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Introduction

Fukushima is not yet over. The nuclear emergency declaration at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has still not been lifted even at the present juncture. Of the residents who evacuated in line with evacuation instructions issued four times within twenty-four hours of the accident (a peak of 164,865 people in May 2012), 43,022 are still unable to return to their homes (as of August 2020). There were no deaths due to direct exposure to radiation during the accident, but indirect deaths, due to the evacuation and subsequent stress, amounted to 3,739 (as of December 2019), according to the Reconstruction Agency.¹ Radiation in the plant near the nuclear reactor is still high, and the situation inside the nuclear reactors cannot be confirmed.

It is presumed that most of the highly radioactive “debris” resulting from the nuclear reactor core meltdowns is located at the bottom of the reactor containment vessels. The technology and plans for its removal have not yet been finalized.

Before the accident, fifty-four nuclear power plants were operating in Japan, but as of the end of October 2020, only nine reactors and five out of the twenty-seven plants that have applied to restart have been approved.

The total amount of damage caused by the accident was calculated at 22 trillion yen (US$204 billion) by the TEPCO Reform and 1F (Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant) Problem Committee of the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) in the “Proposal for TEPCO Reform” announced in 2016. In 2019, the Japan Economic Research Center, a private think tank, announced a trial calculation that the cost in managing the accident would rise to a maximum of 80 trillion yen (US$743 billion) over the course of forty years.

Fukushima is still not behind us.

However, the most symbolic indication that Fukushima is not yet over may be the fact that the investigation of the accident, its background, and responses to it are not yet complete. And, therefore, the essential question of what lessons can be drawn from Fukushima is yet to be answered.

MARCH 11, 2011. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident happened due to a tsunami that came in the wake of an earthquake. The cause of this accident and crisis has been clarified to a considerable extent by research and investigations such as the Government Investigation, the Diet Investigation, the TEPCO Investigation, and the Independent Investigation.

The Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident produced by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation made the following analysis. The accident was a “parallel chain nuclear disaster,” in which Units 1, 2, and 3 went into meltdown one after another and Unit 4 caught fire, but was essentially a man-made disaster. The following factors can be cited as the structural background to the man-made disaster:

1 The trap of the myth of absolute safety

2 A failure in safety regulatory governance

3 The Galapagosization of safety regulations

4 The ambiguity of “national policy carried out by private entities”

5 A lack of leadership and crisis management during a national crisis

The myth of absolute safety is the perverted nuclear safety culture view that preparations for severe accidents in and of themselves cause anxiety among residents, concerning nuclear power. To put it another way, it is a belief system that embeds the social psychology of making risk a taboo in its superstructure, and the interests of the so-called nuclear village, which promotes nuclear power, in its sub-structure. The Japanese “nuclear village,” politics, and government administration all fell into this trap.

Safety regulatory governance involved issues such as the duplicated and vertically compartmentalized nuclear administration of the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT); the typical subservience of a regulatory body to the promoting body as seen with the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency located under METI and the Ministry of Resources and Energy; and the political dynamics of the “nuclear village,” where the power company had stronger political power than the regulatory agency.

The Galapagosization of safety regulations refers to a belief and sense of superiority that Japanese safety regulations were excellent even in light of international standards. Nuclear safety regulations based on a “Japan-only safety principle” equally took a backward stance on international cooperation concerning nuclear plant counterterrorism and making severe accident measures mandatory.

National policy carried out by private entities is a system in which private enterprises are responsible for the “private” nuclear power generation business under a “government policy” promoting the peaceful use of nuclear power. However, while this may have worked during normal times, at a time of nuclear crisis, the system was revealed to not function at all. National responsibility in the event of a severe accident and the role of the responding forces at that time were not clear in the legal system. Who was to make difficult decisions, as well as when and how, spanning both onsite and offsite, such as evacuation or withdrawal from a nuclear power plant at a time of rising radiation, remained obscure.

A severe nuclear accident inevitably brings about a national crisis. It is also indicative that the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident caused a crisis in the Japan-U.S. alliance. During this national crisis, the quality of both the Japanese government and Japanese firms was called into question in terms of both statecraft and strategy, and raised serious questions about the nature of Japanese leadership.

Ultimately, the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident was a crisis caused by human error. Of those preparations, the most important provision was governance, but this was inadequate. Fukushima was a tragic lack of preparing for crisis governance.

In September 2012, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (chaired by Shunichi Tanaka), a highly independent committee tasked with the mission of ensuring safety in the use of nuclear energy, and its executing organization, the Nuclear Regulatory Authority, were established. This has brought more transparency and independence into decisions regarding safety regulations and process. However, the public remains as yet unconvinced as to whether the Nuclear Regulatory Authority is really different from the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency and the former Science and Technology Agency, which were riddled with members of the “nuclear village.”

