By Choi Sung-jin
The Japanese and Korean governments have failed to learn the lessons of Fukushima, an antinuclear expert said Thursday.
“After the Fukushima disaster, even conservative political parties that actively seek economic growth have set about to develop the renewable energy industry through a gradual breakaway from nuclear plants in Germany,” said Shaun Burnie, a senior Greenpeace campaigner.
There are very wide differences between the nuclear policies of Germany and Korea, he said.
Burnie and other Greenpeace campaigners arrived in Busan Wednesday and expressed concerns about the Korean government’s policy on nuclear power generation, drawing attention to the issue in the lead-up to the April 13 parliamentary elections.
Greenpeace has surveyed the Fukushima area in the past three months and found the pace of plants’ decomposition by microorganisms has slowed because of radioactive contamination, which also raised the frequency of brush fires leading to the possibility of more radioactivity, he said.
“The decrease in the number of birds of 57 different sorts within 50 km of the Fukushima nuclear plant is also another cause of concern,” the Greenpeace activist said. “Radioactive contamination has been condensed in the sediments of lakes and rivers but desulphurization of polluted seawater has not been made yet.”
Asked to comment on forecasts by the International Atomic Energy Agency that the nuclear accident’s effects would be negligible, he said, “IAEA’s analysis has underestimated those effects, because the agency is aimed at expanding nuclear power plants.”
Daul Jang, a Korean campaigner, compared Fukushima and the Gori Nuclear Power Plant Complex near Busan. “Out of the 422 nuclear power plants in the world, only 11 areas have six or more nuclear power stations in one complex, and in terms of generation capacity, the Gori complex is biggest,” he said. “Gori has 1.3-times more nuclear power plants, 1.8-times larger generation capacity and a 21-times larger population within the radius of 30 km than Fukushima. If an accident happens, the damage will be beyond comparison.”
Japan has spent 133 trillion won ($115 billion) since the accident in 2011 and will have to spend an additional 250 trillion won or more, he said.
Asked why the campaigners visited Busan during an election campaign, Jang noted that the old Gori No. 1 plant was forced to stop operation as politicians positively responded to citizens’ growing demands. “If candidates make clear their positions on the government’s plan to build more nuclear power plants, it would help voters’ selection of politicians in the polls,” he said.