The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 10 | Issue 12 | Number 4 | Article ID 3724 | Mar 12, 2012

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Mismanaging Risk and the Fukushima Nuclear Crisis　　危険管理の誤りと福島原発危機

Jeff Kingston

M i s m a n a g i n g R i s k a n d t h eFukushima Nuclear Crisis1

Jeff Kingston

Introduction

“Though global safety standards kept onimproving, we wasted our time coming up withexcuses for why Japan didn’t need to bothermeeting them.” Madarame Haruki, Chairman,Nuclear Safety Commission, Diet testimony,2/15/12

The nuclear accident at Fukushima wasprecipitated by natural disaster, but poor riskmanagement , inc lud ing a fa i lure tocomprehend tectonic risk in the mostearthquake prone country in the world, and aninstitutionalized complacency about risk, weremajor factors increasing the likelihood of amajor accident and fumbling crisis response.Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), theutility operating the Fukushima Daiichi Plant,and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency(NISA), the government regulatory authority,mismanaged a range of risks – siting, seismic,tsunami, emergency preparedness andradiation – and it is this mismanagement thatmade Fukushima into Japan’s Chernobyl.Investigations into the accident haveestablished that the crisis response wasimprovised and inadequate because of lack ofpreparation, institutional flaws in emergencyprocedures, and poor communication withinthe government and between officials andTEPCO.

A private panel investigating the nuclear

disaster concludes that TEPCO’s systematicnegligence contributed to the nuclear disasterand criticized its “make-believe” disasteremergency arrangements.2 The myth thatnuclear reactors could be operated withabsolute, 100% safety embraced and promotedby what the Japanese call their “nuclearvillage” of pro-nuclear power advocates made ittaboo to question safety standards andmilitated against sober risk assessment androbust disaster emergency preparedness.Those responsible for operating or regulatingnuclear reactors bought into a myth of 100%safety and this collective failure left themunprepared to deal with an accident or worst-case scenario. Paradoxically, this safety mythexplains why TEPCO lacked a culture of safetyand why it’s crisis response was so deficient.

Politicians dealing with the accident lackedknowledge about nuclear issues and crisismanagement, and did not get sufficient supportor information from bureaucrats or TEPCO tocope with the crisis. In addition, the failure toshare information bred mistrust between keyactors that impaired their ability to coordinatean effective response. One interviewee cited bythe private panel compared the premier’s crisismanagement team to children playing soccer,preoccupied by the cascading disaster in frontof them (chasing the ball) rather thanstrategizing accident response.3

This paper examines how TEPCO minimizedrisk assessments and preparations prior to3/11, how it tried to shirk and shift blame sincethen, and is trying to mitigate risks to itsoperations involving nationalization and thesudden onset of nuclear allergy among

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Japanese.4 This paper also explores howcitizens are responding to the fallout ofFukushima, a bottom-up approach to managingrisk. Elsewhere I have examined TEPCO’sefforts to blame PM Kan Naoto for its ownmiscues and failure to prepare adequately forthe evident risks.5 As we explore below, thenuclear village of pro-nuclear advocates hadmuch to gain by shifting blame to Kan anddiverting attention from the institutionalproblems that are at the heart of the crisis.6

A record magnitude 9 earthquake andsubsequent 15-meter tsunami devastated theTohoku coastline on March 11, 2011, claimingsome 20,000 l ives and inundating theFukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Theseextreme seismic events were the proximatecauses that led to the loss of electricity and thefailure of backup generators. The ensuingcessation of the cooling systems caused threemeltdowns within the first 80 hours and thehydrogen explosions that released plumes ofradiation, spreading radioactive contaminationin surrounding areas but also further afield dueto strong spring winds. The long-term healtheffects are uncertain, but the costs of thenuclear crisis have been enormous and aremounting. The reckoning includes displacementof some 80,000 residents within the 20 kmevacuation zone around the crippled reactors,many of whom will probably never return totheir homes, loss of livelihoods suffered by localfarmers, fishermen, and various businesses inFukushima, together with anxiety aboutradiation and even the stigma of radiation thatconfronts the people of the prefecture. Thisstigma follows those who leave to restart liveselsewhere and raises concerns among youngpeople concerning marriage prospects andraising families. In addition, there has been awider economic fallout as bans on Japaneseproducts were imposed overseas and overall in-bound tourism declined by 25% in 2011.Moreover, the nuclear crisis tarnished theJapan-brand, eroding the nation’s reputationfor technological prowess. Restoring what

people and the nation lost will be costly andtake considerable time. Compensation forlosses are mounting while the costs ofdecontamination, disposal of tainted debris anddecommissioning nuclear reactors will boostthe final reckoning immensely. The Japanesewill be paying for the folly of Fukushima forgenerations to come.

It is important to learn lessons from the poorrisk management in the nuclear industrybecause Japan will probably continue to rely onnuclear energy for years to come despite theFukushima debacle. All but 2 of the nation’s 54reactors are currently idled, and all will beoffline by May.

Status of Nuclear Power Plants, Feb 2012

METI Minister Edano Yukio predicts thatJapan will not be relying on any nuclear energythis summer and favors minimizing reliance onnuclear energy and replacing it with renewableenergy.7 Perhaps, but there are ongoing effortsto restart some reactors based on stress teststhat are based on computer simulations meantto determine whether it is safe to resumeoperations. Polls show that from two-thirds tothree quarters of the public wants to eliminateor reduce nuclear energy, but the utilities haveinvested vast sums in this option, one madepossible only by vast government subsidies,and the powerful nuclear village opposespulling the plug. Moreover, it will take time toramp up renewable energy generating

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capacity. While renewable energy may have apromising future in Japan, in the meantime it isimportant that regulators and operatorsminimize the inherent risks of operatingnuclear plants in a seismically active nation bylearning the lessons of Fukushima andimplementing more stringent safety measuresand improved crisis response procedures.

Embracing Risk

Fukushima was preceded by a series ofmishaps, cover-ups, irresponsible practices,close calls and ignored warnings. In that sense,it was an accident waiting to happen. CharlesPerrow has written extensively on theinevitability of accidents in organizationspredicated on complex technologies and theproblem of unexpected interactions that maycause a cascading disaster such as occurred atFukushima. He writes,

“…some complex organizationssuch as chemical plants, nuclearpower plants, nuclear weaponssystems…have so many nonlinearsystem properties that eventuallythe unanticipated interaction ofmultiple failures may create anaccident that no designer couldhave anticipated and no operatorcan understand. Everything issubject to fa i lure-designs,p rocedures , supp l i e s andequipment, operators, and theenvironment. The government andbusinesses know this and designsafety devices with multipleredundancies and all kinds of bellsand whistles. But nonlinear,unexpected interactions of evensmall failures can defeat thesesafety systems. If the system isa l s o t i g h t l y c o u p l e d , n ointervention can prevent a cascadeof failures that brings it down.”8

Given this apparent inevitability of accidents,and the fact that Japan suffers 20% of theworld’s >6 magnitude earthquakes andinvented the word tsunami, it may seemsurprising that the government decided toplace such a big bet on nuclear energy anddecided to construct clusters of multiplereactors that amplifies the risks. Certainly theoil embargoes and price hikes of the 1970sreinforced perceptions that Japan had nochoice. The nuclear fuel cycle was pursuedbecause it offered the hope of eliminatingJapan’s dependence on energy imports. And asmore money was invested in expanding Japan’snetwork of nuclear power plants it createdvested interests in the government and utilitiescommitted to further expansion. This nuclearvillage is disinclined to reexamine underlyingassumptions about whether it is possible tooperate nuclear reactors safely in such aseismically active area. And, as time passedand no major mishaps occurred, nuclearadvocates became increasingly blasé about therisks and focused narrowly on the benefits of areliable, relatively inexpensive energy source.Moreover, as concerns about global warminggrew towards the end of the 20th century,advocates discovered a new reason to promoteexpansion of nuclear energy: it contributes tothe goal of reducing carbon emissions. Giventhe clear environmental costs associated withreliance on carbon fuels, ranging fromextraction, processing, transporting andemissions, nuclear energy has manyadvantages. So over the decades, nuclearpower developed an accumulating andappealing logic that relied on disregarding theproblems related to disposing of radioactivewaste and the potential for accidents due tohuman error, natural disaster or a combinationthereof.

As Daniel Aldrich argues in Site Fightsregarding government and utility efforts toconvince communities to host nuclear powerplants, there is a keen appreciation amongadvocates that the public needs convincing

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precisely because there is trepidation about therisks.9 Aldrich explains that communities withlow levels of social capital are specificallychosen in order to reduce the risk of localopposition and because their marginal socio-economic situation makes them more inclinedto accept financial inducements. HiroshiOnitsuka shows that the deep pockets of thecentral government and the utilities lavishbenefits on hosting communities prior toconstruction, creating a subsidy addiction.10

Jobs, tax income, various subsidies andextravagant public facilities are combined withreassuring public information campaigns toassuage concerns and build support for nuclearpower projects. In Japan’s declining remotecoastal towns and villages, it is understandablethat the risk of poverty and bleak futures haveuntil now outweighed the potential risk ofnuclear energy. Deferential views toward thecentral government together with a pragmaticassessment that such projects will be builtsomewhere and someone will benefit, also helpexplain why hosting seemed a reasonableoption.

