JAPAN’S NUCLEAR DISASTER AND REGULATORY POLITICS

Images of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident that assailed Fukushima, Japan, on March 11, 2011 (commonly known in Japan as “3.11”) were broadcast to millions of televisions around the world. Many people watched live as the events unfolded over days, evolving into partial core meltdowns in three of six reactors. In a sequence that became world famous, Unit 1 blew up on March 12, followed by a cloud of white smoke, leaving a skeleton where the reactor building had stood. Japan reported the nuclear accident to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as required. On the day it occurred, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) rated it as a level 4 out of seven levels on the IAEA scale: “accident with local consequences” (IAEA 2011b). In the following days, nuclear safety experts around the world analyzed the camera footage and other available data to gauge the severity of the accident. While the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Japanese government reassured the public that no meltdown had taken place yet, French nuclear safety authorities questioned the validity of the level 4 classification (BBC 2011) and nuclear experts in the United Kingdom warned of nuclear meltdowns as early as March 14 (Guardian 2011a).

One month after 3.11, NISA revised its assessment to a level 7 “major accident” (IAEA 2011a), the highest level on the IAEA accident scale. TEPCO has since admitted that it should have declared a nuclear meltdown much sooner. Second in severity only to Chernobyl in 1986, a disaster of such magnitude in high-tech Japan raised urgent questions about how to govern nuclear safety worldwide.

In 2011 IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano stated that the Japa nese nuclear disaster “caused deep public anxiety throughout the world and damaged confidence in nuclear power” (UPI 2020). In response, the German government, facing mass public demonstrations and a rapid shift in public opinion against nuclear power (Infratest 2011), appointed an “ethics commission for safe electricity generation” to assess the overall risks and benefits of nuclear power. Comprising diverse societal stakeholders, ranging from academics to church representatives, the commission advised against reliance on nuclear power due to incalculable long-term risks associated with accidents and radioactive waste storage (EthikKommission Sichere Energieversorgung 2011). Following this recommendation, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that Germany would phase out nuclear power by 2022. Belgium embarked on a similar stepwise phaseout of nuclear power by a set date in the 2020s. Spain and Switzerland foreclosed the construction of additional nuclear power plants. Other nations, such as the United States, China, the United Kingdom, and France, retained nuclear power as part of their energy policy. Responses to the trust-shattering nuclear accident varied around the world and, to the surprise of many, Japan was one of the countries that decided to retain nuclear power.

However, 3.11 exposed severe deficiencies in Japan’s nuclear safety governance. To begin with, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) failed to prevent the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Shortly before 3.11, it had approved the oldest of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as safe for another ten years of operation. The inadequacy of safety governance institutions in Japan was further highlighted by NISA’s failure to correctly assess the severity of the accident, evident from its initial rating as level 4 on the IAEA scale of what turned out to be a massive level 7 nuclear meltdown. Moreover, NISA lacked expertise to take on its predetermined role as a government adviser in crisis management (Kushida 2016), forcing then Japanese Prime Minister Kan Naoto and his government to look elsewhere for expert advice (Kan 2012). The nuclear accident cast a harsh spotlight on nuclear safety governance flaws, a rude awakening for a country that had thought it enjoyed high levels of nuclear safety.

In fact, an accident investigation committee created by the Japanese Diet (parliament) exposed deep-seated flaws in how Japan had hitherto regulated nuclear safety. The Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Committee (NAIIC), the first of its kind in Japan’s postwar history, was equipped with far-reaching competencies to view other w ise confidential documents and to conduct public hearings with persons of interest. It came to a shattering conclusion about Japan’s nuclear safety governance:

The TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by said parties (NAIIC 2012, 16). The regulators did not monitor or supervise nuclear safety. The lack of expertise resulted in “regulatory capture,” and the postponement of the implementation of relevant regulations. They [regulators] avoided their direct responsibilities by letting operators apply regulations on a voluntary basis. Their independence from the political arena, the ministries promoting nuclear energy, and the operators was a mockery. (NAIIC 2012, 20)

The investigation concluded that the accident was not caused by a natural disaster per se, but rather by human failure to address known risks related to natu ral disasters.

