And so it was that I dragged my sleepy self out of bed at 6:30am in order to get ready in time to catch the 7:30am bus outside AP House 1 that would take me to Genkai Nuclear Power Plant for an awesome behind-the-scenes private tour… Unfortunately, it is fair to say that a hot shower and breakfast of rice and fried eggs were the highlights of my day. Had I known ahead of time what I *really* was going to be doing, I would have dismissed the trip out of hand without a second thought… had I known…

The chartered bus was late – warning sign #1 – but the handful of graduate students and I waiting in the fog outside AP House 1 passed the time with pleasant banter. AP House 1 was but the first of four scheduled pick-up points for students, and by the time we had reached the last one, Beppu Station, 45 minutes later, the bus was crammed with nearly four dozen undergraduates – in addition of course to us half-dozen or so graduate students. I had been advertised a private, behind-the-scenes tour of a nuclear power facility and I was now surrounded by underclassmen – warning sign #2…

Nevertheless, we settled into the long 3hr ride that lay ahead of us to the northernmost reaches of Kyushu and I passed the time by studying one of my old (and long since forgotten) Japanese textbooks. Eventually we were told by the accompanying plant representative that we were only a mere half-hour away from the plant, and that it was now time to watch a brief introductory video about nuclear power and the Genkai Nuclear Power Company. The video started reasonably enough with some long panoramic tracking shots of various nuclear facilities, but then quickly shifted to an “educational” narrative about nuclear power with a plot featuring not only a magical book with teleportation powers, but a young witch (witchette?) complete with broom, and a talking hand-puppet – warning sign #3… needless to say, I returned to my studies almost immediately.

Despite all of the above however, when we finally reached the grounds I was upbeat about the potentialities that still lay unknown in front of me. It was a very well-kept installation to say the least.

However, my spirits were crushed, and the full magnitude of the deception realized, when we unloaded from the bus and were ushered into a large building bearing this sign above the door:

That, my friends, reads “Genkai PR Center.” I do not think you need me to explain what PR stands for…

Oh, I was getting a tour alright, a tour of the fucking public relations building. Private, behind-the-scenes tour my ASS.

But by then it was obviously too late, I was trapped…

By now you might be wondering why I was so upset at getting a free trip to a nuclear power plant and a nice guided tour of the public relations building? Well, I’ll tell you – I scraped out a BA in Geology as an undergraduate, and am just about halfway through a Masters in Environmental Policy here at APU, on top of that I can smell bullshit a mile away – in short, I am extremely well-acquainted with not only the functional processes and geologic concerns (*cough* earthquakes *cough*) but the policy pros and cons of nuclear power. And baby if you want to find some bullshit, the PR department of an energy company is a great place to start looking.

The highlight, by far, of the tour was getting to watch a ~10 minute video all about how safe, healthy, effective, safe, efficient, safe, delicious, safe, easy, safe, clean, safe, and safe (did I mention safe?) a nuclear power installation is. This wasn’t just your average run of the mill PR video either, no no people, this is Japan, the land of Pokemon, Keroppi, and Hello Kitty – you gotta have a mascot baby!

So rather than having some dignified person doing a voice-over of the video, it was MC’d if you will by this fat, little freak seen here showing us a nuclear chain-reaction, the water/steam turbine system, and the uranium pellet rods:

That was just the irritatingly-childish aspect of the tour though – things got downright deceitful later on, for example in a giant display depicting the uranium fuel process. In this display (sorry I couldn’t get a picture) uranium fuel is mined, enriched, used in the reactors, and then recycled to be used again! Isn’t it wonderful how we can *recycle* the fuel and use it again? There’s no waste! — at least not in that display, or in our tour guides explanation of it. Someone needs to tell the rest of the world about these amazing Japanese nuclear power plants that have 100% recycling efficiencies and aren’t generating tons and tons of nuclear sludge every year…

My favorite part though was a display addressing the supposedly earthquake-proof construction of the facility. They go to great lengths to show that the reactors have been installed on solid bedrock, hooray!

Got news for you folks, unless you build the damn thing in the air, a powerful earthquake in the vicinity is gonna seriously damage it every time.

Now you may be feeling at this point that I’ve got an anti-nuclear power bent to my worldview. The truth is I really don’t at all – I recognize it’s incredible efficiency and our need for it. However, I tend to get really pissed off when people extoll the virtues of something such as this without taking the time to truthfully point out the downsides as well. Another good example – many of the tour’s displays were about nuclear power use in other countries, like the US, Russia, and France, designed no doubt to further strengthen visitors’ belief that nuclear power is just fine and dandy, hey it must be if those other countries are using it too right?

Well, see it gets complicated there. One display was composed entirely of a large map of the US showing all our nuclear facilities and noting that we have more than any other country in the world.

Well and true, but if you look actually look at the map of our facilities’ distribution, you might be left with a question – namely, why are they almost all clustered on the East Coast? Now one could argue that there aren’t any installations in the mid-west due to low population densities, but that argument fails to explain the near absence of facilities on the Pacific Coast – especially in California, the country’s most populous state and one that suffers from an insufficient electrical supply. Why don’t we have a bunch there?

I see a hand raised over there… yes, you sir, please tell us!

Correct! Japan has 53 actual reactors spread over 20 sites around the country:

I’ve simplified that data for this map.

If Japan wants to build nuclear plants, fine, go for it – they certainly have a unique understanding of the horrors of nuclear power put to malevolent use – but for Pete’s sake at least own up to the risks involved to your own people, if only a little bit!

Japan is not a big country, it’s only a little larger than California in total area, and the vast majority of that is composed of uninhabitably steep mountain-sides. As a result, when Japan experiences a large earthquake, the whole damn country shakes – as evidenced by these seismic intensity maps from a magnitude 6.4 quake in 2001 and a magnitude 7 quake in 2003 – only two years apart.

Hell, there was even an earthquake literally right off-shore from Genkai on Friday, two days after I was there.

Granted it was only magnitude 4 on the Richter scale, barely a burp by Japanese building-code standards, but it underlines the reality that these things happen in Japan – A LOT.

Again, to clarify and conclude, I don’t have a problem with nuclear power in Japan – but I have a serious problem with intentionally misleading the public by making absolutely no mention of the problem of spent nuclear waste accumulation and disposal or the very real threat of earthquake-induced disaster in perhaps the most seismically active country on earth.

My day ended with the mother of all ironies, when from an observation deck I was able to look out and see this scene…

*sigh* if only there were more…