Although the central government and utilitiespromoted a nuclear consensus—nuclear energyis safe, reliable and cheap—some civil societygroups and many individual Japanese contestedthis effort to little avail.11 Nevertheless, thenuclear village of pro-nuclear advocates in theutilities, government, the Diet, mass media andacademia has dominated the conversation.These advocates are not given to doubts orinclined to reconsider their assumptions andhave relied on their power network to prevail.Prior to Fukushima there have been 14 lawsuitschallenging nuclear power plants on thegrounds that seismic dangers were hidden ordownplayed, but the utilities prevailed in eachcase.12

The utilities, government and associatedscientists tout the high tech, fail-safe featuresof nuclear reactors, but as Perrow reminds us,accidents happen. Immediately after the March

11 disaster, TEPCO was quick to claim that thetsunami and chain of multiple failures had beeninconceivable, but the record suggestsotherwise. In 1975, nuclear chemist TakagiJinzaburō and others established the CitizensNuclear Information Center (CNIC) and sincethen issued regular reports on nuclear powerplant safety issues. This activism targeted theregulatory and technical problems with nuclearpower and the vulnerabilities specific toseismically active Japan. Fukushima was thenightmare scenario that CNIC had longpredicted. In a 1995 interview, Takagi spokeabout the risks of a meltdown in the event ofmultiple failures. He raised the possibility oflarge radioactive releases from a meltdownresulting from a breakdown in the emergencycore cooling system and the failure of back-updiesel generators, exactly what happened atFukushima sixteen years later.13

Warnings by the CNIC and other anti-nuclearactivists and experts were not taken seriouslyby the nuclear village since it would haverequired abandoning their quest for nuclearpower under Japan’s seismically fraughtconditions. As Perrow argues, “There is theproblem that warnings are often seen as mereobstructionism. This was the view of arepresentative for a Japanese utility whobrushed away the possibility that two backupe l e c t r i c a l g e n e r a t o r s w o u l d f a i lsimultaneously.”14 This expert witness testifiedat the Shizuoka District Court in February 2007on behalf of Chubu Electric Power Co., theutility that owns and operates the Hamaokanuclear power plant.1 5 Exasperated byquestioning from the plaintiff’s lawyersconcerning what would happen in the event ofa station blackout and loss of all backupelectricity (as happened at Fukushima fouryears later), this irritated witness blurted out,“If we took all these possibilities into account,we could never build anything.” This witnesswas Madarame Haruki who was subsequentlynamed chairman of the government’s five-member Nuclear Safety Commission in April

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2010. Repeta writes,

“ I d o n o t k n o w h o w t h i sper fo rmance f i gured in toMadarame’s selection to lead thenation’s most senior office chargedwith maintaining nuclear powersafety. We do know the result ofthe suit: As in nearly every othercase challenging Japan’s nuclearpower plants, the court ruled infavor of the power company. In oneof many great ironies surroundingthe Tohoku disaster, PrimeMinister Naoto Kan effectivelyoverruled the court by requestingthat Chubu Electric close theHamaoka facility on May 6 (2011).The company board respondedquickly and the shutdown wasaccomplished eight days later.”16

As we discuss below, however, Madaramehas changed his tune.

In Japan, cozy and collusive ties betweenregulators and industry embodied in theamakudari system and the nuclear village havecompromised nuclear safety.17 This situationhas led to widespread regulatory capture,explaining the lack of a culture of safety atTEPCO and the averted eyes approach tomonitoring the nuclear industry evident atNISA.18 Workers at Fukushima report beingroutinely warned in advance of inspections andinspectors did not seem eager to uncoverviolations.

PM Noda Yoshihiko once stated that he doesnot support building any new reactors, does notfavor extending the operating licenses of agingplants beyond their original design life spansand supports a gradual phasing out of nuclearenergy. However, he has backtracked from thisposition. In particular, he appears much morefavorably inclined towards nuclear energy than

his predecessor Kan Naoto, calling forreopening of the closed plants. Kan stunned thenation on July 13, 2011 when he called for thegradual phasing out of nuclear energy, statingthat he believes it is not possible to operatenuclear reactors safely in Japan. In contrast,Noda stresses the importance of nuclearenergy to Japan’s economy, favors restartingreactors following stress tests and wants tocomplete reactors already under construction,while his Cabinet introduced legislationallowing extension of operating licenses foraging reactors (> 40 years).19

This new Japanese law requires thedecommissioning of aging plants, but features acritical loophole designed to permit theircontinued operation at the discretion ofregulators. Given the track record of regulatorsin Japan (and the US), what is supposed tohappen only in exceptional cases (continuedoperations of old reactors), may become thenorm. Given that so many of Japan’s reactorsare aging ( 3 are over 40 years old and another16 are over 30 years old) with the attendantrisk of metal fatigue and dated technology,safety issues are becoming ever more urgent;the three meltdowns at Fukushima occurred inreactors commissioned in 1971, 1974 and 1976.Policymakers, however, under the pretext ofmandating decommissioning such agingreactors have actually ensured that thegovernment retains discretionary powers toextend operating licenses and have evenlengthened time in between inspections in aneffort to improve the lifetime profitability of allreactors.20 These initiatives are increasingrisks.

Whistleblower revelations of systematicfalsification of repair and maintenance recordsin 2002 at all of TEPCO’s nuclear plantsindicate that more robust inspections,transparency and accountability are crucial tonurture a culture of safety.21 It is important toremember that in February 2011, shortlybefore the meltdowns, NISA extended the

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operating license of Fukushima Daiichi despiteexpressing reservations about a dubiousmaintenance record and eerily prescientconcerns about stress cracks in the back-updiesel generators that left them vulnerable toinundation.

Shifting Blame

So who is to blame for the three meltdowns atFukushima? The nuclear village tried to shiftblame onto PM Kan, spreading erroneousinformation about his visit to FukushimaDaiichi to the effect that he forced TEPCO tostop venting and subsequently alleging that heordered the halt of pumping of seawater to coolthe reactors and spent fuel rods stored inadjacent pools.22 The failure to vent did in factlead to hydrogen explosions in three secondarycontainment buildings, but this was TEPCO’sresponsibility and had nothing to do with Kan’svisit on March 12.23 Similarly, PM Kan neverordered the cessation of seawater pumping andthe plant manager actually ignored instructionsfrom the TEPCO president to do so becauseunder international protocols it was his call.24

TEPCO retracted its allegations against Kan,but not before damaging Kan’s reputation andsowing suspicions about his responsibility forthe nuclear crisis. Scapegoating Kan servedmany purposes, especially diverting attentionaway from TEPCO’s, NISA’s and METI’sresponsibility for the accident and woeful crisisresponse. The LDP also needed political coversince it was the party in power that hadpromoted nuclear energy and was complicit inthe lax oversight that undermined plant safety.Personalizing the problem was an effort todownplay the fundamental institutional flawsthat lay at the heart of the crisis. DiscreditingKan also served to discredit his anti-nuclear,pro-renewable energy initiatives.

To his credit, PM Kan in dealing with thedisaster did not trust the bureaucrats advisinghim, knowing from past experience that theiringrained inclination to first establish a

consensus and then act was inconsistent withcrisis management. Kan also distrusted TEPCOsince it was acting to protect its assets andinterests and was not providing him withaccurate and timely information. But Kan’sjustified suspicions also left him isolated andunable to call on people and institutions withrelevant expertise. According to the New YorkTimes, "At the drama's heart was an outsiderprime minister who saw the need for quickaction but whose well-founded mistrust of asystem of alliances between powerful plantoperators, compliant bureaucrats andsympathetic politicians deprived PrimeMinister Kan of resources he could have usedto make better-informed decisions."25 As aresult, those without expertise were makingcrucial decisions while experts such as NSCChairman Madarame were giving misleadingadvice, inevitably leading to mistakes andzigzagging.

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Scapegoat: Former Prime Minister Kan Naoto

NISA was responsible for institutinggovernment crisis procedures, and TEPCO wasresponsible for safe operations of its plants, butboth were unprepared when it counted most.On February 17, 2012 former PM Kan assertedthat Fukushima was a manmade disaster andthat authorities were woefully unprepared todeal with it.26 There were no systems orprocedures in place to respond effectively toFukushima and officials had to improvise asthey went along. "Before 3/11, we were totallyunprepared," he said. "Not only in terms of thehardware, but our system and the organizationwere not prepared. That was the biggestproblem." He added,

"If they had thought about it, theywouldn't have intentionally built it

at such a low location. The plantwas built on the assumption thatthere was no need to anticipate amajor tsunami, and that was theactual start of the problem. Weshould have taken more adequatesafety steps, and we failed to do so.It was a big mistake and I mustadmit that (the accident) was dueto human error."

