipping green tea in a crowded government office, he added, “We worry about Monju and if it will give nuclear power a bad image in Asia.”

That’s the last thing the troubled industry wants. Along Asia’s nuclear frontier, analysts describe a “shopping list” for the next decade that includes 20 1,000-megawatt plants in China, 15 in Japan, 15 in South Korea and four in Taiwan. “At $2 billion a plant, that adds up to more than $100 billion,” says Raymond J. Sero, general manager of international projects for Westinghouse Electric Corp.

Though Asia may be an essential market for U.S. manufacturers, Asian companies are giving them a run for their money.

Already, Japanese and South Koreans, under license from their former American mentors, and Chinese and Russians, on their own, have started a sales path that reads like a nuclear chain reaction: Japan sells to Indonesia and India; Russia and South Korea sell to China; China sells to international outcasts Pakistan and Iran.

And though many manufacturers got their start with American technology, some view the United States as a declining force in the nuclear industry. “Americans have nothing new to offer in hardware,” says Kazuhisa Mori, managing director of the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum. “They haven’t put up a new plant for 20 years. Quality in Japanese machinery is far more assured.”

He does, however, credit the United States with superior software and design.

Even Sero acknowledged that Westinghouse’s collaborator, Mitsubishi Heavy Industry, has caught up. “MHI can design and manufacture, construct and start up a nuclear power plant as well as Westinghouse can.”

The ability to learn and adapt in Asia is outpaced only by the region’s economic growth. As China buys plants from overseas firms like Westinghouse, the government will demand technology transfers that speed Beijing’s ability to build and sell plants of its own, analysts say. And though U.S. laws ban the export of militarily sensitive technology, China--which has reactors that run on bomb-grade enriched uranium--won’t necessarily be hindered.

“The U.S. can’t sell nuclear technology to China directly. But the world is open,” Liu said at Daya Bay during a tour of the plant. “If we can’t get it from the States, we can get it from France--or our students in the States,” he said.

For China and other nuclear-leaning countries, the main problem is cost. Nuclear plants are capital-intensive and take up to 10 years to build. The World Bank won’t provide financing because it considers them too costly and unsafe for developing nations. So, for now, Western companies may be competing as much on their ability to provide financing as know-how.

The major obstacle, Chen Zhaobo, vice president of the China National Nuclear Corp. told a conference in Japan, is money. “We are short of funds.”

But not of will. “We are getting our people ready to go into golden times,” says Peter Chow, a Guangdong Nuclear Power official who oversees the Daya Bay plant in southern China. “We want to be one of the glowing examples of nuclear power production in the world.”