Certainly, each power company subsequently built tidal banks as a tsunami countermeasure, bought power supply trucks as an emergency power supply measure, stockpiled a large amount of batteries, and purchased several fire trucks. However, these provisions are all readily visible and of a hardware-centric focus, so to speak. In contrast, software-based arrangements, such as organizing execution units as the “last bastion” during extreme nuclear accidents, resident evacuation plans, health effects, and radiation management are still inadequate.

Tokyo Electric Power Company has applied to reopen its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant (No. 5 and 6) in Niigata Prefecture, the world’s largest nuclear complex, but Niigata Governor Ryuichi Yoneyama has stated that unless there is a thorough investigation of (1) the Fukushima nuclear accident, (2) the impact of a nuclear power plant accident on residents’ health and lives, and (3) safe evacuation methods in the event of a nuclear accident, the debate on reopening cannot commence. And even nine years on from the accident, there is strong prefectural opposition along the lines of “restarting should not be allowed until they have investigated and learned their lessons.”

For example, SPEEDI, a real-time damage prediction system for protecting residents from radiation exposure in a radiation accident, was not used for resident evacuation after the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident. The discussion as to what kind of lessons to draw from that is not yet over. Following a recommendation from the National Association of Governors to “use it effectively,” the government decided “it would not prevent each municipality from using it at their own responsibility.” However, opinions within related institutions are divided, with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission saying that SPEEDI “cannot and should not be used.”

In terms of software, what we lack the most is perhaps imagination. Whether it is a tsunami, a large-scale compound disaster, a meltdown, or a worst-case scenario, the containment of one’s imagination by defining them as “unexpected” can produce deadly results. This is the most important lesson learned from the Fukushima nuclear accident.

However, this does not mean that the Japanese people, nor Japanese society, inherently lack imagination. The root of the problem is that the political and administrative institutions have not imagined the possibility of “unexpected” events. National security and the safety of citizens can only be ensured through preparedness, prevention, and response by making the unexpected known among the public and disseminating information.

In addition, when a risk assessment exceeds the expectation of what can be managed and imposes excessive stress on business management or political systems, Japan has a political and organizational culture that tends to contain that assessment within an “expected range.” A rigorous risk assessment is understood as causing “unnecessary anxiety and misunderstanding” among the public. Anything that falls outside of the “expected” range of risk, therefore, is driven away. The Independent Investigation Commission used the expression “prioritizing small reassurances and sacrificing greater security” to describe the costs of the psychological and political segregation of risk assessment and management.

After the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident, Japan redeveloped a new safety regulation system by proudly implementing “the world’s strictest” safety measures. This enthusiasm deserves some praise, but to claim that it is “the world’s strictest” simply serves the purpose of imposing “homework” for the companies and offering psychological reassurance to the public. As a result, a new “safety myth” is created, reproducing a regulatory culture that sacrifices safety.

After the accident, the number of reactors that have been slated for decommissioning stands at twenty-four, including those at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi.² As many nuclear power plants are forced to decommission or shut down operations, national opinion is also divided over the current back-end regime of stockpiling plutonium and the nuclear fuel cycle policy, any conclusion being continually put off. As James M. Acton argues in his piece, Wagging the Plutonium Dog: Japanese Domestic Politics and Its International Security Implications, Japan risks violating internationally recognized best practices by producing more plutonium than it can consume within a decade if policy procrastination continues.³ And in the process of moving forward with reopening plants, other than the economic argument, the government still has not adequately considered the viewpoint of ethics, responsibility, and security, which is inevitably required when using nuclear power that carries with it the risk of destroying humanity from the roots.

After the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident, a paradigm shift away from nuclear power to renewable energy began in Germany, Taiwan, South Korea, and other countries. In such a setting, Japan has failed to provide a persuasive post-Fukushima energy policy or positioning of nuclear power plants.

This book is a record of the accident and crisis that began with the station blackout at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on March 11, 2011. This is a story of the people who faced, dealt with, and sought to overcome the ordeal during the thick of this crisis. Rather than being a representation of problems peculiar to Japan, it is a universal challenge, something that could happen anywhere in the world when a civilized society fails to handle the unforgiving technology of nuclear power.

I, therefore, believe that the lessons learned from Fukushima should be shared with the world. It will be fortunate if this book can in some way contribute to a feedback mechanism for learning lessons from Fukushima.

May 25, 2020 (the day the Japanese government decided to lift the state of emergency for the coronavirus pandemic)

Yoichi Funabashi