He a l so acknowledged in format iondissemination was slow and sometimesinaccurate, blaming it on a lack of reliable data.In his view the disaster exposes a wide range ofvulnerabilities and risks and the need tooverhaul safety guidelines and improve crisismanagement.

At the end of February 2012 an investigationconducted by the non-governmental RebuildJapan Initiative Foundation (RJIF) criticizedKan for micromanaging and meddling in thecrisis response at the nuclear plant and forcloseting himself with a small coterie of trustedadvisors, but praised him for refusing TEPCO’srequests on March 15th to abandon FukushimaDaiichi and ordering the utility not to withdrawits staff from the stricken plant.27 The RJIFinterviewed all the people in the room with thepremier, including those who were critical ofhis crisis management, when TEPCO made it’srequest to evacuate personnel from FukushimaDaiichi and they all corroborated Kan’s chargethat TEPCO had proposed a total evacuationand repudiated TEPCO’s subsequent assertionsthat it was not proposing to totally abandon thenuclear plant.28

TEPCO and its defenders also blamed GE forthe accident because it supplied the plantdesign right down to the placement of thebackup generators and refused to modify itdespite concerns expressed by localcontractors at the time about the need toprotect against tsunami. TEPCO also conductedan in-house investigation into the nuclear crisis

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and issued a report in December 2011 thatshirked all corporate responsibility for theaccident, instead blaming the massive tsunami,calling it a rare natural event that could nothave been anticipated (sotegai), a claim thathas been effectively refuted.

Crisis Assessment

The third party panel that investigated thenuclear crisis at the behest of the governmentissued an interim report at the end of 2011 thatwas harshly critical of TEPCO and thegovernment, pointing out that the utility was ill-prepared for a crisis and that its’ workers madecritical errors in shutting off automatedemergency cooling systems and wronglyassumed part of the cooling system wasworking when it was not.29 The report of theRJIF non-government investigation cited abovereleased at the end of February 2012 reachedsimilar conclusions. These workers and theirmanagers were inadequately trained to copewith an emergency situation and according tothe panel lacked basic knowledge concerningthe emergency reactor cooling system. Theirmishandling of emergency procedurescontributed to the crisis. Moreover, TEPCO andits regulators, as we discuss below, failed to acton fresh and compelling evidence abouttsunami risk, a blind spot that left the plantneedlessly vulnerable. Because the possibilityof a tsunami inundating the plant was ignored,TEPCO made no preparations for simultaneousand multiple losses of power. The stationblackout halted cooling systems, caused themeltdowns and disrupted communicationsamong emergency workers and between theplant and the government. Workers werelargely dependent on mobile phones that couldnot be recharged while carrying out emergencywork by flashlight. Meanwhile the governmentwas kept in the dark about c r i t i ca ldevelopments and officials delayed in givingadvice to the prime minister and his advisorson how to respond to the nuclear crisis.30

Investigators concluded that TEPCO failed toprovide information to the government in atimely manner because it was inadequatelyprepared for an emergency. The crisismanagement center for Fukushima Daichi wasonly 5 km from the plant, and when plantworkers arrived they found it wrecked, with nopower or functioning communications andunusable because there was no air filtrationsystem to filter out radiation. This pooremergency preparedness delayed the flow ofinformation to the prime minister’s office,slowing the government response.

NISA was widely criticized for not having donemore over the years to force TEPCO to improveits preventive and emergency measures. It wasalso revealed that NISA staff abandoned theFukushima plant after the earthquake onMarch 11 and thus could not collect anddisseminate real-time information as the crisisworsened; after being ordered to return, theydid little to help manage the crisis.

The investigations also pilloried TEPCO and thegovernment’s mishandling of the evacuation ofresidents living near the plant, in manyinstances evacuating people to places wherelevels of radiation were higher than thosewhere they had left. This reflected the generalproblem of information bottlenecks; PM Kanand his cabinet were not given data onradiation contamination that could have led toa more sensible evacuation order. The thirdparty panel faulted the government’s order forresidents within 20 km of the plant to leave thearea because state agencies had data showingthat radiation contamination did not spreadconcentrically and that some designatedevacuation sites were actually hot zones. Thepanel confirmed that data generated by theSystem for Prediction of EnvironmentalEmergency Dose Information (SPEEDI) onradiation dispersal was available and couldhave been used to evacuate residents atgreatest r isk to safer areas, but thisinformation was not provided to the Prime

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Minister’s crisis management center untilMarch 23, eleven days after the first hydrogenexplosion released plumes of radioactivesubstances into the air. Finally, one monthafter the original evacuation, the governmentused this SPEEDI data to move evacuees out ofharms way, meaning that many had beensubjected to substantial doses of avoidableradiation exposure. One advisor actuallyinformed PM Kan about the SPEEDI data onMarch 13, but the chairman of the NuclearSafety Commission Madarame Harukimisinformed the premier that SPEEDI was notavailable. When officials responsible forSPEEDI were asked why they did not make thiscrucial data available to crisis managerssooner, they replied lamely that nobody askedthem for it.31 Kaieda Banri, METI Ministerduring the crisis, and the top off icialresponsible for the nuclear energy industry,admitted he had never even heard of theSPEEDI system before the accident.

Tsunami Risk

“It's inexcusable that a nuclear accidentcouldn't be managed because a major eventsuch as the tsunami exceeded expectations.”Hatamura Yotaro, Chairman, Third Party PanelInvestigation Committee (Dec. 26, 2011)

Hatamura Yotaro chaired an investigation intothe Fukushima accident and is a well-knownauthority on accidents and author of arespected book, Learning From Failure (2003).He has analyzed data on over 1,100 industrialaccidents focusing on design flaws, systemfailures and human error. For Hatamura,managing risk at a nuclear power plant is aboutforeseeing the unforeseen and preparingaccordingly. His committee refuted TEPCO’s in-house, self-exonerating report released in earlyDecember 2011 that blamed the accidententirely on an unanticipated, rare naturaldisaster. In fact, TEPCO ignored severalwarnings, including internal research, aboutthe possibility of a monster tsunami. It looked

into building a larger tsunami seawall, butdecided the cost was prohibitive and took noadditional preventive measures. On March 7,2011, only four days before the tsunami,TEPCO presented the Nuclear and IndustrialSafety Agency (NISA), the government’snuclear watchdog authority, with results fromsimulations conducted in 2008 by its ownresearchers showing that a tsunami as high as15.7 meters could hit the area, a finding itignored.

Telltale warnings began accumulating over thedecade prior to 3/11. In 2001, researchers citedgeological evidence that the Jogan tsunami of869 slammed the Fukushima coastline and thewave height was strikingly similar to the 3/11event. Their research on ancient gigantictsunami noted that such uncommon disastersoccur every 800-1,100 years and specificallywarned that the region was overdue foranother. In February 2002 the Japan Society ofCivil Engineers using new simulationtechniques determined that there was a risk ofa 5.7 meter tsunami and a month later TEPCOincreased its estimates accordingly from theoriginal assumption of a 3.1 meter tsunamiwhen the reactor was being built in the early1970s. In July 2002 the government’sHeadquarters for Earthquake ResearchPromotion warned that an even larger tsunamiwas possible based on historical evidence. In2006 the government revised its anti-seismicguidelines, specifically calling on utilities toprepare for rare events. In 2009 NISA andTEPCO discussed the possibility of a 9.2 metertsunami based on new simulations andarchaeological evidence, but NISA did notpress TEPCO to take countermeasures.

Clearly, there is no basis to TEPCO’s claim thatt h e s c a l e o f t h e 3 / 1 1 t s u n a m i w a sinconceivable; the utility chose to ignorecenturies of geological evidence and repeated21st century warnings from modern scientists,including in-house researchers. In terms oftsunami-related risk management, it turns out

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that TEPCO and two other utilities actuallylobbied the government’s Earthquake ResearchCommittee on March 3, 2011 to water downwording in a report warning that a massivetsunami could hit the Tohoku coast. Apparentlythe committee agreed to modify the report inaccord with concerns expressed by the utilitiesthat a stark warning about the possibility of ac o l o s s a l t s u n a m i m i g h t c a u s e “misunderstanding” among the public.32

Aside from this dubious intervention, TEPCOignored ominous developments in thesubduction zone off the coast of Honshu island.Subduction zones, where tectonic plates slipunder one another, are prone to ruptures thattrigger tsunami. The wider the area of tectonicplate overlap, the greater the potential for amega tsunami. Seismic sensors on the oceanfloor indicated growing pressures and risk ofrupture along the fault line that runs North-South off the coast of Tohoku. The 2010subduction zone quake off the coast of Chileand that in 2004 off Sumatra that wreakedhavoc in Aceh, Thailand, India and Sri Lankaare recent examples that should haveundermined institutionalized complacencyabout tsunami risk. But TEPCO did notapproach risk assessment from the basis of aworst-case scenario, and relied on undulyoptimistic assumptions that wished away acataclysm in a region with a history of killerwaves. This unjustified insouciance cost Japandearly.

Culture of Safety?

