The massive earthquake that hit Japan’s northeast coast on 11 March 2011 triggered a tsunami that crested as high as 40 meters as the waves smashed into the nation’s coastline. While not every earthquake off the coast of Japan triggers a tsunami, the Tohoku one was exceptionally destructive. As it swept the Japanese seaboard, it dragged buildings, boats, cars, and debris several kilometers inland, taking with it about 20,000 lives. But even as attempts to clean up after this widespread devastation continue over a decade later, the catastrophe is remembered a decade later for mostly just one thing: the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Introduction
In the book The DNA of Disaster: Catastrophe by Design, I demonstrated the dangers of regulatory neglect and capture. One example of this capture led directly to the Titanic catastrophe- not the acutal iceberg impact, but the lack of lifeboats turned a mostly survivable disaster into a disaster that was mostly unsurvivable. The mechanism of this twist is not obvious, but is quite instructive. The Olympic Class Ships were heavily promoted in the press to be exceptionally engineered and as safe as walking on dry land, to the point which one can call the entire effort ‘Monument Building.’ This effort was played out in the press, likely a combination of efforts by shipowners, shipbuilders, and the Stone–Lloyd water-tight bulkhead door company, and further buttressed by editors and enthusiastic members of the public. The synergy produced by the interaction of these components produced a Blue-Sky Monument we know today as the Olympic class ships of the White Star Line, ships which, to the travelling public of the time, were said to have embedded within them “all the science and skill of a century of steam navigation.” Like the Titanic, the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi illustrates how public opinion can be carefully cultivated by monument building in modern times, enabling regulatory capture. The history leading up to the Fukushima disaster was and still is relevant to the study of social systems and how they interact with purpose-built industrial systems such as nuclear power plants.
Energy for Japan
Lacking sufficient quantities of fossil fuel besides coal, Japan has historically found it necessary to import up to 90% of its energy requirements, including uranium, which is necessary for the production of nuclear power by the technology in use in Japan. In the decade following World War II, Japan met about 50% of its energy needs with domestic coal, hydroelectric power provided approximately one third of its power requirements, and the balance was fulfilled by imported oil. In the decades that followed, power consumption doubled every five years into the 1990s. Power-hungry and developing rapidly, Japan turned to nuclear technology imported from the United States to sustain its economic growth. Before the oil crisis of 1973, nuclear power constituted only 2.6% of its power from nuclear reactors. But by March 2011, about 30% of Japan’s electricity needs were supplied by nuclear power plants.
The operation of nuclear power plants, or NPPs, involves the contained manipulation of extraordinarily long-lived toxic substances which are capable of persisting in the environment for millions of years. Human exposure to this waste may cause health impacts such as increased risk of cancer and chromosomal anomalies. Many of the waste products are water soluble, and can concentrate in soil or body tissues such as the thyroid gland. Use of fissile nuclear power assumes that the substances with high catastrophic potential will be contained and separated from the environment both during the power generation phase and the millions-of-years-long waste containment phase. This containment must be able to account for its environment in all conditions, including natural disasters, plate tectonics, war, and corrupt or absent regulatory bodies.
With nuclear technologies, we are on our maiden voyage, hopefully still learning from our errors. Human beings emerged in Africa around 300,000 years ago, and until recently have never been required to sequester such hazardous substances from the environment for millions of years. If we look to manufacturing for error-rate comparisons, an oft-mentioned metric of error is called six sigma. Six sigma is a statistical term that represents a measurement of defects present in a human-designed process. A process operating at three sigma would produce a defect-free product 93.32% of the time, while a six sigma process produces a defect-free product 99.99966% of the time. A factory producing a simple product at a rate of 1,000 per day would produce only about 10 defective products in the entire year if it was operating at six sigma. When you consider that nuclear waste can persist for millions of years, only one significant error in nuclear fuel or waste handling can befoul an environment essentially forever.
