Look at the situation five years after fukushima , radio in activity, i radioinactivity, its the inside story. Welcome to inside story. Im ray suarez. The design failures of the Nuclear Power plant at fukushima are wellknown and japan will be living with them for a lightning sometime. The area of so radio active five years after the tsunami that robots sent in to do work too dangerous for humans failed and decide soon after they entered the contaminated zones. Register as radioactive on store shelves at the other end of the country. Japan marked the anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami this week, al jazeeras Harry Fawcett reports. Reporter in natarie, this is the closest thing ohigh ground. A mound built 96 years ago so the residents of this town could look out to sea. Five years on from the tsunami, it is a place of remembrance. Broadcast live it first showed the scale of disaster unfolding in japan. 950 people died here. Nearly 18 and a half thousand across the country. All thats left of the densely packed houses are these walls. The wave came through this neighborhood scrubbing it out entirety. At its height, it was about two meters above that man made mound. It was there at 2 46 precisely that they gather to mark the time the ecialgh earthquake str. [ sirens ] 150 kilometers north, another community marked the same moment the same way, sounding the tsunami sirens. Translator the reality is that we still feel the scars here. And there are still many who are struggling to restart their lives. [ singing ] reporter at the facial national memorial, the similar sentiment from the nations Prime Minister. Efforts are being paid to improve the situation but my heart aches at the thought that there are still people who cannot return home. Reporter for all the reconstruction elsewhere, the Prime Minister is promising a revitalized effort to get it finished, things have changed little at fukushima. Workers store and treat contaminated water each day. Subcontractor says the efforts are ham are period by a shortage of people willing to do the job, even if conditions are better than what he faced in the weeks after the melt downs. Translator i think what i felt most was anxiety. When i got there i thought my experience would be useful but all the rules i used to abide by became completely irrelevant. It was like a war zone. That astonished me. Walls raised from reconstruction to minimize problems from future tsunamis. But, theres always a reminder of what has been lost. Harry fawcett, al jazeera, japan. On this anniversary of the Nuclear Plant disaster were looking at the Nuclear Power industry. You pay recall that the u. S. Had just formulated a new policy during that time in the first obama term and one of the sources for much needed power Going Forward was going to be Nuclear Plants. The fukushima disaster caingd changed that. Germany stuck with its promise to demilitarize and replace energy in a fairly short time. Nuclear plants in the u. S. Are old with no new plants to replace that. Radioinactivity, joining me tyson slocom. And Scott Peterson. Senior Vice President of the Nuclear Energy institute. Tyson slocum, take us back five years ago. There was and i dont think im recalling this incorrectly, a willingness to relook at Nuclear Power as a source of energy to run our homes and factories. The taint of earlier accidents was sort of fading and people were getting used to the idea that a very electricityhungry country was going to need nuclear. Right. The Obama Administration has always been firmly in support of extending the life of existing reactors and trying to build new reactors. The Obama Administration put together loan guarantees to help subsidize the cost of new reactors under construction in georgia. The problem has been that the fukushima disaster exposed some fundamental problems in the way that we oversee and operate and maintain these Nuclear Reactors. At the same time that the Nuclear Power industry is undergoing serious financial pressures because the cost associated with operating and maintaining and trying to comply with the new Regulatory Regime that is required after the Lessons Learned from fukushima is just not happening. The problem is that Nuclear Power is not competing very well against cheaper natural gas or against cheaper utility scale wind. And so at this point, i think we just need to start closing some of these older reactors, on a timely basis, and make way for the new emerging cheaper technologies that can very easily take Nuclear Powers place. Scott, the energy that comes out of a Nuclear Reactors presence is enormous. Your ability to boil water and spin turbines very, very cheaply yet having plants is very, very expensive, why . The operating cost of a Nuclear Plant, the fuel itself is very, very cheap and as you said just tremendously powerful. The cost comes in in terms of the staffing, in terms of meeting regulations that we must abide by in todays climate. We have been operating our plants for more than 50 years, almost 4,000 combined years of operation. So weve proven in this country we have a tremendous Safety Record in doing that. So what were doing is stepping back and looking at what makes sense from a regulatory