Inexcusably, TEPCO did not make safety itsethos while lax oversight by the governmentallowed this culture of complacency to persistlong after it was obvious that TEPCO wascutting corners to cut costs. METI didshutdown all 17 of TEPCO’s reactors in 2002,but only because the media reported awhistleblower’s revelations about systematicfalsification of repair and maintenance records,and exposed the government’s initial failure to

act on this information. The 2011 third partypanel found that safety precautions were basedon unrealistic assumptions that left the utilitypoorly prepared to deal with a crisis, a findingthat came too late for the people evacuatedfrom their homes in Fukushima and thousandsof farmers and fishermen who lost theirlivelihoods.

Given the risks associated with operatingnuclear power plants in a seismically active,densely populated country it is extraordinarythat Japan’s utilities did not practice evacuationprocedures in reactor- hosting communities.The utilities justify this oversight by arguingthat they did not want to alarm local residentsby practicing for an unlikely event and therebyundermine repeated assurances that nuclearenergy is completely safe. Thus, the utilitiesand many communities did not prepare to helplocal residents escape from the radioactivecontamination that has blighted Fukushimaprefecture. The lack of procedures andguidelines proved a major hole in disasterpreparedness. In retrospect, this policy ofpreserving the myth of 100% safety at theexpense of actually safeguarding residentsrepresents an institutionalized inclination tocollectively bury heads in the sand, andirresponsibly minimize risk in ways thatendangered local residents.

Transparency

In August 2011 a Diet committee investigatingthe nuclear disaster requested that TEPCOprovide it with an operations manual for theFukushima Daiichi plant. TEPCO initiallyrefused the request, prompting a public uproar.One month later, TEPCO provided a heavilyredacted version of the manual and justifiedblacking out key passages related toemergency procedures, arguing that thisinformation constituted intellectual property itwished to protect and also raised securityconcerns. These spurious grounds highlightedTEPCO efforts to prevent the Diet from

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exercising oversight and attempting to cover-up shortcomings in its crisis response. It tooksix months for TEPCO to release the entiremanual. Committee members complained aboutthis stonewalling and stated that, “It wasimportant that we saw the manual to learn whythe company had switched part of theemergency core-cooling system off and onagain after the earthquake (and before thetsunami) — to find out when the emergencysystems were destroyed.”33 Former premierHatoyama Yukio concluded that it is imperativeto nationalize TEPCO in order to promotetransparency and learn the lessons ofFukushima precisely because the utility hastried to obfuscate rather than clarify whathappened and why. But it is not only TEPCOthat is attempting to cover its tracks.

In January 2012 the media reported thatvarious government panels dealing with theFukushima crisis failed to keep minutes of theproceedings, including the task force set up bythe Prime Minister’s office. Keeping minutes isstandard procedure for government panels, oneusually carried out by bureaucratic officials.The failure to keep minutes is a criticaloversight because it prevents learning morelessons about the crisis response to avoidrepeating the same mistakes in the future. TheAsahi termed this absence of minutes a,“monumental level of government ineptitude”,fuming that,

“It would be hard for the officialsinvolved to disprove the chargethat they deliberately neglected tokeep a record of the meetings sothat their blunders and misstepswould not come to light later. Now,the oft-repeated pledge by topgovernment officials to sharelessons learned by the accidentwith the international communitysounds hollow. Technically, theresponsibility for this fiasco lies

with the Nuclear and IndustrialSafety Agency of the Ministry ofEconomy, Trade and Industry,which served as the secretariat forthe headquarters. But even moreto blame are the politicians whofailed to ensure that a record ofthe meetings would be kept.”34

In February 2012 the RJIF investigationhighlighted the lack of transparency, notingthat the government withheld informationabout the full danger of the nuclear disasterfrom the public and the internationalcommunity.35 This conclusion was confirmed onMarch 9, 2012 when the government released a76 page summary of the 23 meetings of thePrime Minister’s crisis management team thatwas reconstructed from interviews conductedin early 2012 of officials attending the 2011meetings and unofficial notes kept by NISAofficials. NHK contrasted this post-factosummary, one short on details, with the recentrelease of the 3,200 page transcript of the U.S.Nuclear Regulatory Commission crisisdeliberations about Fukushima. The summaryis vague on important issues such as thedecision to declare a nuclear emergency,discussions about a meltdown within hours ofthe earthquake, the decisions to expand theevacuation zone and criticism about the lack ofa chain of command in managing the crisis.36

This belated attempt to quell public concernsabout the lack of transparency actuallyamplified them because it has clarified howmuch information the government withheldfrom the public and how little it has divulgedabout its deliberations during the crisis.

Apparently, managing risk was more a matterof concealing chaotic and inconsistent decision-making by the government and inadequatecrisis response procedures by TEPCO thangleaning useful lessons about how to improvecrisis response mechanisms. This lack oftransparency reflects a “circling of the wagons”

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mindset that prevents robust risk management,raising serious doubts about operating nuclearreactors in Japan.

Whistleblower

In Diet testimony on Feb. 15, 2012, MadarameHaruki, Chairman of the Nuclear SafetyCommission, pulled back the curtain on thenuclear village, drawing attention to cozy andcollusive relations between regulators and theutilities, and lax safety standards. He spoke ofofficials ignoring nuclear risks and admitted,“We ended up wasting our time looking forexcuses that these measures are not needed inJapan.”37 He asserted that Japan’s safetymonitoring technology is three decades out ofdate, while acknowledging that he and hiscolleagues had, “…succumbed to a blind beliefin the country’s technical prowess and failed tothoroughly assess the risks of building nuclearreactors in an earthquake-prone country.”38 Hesaid that regulators and the utilities missedmany opportunities to improve operating safetyand warned that safety regulations areminimally enforced and fundamentally flawed.Furthermore, he asserted, regulators weretoothless and overly solicitous of utilityinterests. He acknowledged that officials didnot prepare for a simultaneous station blackoutand failure of backup generators and ignored aseries of warnings about the dangers of a largetsunami affecting the Fukushima plant. Histestimony confirmed the findings of the twoinvestigations, Third Party Panel and RJIF,cited above that were released at the end ofDecember 2011 and February 2012respectively.

In Madarame’s view, nuclear reactor safety iscompromised because of institutionalcomplacency and perfunctory enforcement ofsafety regulations and guidelines. He accusedutilities of slipshod practices, stating, "Powercompanies have the fundamental responsibilityof securing safety and they need to set theirstandards much higher than what the

government suggests. . . . It is extremelyoutrageous if power firms are using the NSC'ssafety standards as an excuse not to raisethem.”39

It is unnerving to have one of the nation’sleading nuclear energy experts, the man incharge of the NSC, one who has long been astalwart advocate of nuclear energy and whodefended the nuclear crisis response in themonths following 3/11, suddenly voice many ofthe same objections that anti-nuclear activistshave expressed over the years. Madarame asapostate may not be convincing, but hiswithering indictment of the nuclear powerindustry and government regulators is anastonishing development in the post-Fukushimadiscourse. Of course some of it can beattributed to his desire to restore a batteredreputation and to shift responsibility.40 Indeed,in his testimony he explained that he had beentrying to reform the NSC and impose strictermonitoring, but having only taken his positionin April 2010, he had not had sufficient timeprior to 3/11 to overcome an entrenchedinstitutional culture. Now Madarame hasexposed the shadowy practices of the nuclearvillage, including collective heedlessness aboutsafety and poor risk management. In the onesector where a culture of safety should havebeen foremost, the nuclear safety czar revealeda culture of deceit.

Shortly after his Diet testimony, Madaramedropped another bombshel l when heannounced that he does not think that the firstround of stress tests conducted on Japan’snuclear reactors are sufficient to ensure safeoperation.41 Speaking on behalf of the NSC,Madarame said, "With only the first round (ofstress tests), the level of safety confirmationthat the commission seeks would not be met.Whether to reactivate (reactors) is thegovernment's decision and we, as the safetycommission, won't say anything about it." Thishigh profile indictment of the stress testscomes at an inconvenient time for the

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government because NISA has alreadyendorsed first stage stress tests conducted forKansai Electric’s Oi power plant. In response toMadarame, the Chief Cabinet Secretary OsamuFujimura stated that regardless of the NSC, thegovernment will decide on whether or not toresume operations of nuclear reactors based onthe initial stress tests and local sentiments innuclear plant hosting communities.

The Noda cabinet’s desire to restore publicconfidence in nuclear energy through thestress tests, and restart idled reactors, hasbeen undercut by Madarame’s statement.Public anxieties about nuclear energy arealready widespread and the stress tests havebeen dismissed all along as empty PR gesturesby prominent politicians such as the governorsof Niigata, Ishikawa and Fukui, along withexperts and citizen’s groups. Nothing, however,could be quite as damning as the NSCchairman, one of the nuclear village’sheadmen, pointedly refusing to endorse thestress tests.