To address t hese governance flaws, in September 2012 the Nuclear Regulation Agency (NRA) was created as a so-called independent regulatory commission. The new agency unified diferent functions related to the safety of nuclear power plants, safeguarding nuclear materials and nuclear security. Looking at the safety governance of nuclear power plants, t hese reforms fi nally separated nuclear regulation functions from nuclear power promotion, strengthened public accountability, and imposed rigorous and far-reaching safety regulation visà-v is the nuclear industry. Hence, instead of phasing out nuclear power in response to 3.11, Japan created an independent nuclear safety regulator in order to reinstill domestic and international trust in nuclear safety and to enable the continued operation of Japan’s nuclear power plants.

Contrary to low expectations (Aldrich 2014; Cotton 2014; Vivoda and Graetz 2014; Kingston 2014; Hymans 2015), the NRA defied pronuclear actors’ pressure for a quick and low-cost return to nuclear power. The LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) government made its wishes to reduce some of the new safety requirements clear a fter 2012, but it did not get satisfaction from the NRA. This book aims to explain the puzzling existence of an independent nuclear safety regulator in Japan which did not backslide on the more stringent safety measures introduced, even a fter it became clear that t hose mea sures were going to force numerous reactors into decommissioning.

3.11 Shook Japan’s Nuclear Policy to Its Core

As accidents often do (Birkland 2007; Balleisen et al. 2017), the nuclear meltdowns and revelations about nuclear safety governance flaws led to an intense debate about reforming Japan’s nuclear power policy. Japa nese Prime Minister Kan, head of a government formed by the former opposition party, the Democ ratic Party of Japan (DPJ), championed an unprec edented call for a nuclear phaseout to achieve “a society that is not dependent on nuclear power” (Prime Minister’s Office 2011). At the same time, Japan saw the largest public demonstrations in decades, which reached their zenith in September 2011, with a rally of sixty thousand people at Meiji Park in Tokyo, including Nobel Prize winner Oe Kenzaburo (Hasegawa 2014). In contrast, the old pronuclear power elites, such as the LDP, the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), Japan’s leading industry association Keidanren, and nuclear power plant operators, such as TEPCO, sought to return to pre-3.11 levels of nuclear power generation as swiftly as possible.

Next to calls for radical policy change, such as phasing out nuclear power altogether, the post-3.11 debate about the f uture of nuclear power revolved around improving nuclear safety. Prime Minister Kan initiated a process of restructuring of Japan’s nuclear safety institutions and ordered an immediate “stress test” to review the safety of Japan’s nuclear power plants, following the model set by the Eu ropean Union (EU). A fter 3.11, the EU embarked on “comprehensive risk and safety assessments (“stress tests”) of nuclear power plants” (EU Commission 2011).1 In Japan, the stress test was conducted by NISA, the agency that had failed to prevent the accident in the first place, misjudged its severity, and proven unable to take on its assigned crisis management role. When the first nuclear power plants in Ōi passed the stress test and were restarted in the summer of 2012, networks of old and new antinuclear civil society organizations mobilized up to two hundred thousand people protesting in front of the Diet, the Japa nese parliament (Wiemann 2018). In an August 2012 public opinion poll, 69 percent of the Japa nese public regarded nuclear power as either very, somewhat, or slightly dangerous (Shibata and Tomokiyo 2014, 47).

Calls for changes in Japan’s nuclear safety governance not only came from the Kan government but were strongly supported by international actors such as the IAEA. Immediately following 3.11, the IAEA began a process of revising global nuclear safety guidelines. It culminated in the 2016 IAEA Safety Standards for People and the Environment, which came to include “freedom from pol itical pressure” (IAEA 2016a) as a lesson learned from Japan’s pre-3.11 safety governance failure. During the reform process in Japan, IAEA representatives backed the idea of a stronger, more independent nuclear safety agency. Huge numbers of concerned citizens protesting in front of the parliament also lent strong support to the reform process. As the largest opposition party at the time, the LDP held the necessary seats in the Diet to block safety governance reforms, but instead it opted to use its power to push for an independent safety administration with a strong legal framework. As a result of cooperation and compromise between the DPJ government and the LDP opposition, the Diet passed the Nuclear Regulation Authority Establishment Act in June 2012.