standpoint based on that operation over 50 years and what makes sense from an industry standpoint and how we can become more efficient. We are embarking on a Major Program right now to do that so we can be more costcompetitive in the future. As tyson said, we are competing against incredibly low prices for gas, wind that is coming on cheaper and heavily subsidized but that doesnt mean were taking our eye off safety. We are going to take our investment we have to into safety to make these plants efficient. Weve done so over the last five years since fukushima, we have put more than 4 billion of safety improvements into the plant so we can run them safely and efficiently. Nuclear plants on average operate 92 of the time which is by far the Industry Leader in terms of efficiency and reliability. You mentioned retrofitting old plants to make them evenly even more safe and compliant. When is the last time a brandnew from scratch turnkey plant opened in the United States . 1990ettes in tennessee but we are Building Four in South Carolina and georgia that are about the midpoint of construction. So in the 2019 to 2020 time frame we expect those reactors to come online, brandnew designs with new safety features this them and theyll be really the stalwarts of power supply for those two states. Anori rilio, how do you abide the concerns that abide by Nuclear Power . There is knowing cheap abou nothing ct Nuclear Power. Even uranium mining. Babies born near uranium mining areas are five times more likely to have birth defects. If you look at the Health Impacts that scientists have found, bomb survivors and chernobyl survivors, multiple my mil mylo mil mieloma, costs have come down without cost to the health and environment. But you also heard Scott Peterson talk about the decades of incidentfree operation. You are hanging your concerns on chernobyl which is a once in a century kind of incident. Except here we are five years after the fukushima disaster as well. And as your reporter showed in japan, theyre still having to cope with a site that is devastated, 100,000 people cant go back to their homes. Thousands of gallons of water are leak into the Pacific Ocean every single day so thats a closerterm example of the threats and the risk. And lets face it. These aging reactors in the United States are not safe. Many have been shut down because of safety and cost concerns, and a recent Associated Press study showed that 75 of Nuclear Power plants in the United States are leaking radioactive water including just this week that the news that turkey point in florida is leaking radioactive water into biscayne bay. Scott peterson i will give you a chance to respond just after our break, stay with us, its inside story. That harmony, that politeness and that equilibrium that japanese people call wa. At the other side of history, fukushimas heroes were not enough. People have lost their trust, especially in the authorities. The myth of Nuclear Energy, of it being economic, safe and clean has been swept away. Fukushima a nuclear story, narrated by willem dafoe. Youre watching inside story. Im ray suarez. Radioinactivity this time on the program. Were looking at the challenges to a nuclearpowered future. In the five years since the catastrophic accident at the Fukushima DaiichiNuclear Power plant on japans coast, fought the industry to a standstill in many places, even in a world hungry for chief and plentiful and lowcarbon electricity. Scott peterson, anna auriliio are with me. To the points anna was making. The Nuclear Watch dogs over our sites, they just recently released their assessments and 90 in the top safety categories. And that regulator has inspectors at each one of our sites with 247 access and they look over our shoulders every single day. Thats who i would trust as the arbiter of safety. Is i think most people in the neighborhoods around those plants are very comfortable with safety because they know the people who work there and they understand the upgrades that have been made and not just after fukushima. We have a continuance maintenance and parts replacements at those plants. So even though their name plate may say theyre 30 or 40 years old, almost every piece of equipment has been replaced or refurbished in that plant. Is there Something Different about smoke coming out of a smokestack at a coal fired plant, someone that explodes and burns which is a once and done experience, you can see what happened, smell what happened, know what happened and then youre done. A gallon jug of radioactive water looks the same as a a gallon jug of regular water. Its there, its not something they can measure or even measure their risk in dealing with. There definitely is a public mystery around radiation and it is our responsibility to operate our plant safely. It is our responsibility to keep the environments around those plants safe. The release of trilium, radioactive hydrogen which has been released into biscayne bay in florida, even the release is 78 safer than the radio activity in drinking water. There is radiation all around us. Our challenge and our promise is to monitor it, regulate it and keep it safe. Tyson slocum, do we risk overstating how easy it is to do without Nuclear Power in 20th Century