The stress tests were first announced by PMKan in July 2011, stirring considerablecontroversy because he did not consult with hiscabinet beforehand.42 Kan’s insistence on EUstyle 2-stage stress tests derailed METI’s plansto quickly restart idled reactors last summerand infuriated METI Minister Kaieda. METI hadengaged in a PR campaign to reassure hostingcommunities that reactors were safe, and onJune 18 Kaieda announced that METI hadconfirmed it was safe to resume operation ofthe nation’s reactors. But this haste to resumebusiness as usual in the nuclear industry onlythree months after the three meltdowns, andnot quite one month after TEPCO finallyadmitted to the meltdowns, backfired. Themedia exposed how NISA and Kyushu Electric,at the suggestion of the governor of Saga, hadorchestrated an Internet “town hall” meetingon June 26, planting questions and opinionsamong participating “netizens” in favor ofnuclear energy and restarting the Genkai

reactors in Saga Prefecture. METI’s planssuddenly came under fire and Kan seized theopportunity to introduce stress tests andhanded responsibility for overseeing theprocess to NISA and the NSC.

At the time it looked like little more than adelaying measure because the utilities wouldconduct the computer simulations about thesafety of restarting their own idled reactors.Adding to the conflict of interest, keyinstitutions in the nuclear village, NISA and theNSC, would assess the results and presumablyendorse them. But the NSC has now upsetthese plans and in doing so stoked publicskepticism about the effectiveness of stresstests based solely on computer simulations.Experts have pointed out numerous flaws in thestress tests and note that they do not measuremetal fatigue, an important issue for agingplants, don’t examine multiple failures asoccurred at Fukushima, and lack hands-ontesting of components.43 Stress tests have notbeen used anywhere in the world to determineif a plant should be operating. People havegood reasons not to trust the utilities to reportinconvenient findings from the stress testssince they are known to have falsified repairand maintenance records in the recent past.Moreover, TEPCO conducted computersimulations in 2008 on tsunami risk that it didnot share with NISA until four days before3/11. Critics also point out that much dependson what assumptions are used in thesimulations and doubt that utilities, with somuch investment in nuclear energy at stake,will uncover the need for expensive retrofittingor decommissioning.

Madarame has undermined the credibility ofthe stress tests and indicated that moresweeping reforms are needed to upgrade safetyand monitoring in the nuclear industry. Willthis ‘betrayal” of the nuclear village have anyimpact? Yes, in terms of public sentiments, buthis remonstrations notwithstanding, thegovernment appears determined to restart

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idled reactors. Apart from considering resultsof the stress tests in deciding whether or not torestart reactors, the government vaguelyreferred to taking into account the feelings oflocal residents while rejecting calls for anational referendum. Rather, the governmentseeks to consult residents of towns that aregiven lavish subsides to host nuclear powerplants that also generate well paid jobs. So bybasing the government’s restart decisions onthe sentiments of those who have the most togain from resuming operations, and on testsconducted by those with the most to gain fromgoing back online, officials appear to belimiting the risk posed by anti-nuclear publicopinion. The media is full of reports about howmuch hosting communities gain from hostingand how much they stand to lose in terms ofsubsidies, taxes and jobs if reactors remainidled. So if only these local people’s viewscount, the fix seems to be in. But Fukushimahas changed perceptions about nuclear energysafety throughout Japan.

An NHK poll in October 2011 indicated that80% of the mayors of hosting communitiesoppose restarting reactors until safety can beverified. The governor of Niigata which hoststhe massive Kashiwazaki nuclear plant, closedin 2007 following a magnitude 6.8 earthquakethat exceeded reactor design specifications,has repeatedly stated that he would opposeresumption of operations until the Fukushimacrisis is resolved and dismisses the value of thestress tests. So it may well be true that localpeople can be induced or bribed into restartingidled reactors, but they are also keenly awareof how little has been done for the residents ofFukushima and how much they lost.

In Fukushima evacuation centers there is adegree of tension between evacuees fromhosting villages and those from neighboringvillages that never received any subsidies orbenefits, but have experienced the same levelof personal loss and dislocation.44 The politicsof cherry picking public opinion are uncertain,

but the government does seem to be courtingrisk by ignoring the voices of many other localresidents who have just as much at risk ashosting community residents and nothing togain.

More worrisome for the nuclear village is theMarch 8, 2012 NHK poll conducted in 142communities in the vicinity of Japan’s nuclearpower plants. NHK found that only 14% ofrespondents favor restarting idled reactors nowor in the near future while 79% opposed or hadstrong reservations about doing so.45 Clearlythe government faces a steep uphill battle ingaining the understanding of Japanese livingnear nuclear reactors about plans for restartingreactors.

Nationalization

The government has injected vast sums ofmoney into TEPCO so that it can honor itsliabilities and continue operating, but the utilityis resisting ceding management control to thegovernment. Decommissioning the fourcrippled reactors at Fukushima will cost atleast US $15.5 bn over the next three to fourdecades while compensation payments mayreach some US$30 bn in the first two yearsalone. Dealing with the cleanup, fromschoolyards and parks to fruit orchards andresidential areas, and disposing of radioactivedebris will boost the bill significantly. In August2011 the government adopted legislation thatprovides guarantees for TEPCO’s liabilities andestablished a 5 trillion yen credit line for aNuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Fund(NDLFF) funded by special compensationbonds that will be used to lend money toTEPCO.

Compensation will cover about 75% ofFukushima’s residents, or 1.5 million people.However, in one of many disastrous PR moves,TEPCO initially required individuals seekingcompensation to fill out a complicated 62-pageform. The ire over this red tape forced thecompany to create a simplified form, although

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the new one still runs to 34 pages and requiresapplicants, many of whom lost homes and allrecords, to fill in over 1,000 fields. This onerouscompensation hurdle and associated delayshave angered victims and left many in difficultfinancial straits. By early 2012 less than onehalf of the 70,000 eligible households had filedthe necessary paperwork. As of March 2012,only one quarter of the 1.7 trillion yen offinancial aid the government provided TEPCOfor compensation has been disbursed. TEPCOhas postponed settlement of real estate relatedclaims in the no-entry area and designated ashot zones.46 The government’s expectedreclassification of such areas in April 2012 willreduce the restricted areas and presumablylower TEPCO’s payouts. In addition, since anarbitration board was established in Sept 2011,TEPCO has stonewalled compensation, onlysettling 18 out of 1,243 cases. Cumbersomeprocedures and paperwork are part of TEPCO’sstrategy for managing risk and minimizingpayments to those whose lives have beenturned upside down by Fukushima.47

TEPCO’s liabilities exceed its assets, and sotechnically it is insolvent, but with more than30 million customers in the Kanto region,including Tokyo, it is too big to fail. Thisexplains the government’s decision to rescuethe utility despite public misgivings aboutmanagement miscues. Banks will not lend itany more money or refinance loans in theabsence of government guarantees. Thegovernment and TEPCO have been sparringover nationalization of the utility with METIMinister Edano arguing that the governmentshould exercise management control becausethe $12.4 billion injection of public funds isequivalent to a 2/3 stake in the company. Whilethis is what happened to the banks during theKoizumi era (2001-06), TEPCO has powerfulbackers to help resist a government takeover.PM Noda is much more favorably inclinedtoward the nuclear industry than hispredecessor while the Ministry of Financealong with the business federation Keidanren is

also lobbying against full-scale nationalization.In early March it was announced tentativelythat the government will obtain 51% of votingrights in TEPCO, but the remaining 15% of itsstake will be non-voting shares.48 According toJapanese law this means that the governmentcan choose board members for TEPCO, butbecause it doesn't control 2/3 of voting rights itcan’t force through major management reformssuch as mergers and spin-offs. Perhaps thisquasi-nationalization will improve corporategovernance, but because the utility retainssignificant management autonomy thisagreement marks a major setback for those likeEdano who believe that TEPCO requires morefundamental reforms. Edano has lead a chorusof criticism that TEPCO has not gone farenough in streamlining operations, cost-cuttingand taking responsibility for its negligence.49

Since it appears that TEPCO will need furtherinjections to stay afloat, the agreementfacilitates access to more public funding. Inaddition, making TEPCO a ward of the statewill help it obtain some 900 billion yen in bankloans from July 2012, but the financial sector isalso insisting on assurances of higherelectricity rates and restarting some reactors.Yet again, this loan plan reaches deep intotaxpayers’ pockets as the government’sDevelopment Bank of Japan will provide about500 billion yen of the total while commercialbanks, trust banks and insurance companieswill provide 400 billion yen and refinance 170billion in outstanding loans.

The bailout and sham nationalization mean thattaxpayers will be paying off the Fukushima tabfor decades to come and as ratepayers facehigher electricity prices while many of thepeople who mismanaged risks at TEPCOremain in charge. The estimated 10% rateincrease for households that will be introducedfrom the summer o f 2012 has drawnconsiderable criticism as it follows revelationsthat TEPCO systematically overchargedcustomers over the past decade.

