This article revisits Japan’s fast breeder reactor Monju and the controversy surrounding its sodium leak and eventual decommissioning.
It introduces Masayuki Takayama’s criticism of the Japanese bureaucracy and media, arguing that Japan’s advanced technologies, from Jun-ichi Nishizawa’s optical communications research to Monju, were undermined by administrative obstruction and excessive reporting.
Unlike a light-water reactor, a coolant leak in this case was like spilling a cup of coffee.
It was decided that the reactor would be decommissioned because of lies and excessive reporting.
This chapter was originally published on January 17, 2020.
These days, I almost always either watch NHK News only casually while doing something else or skip it altogether.
I particularly do not want to watch News Watch 9.
The other night, however, I happened to be watching it.
The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy explains the matter on its website:
https://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/about/special/johoteikyo/kosokuro_roadmap.html
Yet NHK did not explain any of this and instead reported the story in a negative tone.
What I found amusing was Arima, who clearly seemed eager to argue against nuclear power.
Perhaps someone higher up had finally warned him about excessively arbitrary reporting.
He looked as though he desperately wanted to make an anti-nuclear comment but was forcing himself, almost with the expression of a child, to hold back what he really wanted to say.
Even when reporting on the Monju accident, they gave no concrete explanation of what had actually happened.
They merely described it as a reactor plagued by “repeated accidents.”
They are the real villains.
What makes them particularly pernicious is that they speak as though they represent common sense or are simply conveying the truth.
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s book Trump Doesn’t Lie.
The preceding passage is omitted.
In the year of the Tokyo Olympics, Jun-ichi Nishizawa, a professor at Tohoku University, applied for a patent on a revolutionary optical communications technology.
The Japan Patent Office rejected his application, citing such reasons as “deficiencies in the format” and “lack of clarity.”
Nishizawa resubmitted the application twenty times, but each time a different objection was raised.
He even took the matter to court, but after twenty years of fighting, his patent application was ultimately never approved.
Around the same time, Charles Kao, a Chinese researcher who had long known Nishizawa, went to the United States and published research similar to Nishizawa’s.
He later received the Nobel Prize for that work.
Meanwhile, the American company Corning also obtained patents for technology closely resembling Nishizawa’s through Kao.
Using those patent rights, Corning sued Sumitomo Electric Industries, which had adopted the Nishizawa method, for patent infringement and won decisively.
It is a perfect example of Japanese intelligence being crushed by incompetent Japanese bureaucrats.
The fast breeder reactor Monju, once described as a “dream reactor,” was effectively condemned to decommissioning.
Countries around the world had started developing this technology at roughly the same time, and Japan achieved first criticality in 1994.
Russia came second, putting its reactor into operation only recently.
That alone shows how far ahead Japan had been.
Yet soon after Monju began operating, a problem occurred in which sodium used as a coolant leaked.
Unlike a light-water reactor, a coolant leak in this case was like spilling a cup of coffee.
The timing, however, could not have been worse.
The foolish Tomiichi Murayama was prime minister, and the Asahi Shimbun behaved as though it were the Chief Cabinet Secretary.
The Asahi screamed against nuclear power and drove two people involved in the matter to suicide.
On that day, Japan’s cutting-edge technology was condemned to decommissioning through lies and excessive reporting.
The destruction of Japanese intellect was not limited to the Patent Office.
An even more foolish newspaper had joined in.
So what happens next?
The Asahi, with an air of self-importance, seems likely to recommend that Japan proceed leisurely with joint development alongside second-rate France.
“Second place is good enough.”
Are you Renhō?
(October 6, 2016 issue)