Soon a fter, the LDP won the December 2012 general elections with a landslide victory despite its stance being “the most positive of any party and thus the furthest from the majority of an electorate soured on nuclear power” (Endo, Pekkanen, and Reed 2013, 60). The reelection of the LDP and pronuclear Prime Minister Abe Shinzo put an end to calls for a complete nuclear phaseout. Soon a fter, Abe announced that “over the course of roughly three years we w ill assess the f utures of existing nuclear power plants and transition to a new stable energy mix over ten years” (Abe Shinzo 2013). Ahead of the 2014 snap elections, the Abe government adopted a strategy to depoliticize nuclear power with a “shifting of responsibility for decisions about the safety of nuclear restarts to the newly created Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA)” (Hughes 2015, 203). Strikingly, the LDP has won one national election a fter another despite the unpopularity of Abe’s pronuclear stance.

Around the time the LDP returned to government, large-scale antinuclear protest subsided. While the “anti-nuclear movement wave” (Wiemann 2018) marked the end of Japan’s “ice age of social movements” (Pekkanen 2006), it did not translate into a sustained antinuclear movement. As part of the “new protest cycle” that emerged a fter 3.11 (Chiavacci and Obinger 2018), attention turned away from nuclear power and towards the Abe government’s national security policy agenda. Demonstrations focused on protesting against the State Secrecy Law (2013), the Security Laws (2015), and the Conspiracy Law (2017). What remained from the large antinuclear demonstrations of 2011 and 2012 was a small group of people protesting against nuclear power at a street corner in front of the Prime Minister’s Office every Friday.

The turn of the year from 2012 to 2013 seemingly marked a reversion back to nuclear politics as usual: a pronuclear government in power and able to win election a fter election, no large public demonstrations against nuclear power, and a new safety agency in place to ensure a smooth return to nuclear power with better safety standards as a means to regain international and domestic trust lost after 3.11.

Why Did Japan Hold on to Nuclear Power Despite the Obvious Risks?

As LDP Prime Minister Abe explained his government’s stance: “Our resourcepoor country cannot do without nuclear power to secure the stability of energy supply while considering what makes economic sense and the issue of climate change” (Japan Today 2016). Concretely, the Long-Term Energy and Supply Outlook, adopted by the government in April 2015, set a target for nuclear power to account for 20 to 22 percent of electricity generation in 2030 in order to achieve the triad of energy policy goals: energy security, environmental and climate friendliness, and economic efficiency (known as “3E”). A return to a strong nuclear policy was considered pivotal to Abe’s economic policies to reignite growth, called Abenomics (Kingston 2016; Incerti and Lipscy 2018); to Japan’s eforts to raise its energy self-sufficiency rate, which reached a low point a fter 3.11 (Vivoda 2014); and to lowering green house gas emissions in line with international commitments under the United Nations climate regime (Kameyama 2019). Hence, Japan’s “power elite, and notably the so-called ‘nuclear village’ of big business, the electrical utilities, and key government ministries, wanted to return to business as usual” (Hymans 2015, 113).

The so-called nuclear village,2 a term mainly used by critics to convey the intimate proximity of relations, was centered on METI, the nuclear industry— plant manufacturers and regional electric utilities—a nd the LDP.3 It resembled a classic “iron triangle” of policymaking and implementation. The nuclear iron triangle was dominated by vested interests, had a propensity for making agreements behind closed doors, and promoted a nuclear “safety myth” about the absolute safety of Japa nese nuclear plants (Cotton 2014; Vivoda and Graetz 2014; Kingston 2014). According to the NAIIC, Japan’s pre-3.11 nuclear safety governance setup, designed in the immediate postwar period, was influenced by pronuclear politicians and ministries, and depended on industry expertise, allowing the industry to “capture” regulation and twist it in its favor at the expense of public safety. This regulatory governance design exhibited path dependency for half a century, despite multiple reform attempts in the aftermath of smaller nuclear accidents in Japan.

Japan’s Game- Ch anging Post-3.11 Nuclear Safety Reforms

Many studies of nuclear energy in Japan’s post-3.11 have drawn on the notion of crisis-i nduced change to ask whether it brought about fundamental changes. Early studies failed to anticipate the crucial changes resulting from the creation of the NRA (Samuels 2013; Elliott 2013; Al-Badri and Berends 2013). The new agency took over sta f from the previous captured safety administration, a pronuclear chairman headed the new agency, and most observers expected significant pressure from powerf ul pronuclear actors on the NRA (Aldrich 2014; Cotton 2014; Vivoda and Graetz 2014; Kingston 2014; Hymans 2015). Some scholars attested to the NRA’s strict stance on regulation and its apparent ability to resist political pressure, but they omitted an analysis of the reasons behind it and ex-