Discuss about the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident.
The importance of the Business Risk Management is to identify and analyse the risk that has occurred or likely to take place within the business organization in order to minimize it. Risks in business can lurk out at any point of time, sometimes the risks are predictable and can be controlled, but most of the cases risks are unpredictable and are not possible to control (Hillson and Webster 2017). In case of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster, the accident took place during the year 2011 in Northern Japan, is considered as one of the biggest nuclear disaster in the world, after the Chernobyl disaster. The Nuclear power plant of the Fukushima was mainly operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Point, (TEPCO), and the disaster was mainly caused because of their negligence. However, it was said that the nuclear power plant was mainly made up of six boiling water reactor, but at the time of the disaster, only 1-3 reactors were in operation. The nuclear disaster had severely affected the power plant, and it cause major damaged to the environment and also to the lives of many people. The disaster was mainly considered as man-made disaster, as it provided major risk to the country. Apart from that, as the workers of the power plant continued to cool the reactors, it was said that there was increase in the radiation level in foods (Sadgrove 2016). It has also been noted that many species were affected from the increase level of radiation and human beings were also suffered from cancer and other severe diseases. The Fukushima disaster caused severe risk to the whole economy, and it resulted to economic risk, environmental risk and healthy and safety risk. However, in order to deal with the risk, the power plant implemented different risk management strategies such as it has applied varied standards and policies.
In this assignment, the report elucidates on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster and would identify the major risk related to this case study. Furthermore, the paper would also sheds light on the major polices and rules that would help the organization to maximize their risk and accordingly recommendations would be provided in order to minimize the risk within the organization.
The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster in Japan is considered as one of the biggest disaster after the Chernobyl disaster in the year 1986. The nuclear disaster that took place in the year 2011, cause a major damage to the power plant by leaking large amount of radioactive elements. Furthermore, the damage also had a severe impact on the environment and on the lives of people in Tokyo (Tanisho 2016). The nuclear power plant is located between Futaba and Okuma in Japan and consists of six major boiling water reactors (BWR). The boiling reactors helps in the generation of electricity with the combination of 4.7 GW power and thus it makes Fukushima as one of the fifteenth biggest nuclear power station in the world. In the year 2011, in March 11, the nuclear disaster at Fukushima was occurred because of the 9.0 earthquake, and that was followed by the unexpected tsunami that hit the power plant by causing severe damage to the nuclear power plant. Apart from that, the disaster triggered in to the evacuation zone of 30km that lead to the leak of nuclear radiation. However, after the disaster, certain units such as unit 1-4 are not operating any more (Bonetti and Michelon 2015). Apart from that, the disaster was considered as a man- made disaster, as the melt function of the nuclear reactor lead to major risk to the organization and overall to the economic situation of the country. It has been stated that the power plant should not have automatically shut down, as this had lead to major crisis. The Japan Parliamentary accused and blamed Tokyo Electric Power for not taking any adequate measures in order to control the risk in the power plant, despite of knowing the facts that the area was prone to earthquake and tsunami (Labib and Harris 2015). Since the year, 2006 the Tepco and the regulators were aware of the major risk that if tsunami occurs that plant would likely to suffer huge loss, but they did not paid any attention to it.
In case of the major nuclear disaster in the Fukushima nuclear plant, the disaster has lead to the major risk related to the risks related to economy, environmental risk and safety risks. As it has been stated by the Government of Japan that the disaster was a man-made disaster and with better precautions the risk could have been mitigated, but Tepco neglected the situation and it had severe effects on the whole economy of Japan, and still now the effects are there (Merz, Shozugawa and Steinhauser 2015). The major risks that were resulted from the disaster are discussed below:
As a result of the disaster in Fukushima power plant, the business as well the overall country suffered economic losses that lead to major economic risk in the country. The Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry had to compensated the victims and to the families of the workers who were killed in the disaster, a compensation around ¥ 21.5 trillion, (US $ 187 bn; € 175 bn) (Steinhauser, Brandl and Johnson 2014). This had lead to major loss to the business, as large amount of money required for many purposes that includes for removing the reactor from the contaminated soil and more. However, the major economic risk had a negative impact on the organization that is discussed below:
It has been stated that the Fukushima nuclear disaster has resulted in to the myriad of the indirect costs, though the indirect cost could not be measured, but it could be said it was required in replacing power from the idled reactors of Japan’s fleet. The replacement power which was required to implement would result in the increase of the renewable and also will increase the use of fossil fuels. It has been mentioned that in order to import fossil fuels for the power plant as a replacement power, cost the business ¥ 3.6 trillion that means US$ 31.3 bn, that was considered a larger amount, and the costs are increasing every year in order to replace power (Bonetti and Michelon 2015). This had impact a major loss to the organization as it had to invest majority of the finance in replacing and importing alternating power for the power plant. Apart from that, the cost for the importation of fuels resulted to US$ 266 billion as per the 2012 report (Dreiling, Lougee and Nakamura 2017). ASME also noted financial risk in case of decommissioning and also for cleaning up the power plant and it also had to compensate the victims. As per the report of ASME, it has been stated that the consequences of disaster had a severe effect on the economic condition of the country as it inflicted enormous cost to the overall society.
