Leaders of three Northeast Asian countries displayed heartwarming solidarity last week, munching on farm produce from Japan’s nuclear crisis-hit areas.
For Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who had pushed but failed to hold the trilateral summit in Fukushima, the choreographed photo-op was still a half success, which helped to ease the regional and global scare about the nuclear disaster in Japan and food produced in the country.
As usual, nuclear issues topped the latest three-nation summit. Only this time, it was not the denuclearization of North Korea but the safety of atomic power generation. Little wonder: the radioactive materials produced a year by a 1,000-megawatt reactor are equivalent to 1,250 atomic bombs like the one dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
It was encouraging in this regard the three leaders agreed on the early notification of accidents and better exchange of information on the flow of contaminated air. Far less reassuring were Japanese officials’ attitude in handling the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, which give the impression of hiding something not just from foreigners but from their own people.
Behind leaders who just smile and shake hands, working-group officials should make stronger demands for more correct information.
Much more worrisome is regretful lacking of discussion to reconsider the three countries’ nuclear power policies. Currently, there are 54 nuclear reactors in Japan, 21 in Korea and 13 in China. China has 27 more under construction and Korea plans to add 12. The three-nation total would reach 140 before long unless the governments put on the brakes to their excessive resorting to the seemingly cheap and pollution-free power generation, turning Northeast Asia into the most reactor-crowded region.
Yet Tokyo has recently made it clear it will reconsider its nuclear-oriented energy policy, and even authoritarian Beijing has begun to take heed of the popular outcry on nuclear safety.
Unfortunately Seoul remains an exception. ``What the Japanese accident teaches us is to build safer nuclear plants, not to abandon them,” President Lee Myung-bak said recently. ``We ride on airplanes, even though the lethality from any accident is extremely high.”
But there can be no zero-risk nuclear reactors, and the comparison of nuclear accidents to plane crashes is not just inappropriate but also ignores the huge gap in the scale of casualties. President Lee seems to be the only leader who didn’t hint at ― or didn’t feel the need to ― slowing down the nuclear push even as a political gesture. Sometimes one can’t help but wonder whether the President is naïve or arrogant.
Among the three European countries he visited earlier this month, Germany has decided to shut down seven older plants and abolish all in a few decades. Denmark has no reactors at all, and instead has developed renewable energy technology.
This page has acknowledged the need for nuclear power until the country can completely move toward renewable energy. But while the government’s annual PR budget for nuclear power reached 10 billion won, that for renewable energy remained at 300 million won.
What’s happening in Japan can never be a foreign problem, with or without earthquakes.