Seven Elements That Have Changed the World (24 page)

Japan was the first and only nation to experience the terrifyingly acute effects of an atomic bomb and the persistent fear that exists in the aftermath. No one knew what the health effects of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be. Those unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast struggled to make sense of the mysterious illness befalling them, their friends and their family. It could be minutes, hours or days later when apparently healthy survivors would be struck down, the appearance of purple spots on the skin acting as an omen of death. Nausea would set in, followed by vomiting, bloody diarrhoea, fever and weakness. As a Hiroshima doctor, Michihiko Hachiya, wondered: ‘Did the new weapon I had heard about throw off a poison gas or perhaps some deadly germ?’
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In Japan, survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings are known as ‘hibakusha’, meaning ‘explosion-affected people’. They have for a long
time suffered social stigma, being avoided by those around them for fear of contamination. Radiation continues to be misunderstood today. It has what Princeton academic Robert Socolow calls a high ‘dread-to-risk-ratio’: the perceived hazards of radiation are often much higher than the actual hazards.
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These misconceptions stem from the inherently mysterious nature of radiation. Invisible yet penetrating, radiation is not easily perceived by our senses. You may be exposed without even realising it and, even after exposure, the effect on your health is very uncertain. You may suffer no adverse impacts; or you may contract cancer at some indeterminate point in the future. It is impossible to predict.

Individual exposure to radiation released from an atomic bomb and radiation released from an accident at a nuclear power station are of a greatly different magnitude. No one has yet died because of radiation released from Fukushima, and it is unlikely that anyone will die as a direct result.
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The accident spread radiation over a very large area of Japan and in the months following it several potentially harmful concentrations of radiation were detected, even in Tokyo, 250 kilometres away. Radiation fallout was detected on school playgrounds, baseball stadiums and pedestrian walkways, although this could not always be attributed to Fukushima.
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Except in a very few cases, radiation levels outside the immediate Fukushima evacuation zone were so low they are very unlikely to harm anyone. But the Japanese public are scared because, however small the risk, no one can be sure.

People were just as concerned after the 1986 disaster at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in Ukraine, where an explosion completely destroyed a reactor within a few seconds.
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There was a large and tragic loss of life: thirty people died and another 106 were treated for acute radiation syndrome. Survivors became anxious and depressed not only because they were forced to leave their homes in the accident area but also because they had a lingering fear that radiation released from the reactor would cause cancer and other life-threatening illnesses.
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The more widespread effects of the Chernobyl disaster were, in reality, relatively small. While it is true that the accident did release large amounts of radioactive material, it was, however, heavily diluted as it spread across the whole of the northern hemisphere. Outside the accident area the
levels of radiation were very low and caused few observable health effects.
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Nonetheless, the reaction from the wider public was of alarm, disproportionate to the actual risks.
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In Germany, where some of the highest radiation levels were detected, this alarm has had a lasting effect.

Public confidence in nuclear power and its safety has, unsurprisingly, fallen since the Fukushima disaster. Protests have been staged calling for Japan to abandon nuclear power outright. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster though, a poll by the independent US think-tank the Pew Research Center found that 46 per cent of the Japanese public would like nuclear power maintained at current levels, slightly more than thought it should be reduced.
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As Sir David Warren, British Ambassador to Japan, explained to me when I met him at the British Embassy, the public were directing their anger towards government and companies rather more than towards nuclear power itself. Although the government reaction to the Tohoku earthquake was much faster than its response to the giant 1995 Kobe earthquake, officials were still seen to be acting with a lack of clarity and decisiveness. There was far too little clear communication between the government, the public and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant’s owners. At one point Prime Minister Naoto Kan was overheard asking TEPCO executives: ‘What the hell is going on?’
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Many Japanese citizens believe, rightly or wrongly, that the plant’s owners were hiding the true extent of the accident from the government and public alike.