In the 2014 Strategic Energy Plan, it has been noted by METI that after the nuclear disaster the electricity prise have been risen to greater amount and as per the report six of the major electric power organization have increased the power ranges from 6.2% to 9.8%. This had resulted in the increase in electricity price for the households by 20%, because of the increase in the price of fuels (Hasegawa et al. 2015). This had a severe consequence mainly on the below average families, as they had to cut their electric power and this directly had a negative impact on the business of the power plant. The 2014 report further stated that rise in the electricity prices have put severe pressure on the profit of the small and medium sized industries and mainly on the energy intensive industries that lead to the decrease in the production transfer and also reduced profit from exporting electric power to overseas (Aliyu, Mousseau and Ramli 2015).
The man-made nuclear disaster in Fukushima had led to severe environmental risk that poses significant chronic risks and acute risk in the environment. From the leakage if the radioactive elements in the environment, had contaminated the air, as it was proved that air was contaminated with radioactive elements and half of the lives were contaminated. Moreover, the people in that particular area were severely affected by high amount of the radioactive doses that increased up to 5mSv (Aoyama et al. 2016). As radioactivity had been detected in every part of the environment, it has misbalanced the environment system and moreover not only the humans were affected, the whole ecology got disrupted. For instance after the nuclear disaster, a rabbit was born without any ears that had increased fear within the whole country. Moreover, not only animals, even humans had also born with deformities. The whole world had exposed the effect of radioactive elements and still in the present day most of the Japan’s coast, cities are getting contaminated with the radioactive elements (Park 2014). As per the report it has been stated that the release of the radio nuclides have damaged the biota in the Pacific Ocean has increased attention and concern in the whole world. For instance, the bluefin tuna of the Pacific that were migrated from Japan were contaminated with large amount of radioactive elements and that also endangered the lives of other species in the ocean (Batlle et al. 2018). Prior to that, the disaster also had a negative impact on the climate, as increase in global warming had also resulted from the leakage of the radio nuclides in the environment.
As per the study by the Stanford University in the year 2012, it has been stated that in the nuclear disaster in Fukushima more than 1300 people died in the accident. The workers who were working in the power plant had become victims of the disaster and this mainly because of neglecting risks in the power plant (Aliyu et al. 2014). It has also been estimated that majority of the people died of cancer because of the high dose of radio nuclides. Though precaution have been taken by the Government after the disaster, but it could have saved majority of the lives, if Tepco, would have taken some serious steps long before. Moreover, the disaster also had psychological and mental illness on the people of Japan. On exposure of the ionizing radiation, many types of damages occurred to human health that is also known as the acute radiation injury.
In case of adopting safety measures in the nuclear power plant to avoid disaster like the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, all nuclear power plant should have certain standards. Prior to that in the context of nuclear power plant, safety is linked with security and safeguards (Kubota et al. 2015). As per the International Basic Safety Standards (IAEA), under Article III, the Government of Japan should incorporate safety standards that would minimise the risk in the power plant. However, the standards of the IAEA are only effective, if they are put into practice by the Government (Ishikawa 2017). The standards of the IAEA comprises of the safe transportation of the radioactive materials, safety operation of the nuclear power system, proper management of radioactive waste and more. It has also been stated that regulating safety measures is the responsibility of every country in regards to nuclear power plant (Jopen et al. 2017). Some of the safety standards that have been adopted by the IAEA include
All the above mentioned standards have been approved by the Governing body of the International Labour Organization (ILO), in order to establish those standards to measure the risks in the nuclear power plant. Apart from this, the safety standard series also consist of factors that include safety guides, safety requirements and safety fundamentals. All the series and documents have been ensured by IAEA, so that the nuclear power plant should apply these documents for nuclear safety and for carrying out their work peacefully.