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Backlash

Over the past five decades the government andutilities have educated Japanese citizens tobelieve in the safety, reliability and necessity ofnuclear energy. Indeed this myth blindedregulators and operators to the risks andrendering adequate crisis managementprocedures taboo.50 Thus the Fukushimadebacle came as a shock to most Japanese, onethat thoroughly undermined the assiduouslypropagated myths of nuclear energy safety. Asthe crisis lingered throughout 2011 and itbecame clear that the nation would be dealingwith the consequences for decades rather thanmonths, shock gave way to a backlash, joltingmany citizens out of resignation to varyingdegrees of anti-nuclear activism.51

The top-down consensus promoting nuclearenergy is now being challenged by a growingbottom-up backlash. Certainly there was anti-nuclear activism prior to Fukushima, but it hasbecome far more widespread since 3/11 due toa lack of trust in official information andreassurances. This activism is evident in socialmedia where websites post radiation readingstaken by “citizen scientists” armed with theirown Geiger counters that map the spread andextent of contamination, painting a far moregrisly situation than official assessments. As itbecame evident that the government was notensuring food safety, producers, retailers andconsumers have taken matters into their ownhands, a do it yourself approach that speaksvolumes about public perceptions of officialfailings. In addition, there is also a citizen’scampaign led by Nobel Literature laureate OeKenzaburo, among others, to collect ten millionsignatures for an anti-nuclear energy petition;currently they have 4 million. In the presentstate of siege, the moat surrounding thenuclear village may have been breached, butthe ramparts remain well defended.

Checking for Radiation with dosimeter

Activists have sought a national referendum onnuclear energy and various local referenda arebeing mooted. The central government,however, will work to prevent public sentimentfrom dictating national energy policy.52 Thepopular mayor of Osaka, Hashimoto Toru, hasbeen very critical of the utilities and when hewas governor of Osaka he spoke out againstnuclear energy on which the Kansai regionpreviously relied for 50% of its electricity. Atpresent, the three major cities in the Kansaiheartland—Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe—arelobbying KEPCO to phase out nuclear energyand disclose information about energy supplyand demand, and lower rates. The three citiescontrol nearly 13% of Kansai Electric shares(Osaka 9%, Kobe 3% and Kyoto 0.45%) andplan to table a motion on phasing out nuclearpower at the June 2012 shareholders’ meeting.

Citizens are also responding to the nuclearcrisis through voluntary conservation efforts. Inthe summer of 2011 there were expectations ofrolling blackouts as reactors went offline forregular inspections so the governmentmandated conservation for large commercialusers and urged the public to reduce electricityconsumption by 15%. Through lifestyle changesand innovative measures, the public exceededthis target and registered an overall 20%

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decrease in electricity consumption. Surveysindicate that some 60% of the public practicedconservation since 3/11 and it seems to be anew commonsense norm, one that will bereinforced by higher electricity prices.

Polls also indicate strong public support forrenewable energy and key business leaderssuch as Son Masayoshi, Japan’s Bill Gates,along with others, are tapping into this shift insentiments and the new Feed-In Tarifflegis lat ion to invest in expansion ofrenewables.53 A Yomiuri poll taken in November2011 asked respondents what source of energyJapan should rely on in the future and 71%chose solar energy while only 6% chose nuclearenergy. Smart innovative capital is driving agreen revolution, but also encounteringresistance from the nuclear village in terms oftransmission access and pricing while alsofacing technological hurdles that raisequestions about how quickly such a shift canhappen. But because renewable energy nowgenerates only 1% of Japan’s electricity supply,there is lots of low hanging fruit that could leadto fairly rapid increases over the next decade ifthe government gets policy and pricing right.

Food and Fuel Risk

In post-Fukushima Japan, risk managementincludes protecting the public from theradiation that has been spewed from thecrippled reactors. In the area of food safety thegovernment continues to underwhelm. Thepublic has grown increasingly skeptical aboutgovernment pronouncements because onemonth they are told that Fukushima rice is safeand free from radiation and the next that it isnot.

Rice Planting Ban

One of the more puzzling policy decisionsinvolves the government announcing stricterfood safety radiation standards soon after itannounced a cold shutdown at the strickennuclear complex in December 2011. The newtop limit for cesium is 100 becquerels per kg ofrice, meat, vegetables and fish, one-fifth thelimit set shortly after the nuclear accident,while the safe level for drinking water wasslashed from 200 to 10 becquerels. This drasticreduction in “safe” levels is unnerving forpeople who have been paying attention to theprevious guidelines and believing that theywere eating safe food and drinking safe water;now they are not so sure. There is alsobafflement as to why the stricter limits onlytake effect in April 2012 with a further six-ninemonth “grace period” for beef and rice to meetthe new standards.

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Cesium Dispersal Map

Grace period? Understandably consumerswonder why stricter standards for what theyingest are delayed. It is also puzzling that atthe end of February 2012 the Ministry ofAgriculture announced that it would permit ricefarming in ho t zones where ces iumcontamination of soil was found to exceedmaximum safety levels and tasked localauthorities with preventing distribution of anyharvested produce exceeding safety guidelineseven though there is no system in place tocoordinate and conduct such safety checks.54

The government has also failed to deal with theimmense risk of spent fuel rods that arecurrently stored in pools located in buildingsthat house nuclear reactors. After the stationblackout on March 11, cooling systems for thespent fuel rod pools ceased functioning

meaning the water would evaporate and thefuel rods would overheat, causing a massiverelease of radioactive substances. This wouldhave rendered Fukushima Daiichi inaccessible,halting nuclear accident crisis operations there.In addition, the scale of the Fukushimaaccident would have been far worse as theReactor 4 pool contained recently removed fuelrods that remained “hot” and altogether thepool held the amount of fuel rods typically usedto power two reactors. It was “sheer luck” thata catastrophic accident was averted.55 Reactor4 was shutdown at the t ime and wasundergoing major upgrading work involvingreplacement of the core shroud. As part of thiswork, part of the reactor structure was filledtemporarily with a large amount of water. Theschedule called for draining the water prior to3/11, but there were delays due to glitches inthe work and by chance, a separator gate wasopen, so that after the hydrogen explosion, anestimated 1,000 tons of water flowed into thespent fuel storage pool, serendipitouslypreventing a cataclysm.56

The face of sheer luck: Reactors 3 and 4 atFukushima Daiichi

These spent fuel rods are supposed to be storedand reprocessed at the Rokkasho facility, butthere have been significant delays andproblems in completing this project and itscapacity is insufficient anyway.57 The storagepool at Rokkasho is already 95% full while thecooling pools at reactors are nearly full and allremain vulnerable to seismic events. There are

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no large dry-cask storage facilities in Japan formore secure, interim storage as is the case inEurope and the US. The US faces similarproblems in dealing with nuclear wastedisposal and has also not moved ahead with apermanent storage solution. At the end ofFebruary 2012 the Japan Atomic EnergyAgency, now revising Japan’s basic nuclearenergy policy, suggested the option of directfuel disposal by burial. This signals a possiblemove away from the nuclear fuel cycle andreprocessing, but currently there is no disposalsite.58

Conclusion

“…they allowed their enthusiasm for nuclearpower to shelter weak regulation, safetysystems that failed to work and a culpableignorance of the tectonic risks the reactorsfaced, all the while blithely promulgating amyth of nuclear safety.”

The Dream That Failed59

It is extraordinary that The Economist , aconservative, pro-business, mainstream weekly,has reversed its longstanding support fornuclear energy, describing it as a failed dream.In Japan, however, the battle lines are drawnbetween nuclear advocates who cling to thisfailed dream and opponents who favor a shifttowards renewable energy. The nuclear villageenjoys many advantages since it is easier tomaintain or modestly tweak the national energystatus quo than to promote a green revolution.Institutional inertia may constrain reforms,causing changes to be more incremental thandramatic. The trump card of the nuclear villageis the need to maintain stable electricity supplyand its’ advocates maintain that nuclear energycannot be replaced by renewable energy andnote that shifting to carbon fuels is costly interms of the trade deficit and global warming.The strategy is to transform this politicizeddebate into a “pragmatic” decision, dictated bya dispassionate assessment of energy,

economic and environmental realities.60

But the realities that spewed from Fukushima,and revelations about TEPCO’s inept safetyprecautions and crisis response, along withinstitutional failures in regulatory agencies,lead other actors to draw different conclusionsabout the safety, reliability and cost of nuclearenergy. This pragmatic reassessment bynuclear critics, now including The Economist,also draws on the fact that nuclear energydeveloped because of significant governmentsubsidies and incentives over several decadesbecause it was deemed a pressing nationalpriority. Renewable energy advocates arguethat similar government commitment andinvestments in renewable energy would make ita sustainable alternative, yield less toxicdividends and boost Japan’s prospects in globalmarkets for green technologies.

It does seem likely that Japan will continue torely to some degree on nuclear energy, butthere are powerful actors in government andbusiness, supported by public opinion, thatfavor METI Minister Edano’s call for a phasedreduction and minimal reliance on nuclearenergy based on expansion of renewableenergy. PM Noda and other Cabinet ministers,however, side with the nuclear village and onewonders how long Edano will remain in hisposition and who might replace him. Clearly ithas been a bad year for the nuclear village witha surge of anti-nuclear sentiment, but it is toosoon to predict the outcome of the ongoingbattles over national energy strategy given thenuclear village’s networks of power andinfluence.