TEPCO was an example of an old-fashioned corporation which only liked to put out good news. They have received the brunt of the criticism for failing to plan sufficiently for very large tsunamis and for making operating mistakes that may have increased the release of radiation into the environment. Of greater concern, Fukushima has revealed the government’s inability to regulate adequately the nuclear industry. Numerous instances of bad practice have been uncovered since the disaster. Japan has long been governed by informal bonds of trust and, as a result, the regulator and the regulated were not sufficiently separated.
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Fukushima is forcing a re-examination of these relationships. The Chernobyl disaster was another stark example of a lack of distinction between the regulator and the regulated and, as a result, poor application of regulation.

Chernobyl also epitomised mismanagement of a disaster by the nuclear
industry. The first reaction of the Soviet government was to hide the accident from the world. Only when presented with irrefutable evidence of the accident did officials admit to the explosion. Credibility was damaged and trust evaporated. While the Fukushima accident in Japan was not mismanaged as badly or surrounded with as much secrecy, it has caused a similar breakdown of trust.

By May 2012, every nuclear reactor in Japan had been taken offline. Some of them had been permanently damaged by the Fukushima earthquake, but many were gradually shut down over the following year pending safety tests or routine maintenance. Many interpreted this as a political gesture rather than a pragmatic necessity. Japan remained without nuclear power until July 2012, when two reactors were restarted. When the Pew Center repeated its poll just over a year after the accident, it found that 70 per cent of respondents thought that Japan’s use of nuclear power should be reduced, compared to just 20 per cent who thought it should be maintained at current levels.
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As time has passed, the Japanese public appears to have become more comfortable with the idea of a nuclear-free future.

Japan had planned to grow its generation of electricity from nuclear reactors from 30 per cent in 2010 to so per cent by 2030. It is now planning to reduce this dependency as much as possible. In order for this to happen it will have to find new energy sources and reduce its energy consumption through efficiency and conservation. That is a great challenge for a nation which has few naturally occurring energy resources and is already one of the most energy efficient economies in the world.

Plans to grow nuclear power generation elsewhere in the world have also been cut. In the immediate aftermath of Fukushima, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a three-month moratorium on its decision to extend the lifetime of existing nuclear plants. This led to the announcement in May 2011 that it would completely abandon all nuclear power by 2022. Many other countries placed plans on hold pending reviews of the safety of reactors.

So far, the statistics are in favour of nuclear power; it appears to have
been safer than almost every other energy source.
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Nonetheless, our fear of catastrophe and radiation means that we insist on continuously improving tough safety standards that are better than those of any other energy source. Those other energy sources are, of course, not absolutely safe; there will always be some risk to humans and the environment. But the thing they do not have to take into account is the dread of radiation.

Nuclear power could form one part of the solution to the problem of removing carbon from our energy sources. However, Fukushima may mark the beginning of its end, not just in Japan but across the world. Nuclear power generation was always an uneasy fit with the production of nuclear weapons. Many now see it as simply too expensive and cumbersome an option when compared with other forms of energy, including renewable energy sources. The time period between deciding to build a nuclear plant and starting to generate electricity is so long that possible changes in regulation and even demand during that period make returns on investment highly uncertain. In addition, the costs of processing uranium fuel and its radioactive by-products are higher than for other fuel sources. That all makes financing very difficult to obtain at any reasonable price. For reasons of commerce as well as public concern nuclear power is likely to face a bleak future.

On the first anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb, survivors gathered at the destroyed Gokoku shrine to pray for those lives lost. The flags they carried read: ‘World Peace begins in Hiroshima’.
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The dead were buried and the city was beginning the slow process of rebuilding itself from scratch. Hiroshima was home to almost 300,000 civilians at the time of the explosion, but during the Second World War it was also a city of considerable military importance, containing a communications centre, army storage facilities and military bases for about 43,000 soldiers. After it had been part of the brutal climax of the war, Hiroshima would be reinvented as a symbol for world peace and the total eradication of nuclear weapons.