America . Nuclear power currently provides one fifth our power supply in america. We cant close all of our plants but we should start an aggressive time be tame phasing out these aging reactors, and replacing it with renewable energy. The fact of the matter is that there have been a number of safety problems that have been expose id as the Nuclear Regulator commission has adjusted to the postfukushima world. In july 2011 just months after the fukushima incident, the nrc concluded an internal task force of its top engineers and scientists to say what are the Lessons Learned . We had a whole bump of assumptions how to safely operate these facilities and all of those lessons went wrong in japan. We have similar situations here, what do we need to fix it . They came up with 12 recommendations and most of them have not been acted on or watered down because of financial pressure exerted by the Nuclear Power industry. The Nuclear Power industry is under enormous strain as it struggles to compete against superior lower cost sources. Nuclear power was cutting edge two generations ago. It is no longer. It is an albatross and cant be done as safely and securely as competing source he such as renewables. The white house hosted a summit on advance nuclear technologies, one that we can put in place as the Current Fleet is retiring. Now we need to run our current plants until about 2030 and we have a process in place to do that. But there is a lot of investment, there is a lot of interest, there is a lot of Technology Development into designs that can be used for not only Electricity Development but to desalinate water. Which is necessary in the years to come. Investors like bill gates and others who are developing these technologies for global use. Anna aurelia i want you to respond when we cok com come ba. The difficulties of storing spent fuel, does that neutralize the Climate Change argument . Is nuclear done . Radioinactivity. Stay with us, its the inside story. V welcome back to inside story, im ray suarez. No matter where you land personally, on the future of Nuclear Power, it presents a fascinating Public Policy challenge. A technology with organized enemies and opponents, but one its hard to do without right now. Nuclear Power Supplies as was mentioned about 20 of u. S. Electricity. At the same time how much innovation can there be in the design of power plants no ones even sure would ever get built . My guests are still with me. Anna, as we go back and forth in washington over the future of power we still havent figured out what to do with the spent fuel and nobody wants it. Thats totally right. Our environment americas take is we dont need Nuclear Power for future. Dollar for dollar you get five times as much wind solar and Energy Efficiency, Nuclear Waste needs to be separated from human beings in all living things. For about a quarter of a million years. Thats a long time. Thats a big problem to solve. And one of the problems is, we dont know what to do with it in the long term and in the short term, in too muc much too much s being stored onsite. Lets embrace 100 clean energy future. Get there as quickly as we can. But for existing fuel at the Nuclear Reactors it needs to be put into hardened casks so we can figure out what to do with it in the long term. Is there nothing we can do with it to reuse, continually refine, recycle . Weve looked at this issue, ray. And what happens is as you start to, quote unquote, reuse or refine spent nuclear fuel, what you end up with is material thats closer and closer to whats being used in bombs. So that poses a Nuclear Proliferation threat. The other thing that happens is every single thing that comes into contact with this highly radioactive spent at a fuel becomes a highly radioactive waste that needs to be dealt with. You are basically creating a longer term mess to clean up. Economically speaking our research has found that you gets five times per dollar of investment in other than Nuclear Energy. Scott peterson is this riskier capital because if you design a state of stateoftheart ra plant, you cant make sure that the economics will make sense after that long time line. The challenge there is that youre is designing a plant that will be exeivet. To annas point, a lot of these reactors will be able to reuse spent fuel already stored at our sites today. We do have a new mechanism to be able to manage that fuel and reduce the storehouse of that. What we also need are really policies in place that recognize all the distinct values of Nuclear Energy. So theres no recognition for the carbon avoidance that we have, we produced 800 billion kilowatt hours. We feel theres no value being able to produce power in the coldest or hottest days of the year when other plants are going offline. There should be power there should be value for that. We need to reframe Value Proposition for Nuclear Energy and in many cases for all Clean Energy Sources so you have Clean Energy Standards instead of renewable Portfolio Energy standards. Meet the Climate Change goals we have Going Forward. Is Scott Peterson right the failure to set up a work Carbon EmissionsTrading Market undermine one key value of Nuclear Power . No, because the problem is that Nuclear Pow