The nuclear village has been battered over thepast year because there are fundamentalquestions about safely operating nuclearreactors in such a seismically disadvantagednation. The Economist points out that, “nuclearsafety can never be a technological given, onlyan operational achievement.”61 It also notesthat the new generation of supposedly far safer

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reactors is also vulnerable to unanticipatedmalfunctions as occurred in Hamaoka.62

The nuclear crisis at Fukushima was triggeredby natural disaster, but human error played acritical role. A systemic failure in riskmanagement, institutionalized complacencyabout tsunami risk and incompetence inoperating emergency cooling systems werecrucial factors in this catastrophe. TEPCOlacked a culture of safety that explains itslapses before, during and after 3/11.Fukushima was an accident waiting to happenand nuclear industry regulatory authorities arecomplicit because they failed to pressureTEPCO to heed numerous warning signs.Because risks were downplayed, TEPCO andthe government were ill-prepared to deal withthe meltdowns and respond effectively to theconsequences of the accident. Kitazawa Koichi,former chairman of the Japan Science andTechnology Agency, stresses that Japan wasvery lucky that the three-meltdown disasterwas not significantly worse.63 It is equallyalarming to know that the scientific communitydid l itt le to challenge, and in the endperpetuated, the absolute safety myth thatenshrouded nuclear energy. Expertsoccasionally raised red flags but did not followthrough when their warnings were ignored andscientists in a position to influence nuclearsafety regulations and disaster preparednessaverted their eyes from the evident risks andkept silent while nuclear advocates made half-baked claims and cut corners on safety.

The mishandling of the evacuation subjectedmany Fukushima residents needlessly toradioactive contamination, highlighting howpoorly prepared authorities were for a nuclearcrisis. Other communities hosting nuclearplants have taken note of lax disasterpreparedness and how little has been done forthe Fukushima evacuees. As a result, restartingreactors shutdown for inspections and stresstests will prove politically divisive. As ofNovember 2011, an NHK opinion survey

showed that 90% of those polled are anxiousabout nuclear accidents and 70% do not trustthe government’s safety preparations.64 Inaddition, two-thirds of the public expressesmisgivings about nuclear energy, with 42%favoring reduction of the number of plants and24% favoring abolishing them. A March 2012poll by NHK found that residents of localcommunities in the vicinity of nuclear powerplants have serious reservations aboutrestarting idled plants despite all the subsidiesand other financial inducements; only 14% arein favor of restarting or are inclined to agree,whi le 79% oppose or express strongr e s e r v a t i o n s . D e c o n t a m i n a t i o n ,decommiss ion ing and d i spos ing o fcontaminated waste over the coming decadeswill keep nuclear energy under sustained,critical scrutiny.

TEPCO’s risk management prior to and duringthe crisis may have been woeful, but in theaftermath it has been relatively successful inmanaging risks to its institutional interests andavoiding accountability. While its reputationmay be in tatters, TEPCO has stonewalledceding management power to the governmentwhile obtaining vast sums of public money tocover the utility’s enormous costs for clean-up,disposal, decontamination, decommissioningand compensation. It is also lobbying tosideline plans to separate power generationfrom transmission and distribution, maintainingadvantages that may impede the expansion ofrenewable energy capacity. Bondholders andshareholders stand to gain from avertingnationalization, with taxpayers and ratepayerspicking up the tab. TEPCO has also resistedgovernment demands for more cost-cutting andit has also muddied the waters of responsibilityby maintaining its tsunami defense anddiverting attention from the role of theearthquake in damaging cooling systempiping.65 If the quake is implicated in themeltdowns the implications would beenormous, requiring extensive and expensiveretrofitting at all of Japan’s remaining nuclear

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reactors because they are all vulnerable toseismic events. This is not the sort of riskmanagement that instills confidence in acompany that seeks permission to restart its’idled reactors.

At the end of Feb 2012, the Rebuild JapanInitiative Foundation (RJIF) released a reportbased on its investigation of the nuclearaccident.66 It is a scathing indictment of Japan’snuclear risk management and crisis response.The report emphasizes the disarray,dysfunction, miscommunication, meddling andvertical sectionalism that prevailed and howthese problems exacerbated poor disasterpreparedness. The RJIF criticizes leaders whoplayed down the risks of reactor meltdowns inpublic while privately conducting discussionsabout a worst-case scenario involving theevacuation of Tokyo. The crisis also exposedthe vulnerabilities of the electrical and coolingsystems, and lax security rules, raisingconcerns about a potential terrorist attack. Inhighlighting these sweeping problems thereport underscores the major risks associatedwith Japan’s nuclear industry and raises seriousdoubts about whether it is possible to managethese risks.

The Fukushima Daiichi reactors remainvulnerable to earthquakes and rely on jury-rigged cooling and electrical systems that are“shockingly feeble-looking”; plastic water hosescritical to the cooling systems have cracked inthe cold weather and are mended with tape.67

In addition, vast amounts of contaminatedwater used in cooling the stricken reactors isaccumulating and, as with accumulating spentfuel rods, there is no waste disposal solution athand. Utilities are now increasing the safety ofback-up energy generating capacity, and inHamaoka they are finally building a seawall toprotect against a predicted tsunami, but theseare belated and small steps towards complyingwith a wide array of previously ignoredinternational guidelines and addressing thenuclear energy risks that Japanese now know

all too well.

The great risk in Japan today and well into thefuture is that the lessons of Fukushima may beskewed, ignored or marginalized in a nationwhere nuclear energy represents a significantand abiding risk. The coming months willprovide a critical barometer as Japan resets itsnational energy strategy and institutes newnuclear safety and crisis response measures.

Jeff Kingston, Director of Asian Studies, TempleUniversity Japan. Editor of Natural Disasterand Nuclear Crisis in Japan: Response andR e c o v e r y a f t e r J a p a n ’ s 3 / 1 1(https://www.google.com/search?q=Natural+Disaster+and+Nuclear+Crisis+in+Japan:+Response+and+Recovery+after+Japan%E2%80%99s+ 3 / 1 1 & h l = e n & c l i e n t = f i r e f o x -a & h s = M x D & r l s = o r g . m o z i l l a : e n -US:official&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=shop&ei=BQ5iT-3lEpKz0QHa3aSXCA&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=6&ved=0CEEQ_AUoBQ&biw=775&bih=766) (Routledge 2012).He is an Asia-Pacific Journal associate.

Recommended citation: Jeff Kingston,'Mismanaging Risk and the Fukushima NuclearCrisis,' The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue12, No 4, March 19, 2012.

•Miguel Quintana, Ocean Contamination in theW a k e o f J a p a n ' s 3 . 1 1 D i s a s t e r(https://apjjf.org/-Miguel-Quintana/3718)

•Koide Hiroaki (interview), Japan's NightmareFight Against Radiation in the Wake of the 3.11Meltdown (https://apjjf.org/events/view/136)

•Gayle Greene, Science with a Skew: TheNuclear Power Industry After Chernobyl andF u k u s h i m a(https://apjjf.org/admin/site_manage/details/3733/Science with a Skew: The Nuclear Power

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Industry After Chernobyl and Fukushima)

Notes:

1 I would like to thank two anonymousreviewers, Mark Selden and Rodney Armstrongfor their helpful suggestions.

2 Asahi 2/28/2012

3 NHK News 2/28/2012

4 In assessing TEPCO’s approach to safety it isimportant to bear in mind it’s track record ofcover-ups and falsification of repair andmaintenance records. Jeff Kingston,Contemporary Japan. Wiley, 2011. 149-155

5 Jeff Kingston, 'Ousting Kan Naoto: The Politicsof Nuclear Crisis and Renewable Energy inJapan,' The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 39No 5, September 26, 2011.

6 The nuclear village includes utilities, vendors,bureaucrats, regulators, politicians, academicsand journalists who promote and defendnuclear energy.

7 NHK News 9 Interview 3/8/2012.

8 Charles Perrow (2011) “ Fukushima and theInevitability of Accidents”, Bulletin of theAtomic Scientists 67(6) 44-52.

9 Daniel Aldrich, Site Fights: Divisive Facilitiesand Civil Society in Japan and the West, CornellUniversity Press: Ithaca, NY, 2008.

10 Hiroshi ONITSUKA, 'Hooked on NuclearPower: Japanese State-Local Relations and theVicious Cycle of Nuclear Dependence,' TheAsia-Pacific Journal Vol 10, Issue 3 No 1,January 16, 2012

11 There was no national anti-nuclear energymovement pre-3/11 and the anti-nuclear bombactivists did not embrace this issue. See Simon

Avenell, “From Fearsome Pollution toFukushima: Environmental Activism and theNuclear Blind Spot in Contemporary Japan”Environmental History (online Feb 22, 2012; print forthcoming) Environmental History2012; doi: 10.1093/envhis/emr154

12 Some lower court decisions went against theutilities and/or government, but these werereversed on appeal. Lawrence Repeta, “Couldthe Meltdown Have Been Avoided?”, in JeffKingston (ed), Tsunami: Japan’s Post-Fukushima Future. Foreign Policy: Washington,DC, 2011. Pp. 183-194. This ebook is availableon the Foreign Policy website or from Amazon,h e r e(http://www.foreignpolicy.com/ebooks/tsunami_japans_post_fukushima_future). For a broaderdiscussion about how the judicial system hasbeen manipulated to protect conservativeinterests and stifle civic activism see LawrenceRepeta, “Reserved Seats on Japan’s SupremeCourt”, Washington University Law Review,vol. 88 (2011), 1713-1744.