While I was in Hiroshima in 2011, I met Hidehiko Yuzaki, Governor of
Hiroshima Prefecture, to discuss the Fukushima accident and the legacy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Hiroshima exists as a stark reminder of the destructive potential of nuclear weapons and the need to continue efforts towards their eradication.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is rooted in Eisenhower’s 1953 ‘Atoms for Peace’ speech, which subsequently led to the formation of the International Atomic Energy Authority. This organisation monitors nuclear activities and helps non-nuclear nations to develop peaceful nuclear power programmes. Coming into force in 1970, the Treaty is a legally binding agreement which prohibits any action by a signatory nation that helps the spread of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear nations. Those countries that already held nuclear weapons before the Treaty came into force must also ‘pursue negotiations in good faith’ towards complete abolition of nuclear weapons.
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If the Treaty had not existed it is estimated that at least thirty countries would have acquired nuclear weapons by now. Even so, there are nine nations today which between them hold an estimated 22,400 nuclear warheads.
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Four of these nations – India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea – stand outside the Treaty. Total eradication of nuclear weapons is still a distant ideal and many nations will go to great lengths to get them.

In October 2003, the cargo ship MV
BBC China
was intercepted by CIA agents on its way through the Mediterranean to Libya. Several shipping crates were hastily removed from the ship and taken to a high-security warehouse. The next day, as the CIA opened them, their suspicions were confirmed: they contained thousands of aluminium centrifuge components. Two days later American and British intelligence officers met Colonel Qaddafi in the Libyan Desert. Libya’s subsequent surrender of nuclear weapons technology led to further discoveries about the network’s operations and ultimately the arrest of many of those suspected to be involved, including Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Khan grew up in British India in the 1940s, before fleeing to Pakistan amid the growing conflict brought on by Partition. As a child, he had witnessed trains pulling into his home town station piled high with the dead bodies of Muslims, instilling in him a deep sense of national pride and hostility towards India. In December 1971, Pakistan faced a crushing military
defeat by India. Coming to power as president following the conflict, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto saw nuclear weapons as the only way of countering his neighbour’s greater military might.
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A month into his presidency, Bhutto held a meeting with the country’s top scientists and military personnel. He wanted a nuclear bomb within three years. ‘Can you give it to me?’ Bhutto asked. ‘Oh, yes. Yes you can have it,’ the group cheered.
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Their neighbour held similar aims and on 18 May 1974 the Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, watched as the floor of the Rajasthan desert rose up into an iconic mushroom cloud. Operation Smiling Buddha had been successful and India was now officially a nuclear weapons nation. India’s nuclear test flew in the face of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which had come into force four years earlier. India had never signed the Treaty, but its display of nuclear might came as a kick in the teeth to the West. India had developed its weapons using information declassified under the US Atoms for Peace programme, while the plutonium inside the warhead was produced from the spent fuel of a reactor supplied by Canada for producing electricity. Widespread international condemnation followed and sanctions were placed on India. But it was Pakistan that felt most threatened by India’s now apparent capabilities. India’s bomb, detonated less than 50 kilometres from Pakistan’s border, was another show of force towards its neighbour.

India’s bomb seems to have been the spark for Khan’s involvement in the Pakistan project. He had immigrated to Europe in the 1960s to study and he now worked for a nuclear fuel company called URENCO in the Netherlands, giving him access to the secret details of the uranium-enrichment process. Following Operation Smiling Buddha, he wrote to Bhutto saying he knew how to produce the fissile material needed for a bomb and offering his services. Suspicions grew that Khan was involved in the transfer of classified information, and in 1983 he was sentenced
in absentia
by a Dutch court to four years in prison for espionage. Khan denied the charges, and his lawyer vigorously defended the case on the grounds that the information Khan had obtained was freely available in any university library. The case ultimately collapsed, and Khan claimed vindication.