In comparing the safety standards of IAEA with the nuclear disaster of Fukushima, it have been stated that the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), did not follow any of those measures in order to mitigate risk within the power plant. As per the International Basic Safety Standards (IAEA), the Governing body has introduced certain standards and rules that should be followed by every nuclear power plant (Orita et al. 2015). As per the first standard of the IAEA, Radiation protection and Safety of the Radiation Sources, states that every nuclear power plant should take effective measures to reduce radiation and prior to that training should be provided to workers related to reduce radioactive elements in the atmosphere. But it seems that in order to mitigate risk, the Tokyo Electric Power Company that regulates the power plant of Fukushima did not take any such measure to reduce the amount of radioactive elements that are being exposed to the environment (Yamashita et al. 2016). Another safety standard of the IAEA states the Regulations for the safe Transport of Radioactive Materials, that means in case of transferring the radioactive materials to other parts of the country, they plant should measures safety so that any living organisms should not be hampered due to this. However in the case of Fukushima, they did not implement any of this strategy and that results tuna fish in the Pacific Ocean were exposed to radio nuclides. As per the Radioactive Waste Safety Standards, nuclear plant should not dump their waste anywhere as the waste is toxic waste, therefore the waste should be recycled in order to reduce risk in the environment. Radioactive waste management means, diluting the waste in such a way, so that after returning the radio nuclides to the atmosphere should remain harmless (Tsuda et al. 2016). This safety measures were nit followed by the nuclear power plant and large amount of radioactive elements were discharged in the environment, and thus it result to environmental risk. In order to reduce the risk that occurred from the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, the Tokyo Electric Power Plant (TEPCO), implemented the six stages of the crisis management were incorporated that include warning, risk assessment, response, management, resolution and recovery. For instance, to recover from the risk, the organization implemented risk assessment strategy to assess the risk and accordingly with implication of various policies such as safety to workers, recycling of radioactive waste tried to recover from the crisis.
The Tokyo Electric Power Plant that regulates and operates the Nuclear Power plant of Fukushima has implemented certain measures in order to ensure that the power plant do not cause any harm to the environment and also to the public. After the disaster, the power plants are designed in such a way, so that the plant could predict the risk and thus that could be easily controllable (Doss 2016). For instance, all the electric power industries in Japan have committed to adopt safety measures, and also installed emergency power supply units, that would supply power at lower cost. Apart from the measures taken by the power plant and electric companies, they could also implement various other strategies that include control of the radio activity elements that means controlling of neutron flux, and by decreasing the neuron flux, it becomes easy to reduce radioactive elements. The most common strategy to reduce the neuron flux is by implementing the neutron- absorbing control rods. Other measures to reduce risk in the power plant include maintenance of the core cooling system that means nuclear plant should have cooling reactor (Yamashita et al. 2016). The Fukushima power plant should implement the cooling reactor with the use of water, and if water is not available it can cool with sodium or sodium salts. Cooling reactor also focus on the monitoring of various instrument and also monitors prevention of the failure of any equipment. Prior to this, most importantly safety is foremost important for the workers in the nuclear power plant therefore, protective clothing must be provided to the workers. In case of handling any equipment, it should be handled via monitor and prior to this, the time of the workers should be limited in the area of high radiation levels.
Conclusion
From the above assignment and from the case study it could be concluded that the nuclear disaster in the power plant of Fukushima that took place in the year 2011, was a manmade disaster that had a severe consequences on the overall economy of the country, and also had severe effect on the environment and health. It has been stated that The Tokyo Electric Power Plant that operates and regulates the nuclear power plant did not paid any attention in mitigating the risks that were likely to occurred to the power plant. It had also been mentioned in the report; the nuclear disaster had posed major risk on the environment and on the overall economy. The plant had suffered major financial loss in replacing power reactor after the disaster and beside that they also had to compensate large amount to the victims and their families. In case of environmental risk, it had severe effect on the environment as many species have been endangered and many species were born with deformities after the nuclear disaster. As per the health and safety risk, the power plant did not implement any measures and that lead to death of many workers and prior to that many people of Japan had died of cancer. After the disaster, the electric companies as well as the nuclear power plant implemented various measures that are related to the IAEA standards, so that they could predict and control the risk.
References
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