13 Takagi Jinzaburō, “Kakushisetsu to Hijōjitai:Jishin Taisaku no Kenshō o chūshin ni,”Nihonbutsuri Gakkaishi 50 (1995): 821.

14 Perrow, op. cit., 48.

15 Repeta, op.cit., p. 191

16 ibid.

17 NYT, 4/26/2011

18 Amakudari literally refers to descent fromheaven, but in practice means officials securingpost-retirement sinecures in the industry theypreviously supervised in their official capacity.This system, creates a government-wideconflict of interest; officials are loathe toalienate potential future employers by zealousenforcement of regulations and standards.

19 For a summary of Noda’s views on nuclearenergy see Watanabe Chisaki, Bloomberg

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9/5/2011.

2 0 For a discussion of the new law ondecommissioning see Sawa Takamitsu,“Tradeoff in Nuclear Power”, Japan Times,2/27/2012

21 On the nuclear reactor whistleblower scandalsee Jeff Kingston, Contemporary Japan:History, Politics and Social Change Since the1980s. Wiley 2011, pp. 151-152.

22 This section draws on Jeff Kingston, ThePolitics of Disaster, Nuclear Crisis andRecovery,” in Jeff Kingston (ed.), NaturalDisaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan: Responseand Recovery after Japan’s 3/11. Routledge2012, pp. 188-206.

23 Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano Yukio toldKan before he flew to Fukushima that his visitwould trigger criticism and Kan responded byasking if it was more important to avoidcriticism or try to deal with the crisis. NHKNews 2/28/2012

24 When the TEPCO president called the plantmanager and insisted on cessation of saltwaterpumping, the manager agreed in a loud voice todo so while quietly telling his staff to ignore theorder. Funabashi Yoichi presenting findings ofthe non-government investigation into theFukush ima acc ident a t the Fore ignCorrespondent’s Club of Japan, 3/1/2012.

25 NYT, 6/12/2012

26 Japan Times 2/18/12

27 AP 2/28/2012. The RIJIF report focuses onthe fact that the institutions that should havebeen prepared to manage the crisis—TEPCO,METI, NISA and the NSC- were totallyunprepared and thus did not respondeffectively. Kan very quickly sensed thisvacuum in the crisis response and was trying tocompensate for the shortcomings of theresponsible institutions. Thus to blame him for

meddling seems to overlook the context ofinaction and what was at stake if he shied fromintervening.

28 Funabashi Yoichi responding to questionabout the RJIF report at the ForeignCorrespondents’ Club of Japan 3/1/2012

29 Asahi Shimbun 12/27/2011

30 NHK News 2/28/2012

31 Apparently, former Science Minister TakakiYoshiaki and other top officials in MEXT, theministry responsible for SPEEDI, decided onMarch 15, 2011 to withhold data about thedispersal of radiation from the public. ViceMinister Suzuki Kan argues that releasinginformation about the spread of radioactivesubstances would have caused publicpandemonium. Japan Times 3/4/2012.

32 Japan Times, 2/27/2012

33 Taira Tomoyuki and Hatoyama Yukio,“Nuclear Energy: Nationalize the FukushimaDaiichi Atomic Plant”, Nature (480) Dec. 14,2011, pp. 313–314, 15 December 2011.

34 Asahi 1/26/2012

35 AP 2/28/2012

36 NHK News 3/9/2012. AP 3/10/2012

37 AP 2/15/12

38 NYT 2/15/2012; AP 2/16/2012, Bloomberg2/16/2012

39 Japan Times 2/16/2012

40 Indeed, the RJIF report on the Fukushimaaccident pointed out that as they flew toinspect the Fukushima plant on March 12,2011, Madarame responded to PM Kan’s queryby assuring him that hydrogen explosions atthe plant would not occur. Later that afternoonthe first of three hydrogen explosions

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happened, destroying trust between Kan andhis advisor. Madarame told the committee thatlater he found himself unable to acknowledgethat it was a hydrogen explosion because hehad previously told Kan that such a scenariowas impossible. NHK News 2/28/2012.

41 Mainichi 2/21/2012

42 Jeff Kingston, “The Politics of Disaster,Nuclear Crisis and Recovery”, in Jeff Kingston(ed.), Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis inJapan: Response and Recovery after Japan’s3/11. Routledge 2012, pp. 194-96.

43 Wall Street Journal 3/2/2012. Stage two testsare supposed to assess whether utilities arebetter able to cope with any new accident, butwill not be completed before the end of 2012 atearliest. It is not clear what will be tested andhow safety will be measured in the secondstage of stress tests.

44 Personal communication, Nils Horner,Swedish Broadcasting Corporation, 2/25/2012

45 NHK News 3/8/12

46 AP 3/12/2012

47 For more on compensation issues see DavidMcNeill, 'Crippled Fukushima Nuclear PowerPlant at One Year: Back in the Disaster Zone,'The Asia Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue 9, No 4,February 27, 2012.

48 Reuters 3/3/12

49 Interview NHK News 9, 3/9/2012.

50 Yoichi Funabashi presenting findings of theR J I F i n v e s t i g a t i o n a t t h e F o r e i g nCorrespondent’s Club Japan, 3/1/2012.

51 Nicola Liscutin, 'Indignez-Vous! ‘Fukushima,’New Media and Anti-Nuclear Activism inJapan,' The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 47No 1, November 21, 2011; Satoko Oka

Norimatsu, 'Fukushima and Okinawa – the“Abandoned People,” and Civic Empowerment,'The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 47 No 3,November 21, 2011

52 The number of referenda has been increasingsince the 1970s because citizens believe that itis an important method for expressing theirviews on important policy issues and it is a wayfor local governments to challenge nationalpolicies imposed by the central government.Numata Chieko, “Checking the Center: PopularReferenda in Japan”, Social Science JapanJournal, vol 9, (1) April 2006, pp. 19-31.

53 For an assessment of the prospects ofrenewable energy see Andrew DeWit, 'FalloutFrom the Fukushima Shock: Japan’s EmergingEnergy Policy,' The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9,Issue 45 No 5, November 7, 2011.

54 NHK News 2/28/2012. Asahi 3/10/2012. TheFarm Ministry and local governments banfarming in 1/8 of Fukushima’s paddies,including the no-entry zone in a 20 km radiusaround Fukushima Daiichi, but guidelinesissued on February 28, 2012 allows ricecultivation in other areas where contaminationlevels exceed official standards. Municipalgovernments are supposed to monitor ricecultivation from planting to harvesting andinspect all bags of rice to ensure they don’texceed the new maximum 100 becquerelcesium standard before distribution. The FarmMinistry requires that local authorities submitrice inspection plans by June, but this will beafter the planting and such capacity does notcurrently exist.

55 Interview with Yoichi Funabashi, Chairman ofthe Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, Asahi2/29/2012. Remarks by Kitazawa Koichi, formerchairman of the Japan Science and TechnologyAgency, at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club ofJapan, 3/1/2012. Kitazawa explained that it wassheer luck that the hydrogen explosion pushedwater into the spent fuel rod storage pool at

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reactor 4; this was not a fail-safe mechanism.

56 Asahi 3/8/2012.

57 Masa Takubo, “Nuclear or Not? The Complexand Uncertain Politics of Japan’s Post-Fukushima Energy Policy”, Bulletin of theAtomic Scientists, 67(5) 2011, 19-26. Forrecent further details on Rokkasho see Reuters2/ 24,/2012.

58 Mainichi 2/29/2012

59 Special Report on Nuclear Energy, TheEconomist March 10, 2012. Quote from leaderon p. 15.

60 With no sense of irony about the wreckedlives and huge costs piling up in the aftermathof the Fukushima disaster, nuclear advocatesslyly remind us that windmills kill birds.

61 Special Report on Nuclear Energy, TheEconomist March 10, 2012, p. 11.

62 Ibid., p. 12

63 Kitazawa remarks drawing on RJIF non-government investigation report on theFukush ima acc ident a t the Fore ignCorrespondents’ Club Japan, 3/1/2012.

64 Matthew Penney, Nuclear Power and Shiftsin Japanese Public Opinion, The Asia-PacificJournal, Feb. 13, 2012.

65 Earthquake damage is reported by JakeAdelstein and David McNeill, “Meltdown: WhatReally Happened at Fukushima?” Atlantic Wire,July 2, 2011. Accessed Dec. 12, 2011. here(http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/07 / m e l t d o w n - w h a t - r e a l l y - h a p p e n e d -fukushima/39541/)

66 Japan Times, 2/28/2012; Wall Street Journal(Asia) 2/29/2012

67 AP 2/28/2012