The Long Lead Up to the Fukushima Disaster
A short history of nuclear power in Japan
Nuclear power has its roots in nuclear weapons. The Japanese had a brutal introduction to the power of the atom after the two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Over 200,000 people were killed or grievously harmed by the lingering effects of the blasts, and the survivors, called Hibakusha, suffered many physical and mental hardships including an increased incidence of cancers and other illnesses, weathered substantial financial burdens, and being shunned by Japanese society.
As the American Forces were on their way to Japan for a full-scale invasion, the US military could not risk involving any veto players in the chain of events that led to the bombings and, ultimately, the surrender of Japan. The exclusion of the American public and their representatives in Washington from participation in this major historical decision would arguably produce repercussions throughout the decades that followed, helping to set the stage for the disaster at Fukushima.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were immediately followed by an intense propaganda campaign against the Japanese Empire. The War Department instructed General Thomas F. Farrell to conduct the campaign, designed to corral the Japanese into surrender negotiations. In total, about 6 million leaflets urging capitulation were dropped onto Japanese cities, alongside regular radio broadcasts and newspaper stories. This can be considered the beginning of the American influence in post-war Japan. On 14 August 1945, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito recorded his address to the Japanese Nation:
TO OUR GOOD AND LOYAL SUBJECTS
[…] we have decided to effect a settlement. Indeed, we declared war on America and Britain out of our sincere desire to ensure Japan’s self-preservation (…) the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. 1
1. “The Text of Hirohito’s Radio Rescript,” The New York Times, August 15, 1945, p. 3.
Just after the surrender, the SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) launched the series of programmes to provide basic necessities to the Japanese, who had suffered inflationary economic conditions stemming from excessive military spending prior to the intensive bombing campaign by the Americans, which wiped out large portions of Japan’s infrastructure. SCAP also conducted a demilitarisation of Japan, purging military officers and many local political leaders and disqualifying them from holding further office. The US began to use much of the Japanese government as a means to rule Japan, and the existing Japanese press was used and carefully censored to carry the official narratives and directives of the SCAP.
Almost a decade later, Operation Castle Bravo, the first in a series of high-yield weapon design tests, was conducted in the Marshall Islands, near Bikini Atoll. The device was the most powerful thermonuclear device ever detonated by the United States, and was three times more powerful than expected due to a design error. A Japanese fishing boat named the Daigo Fukuryū Maru (“Lucky Dragon No. 5”) was located about 85 miles away from the explosion, and was well out of the exclusion zone when the detonation occurred on 1 March 1954. The crew of 23 was taken by surprise: they had no plan to shelter below deck and no radiation monitors as they came into direct contact with the highly radioactive fallout. This fallout coated the vessel, crew, and catch with a white, ashy, gritty residue that stuck to everything on the boat. The crew finished their time at sea, and headed to port in Yaizu. By the time the vessel reached port some two weeks later, some of the crew were already sick with headaches, burns, and severe hair loss. Japanese medical investigators quickly identified the illnesses as acute radiation disease caused by the radioactive fallout from the weapons testing. Before the source of the illness was identified, the contaminated fish was sold at the market. The incident was quickly picked up by the press and went worldwide, causing an international incident. Japan was once again a victim of atomic weapons at the hands of the United States.
Particles from the explosion made their way around the world in the atmosphere and ocean, and were found in Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, and India. Residents of Pacific Islands were found to have high levels of caesium in their bodies After caesium-137 was found in locally grown foodstuffs and fish, and some of the islands were evacuated. Strontium-90 particles were blown up into the stratosphere by the rapidly-expanding fireball, and made their way to the southwestern United States, prompting popular magazines to warn of contaminated foods.
The medical community quickly established that exposure to fallout from Castle Bravo led directly to an increase in the mortality rate in certain cancers and an increase in the likelihood of leukaemia and lung, breast, and thyroid cancers in the residents of the Marshall Islands and nearby populations. Exposed populations were found to have an overall increased rate of developing cancer than other populations, up to ten times that of the United States.
It is no wonder, then, that a majority of the Japanese population were resistant to Nuclear Power in the mid-1950s. Prior to this incident, the occupying forces in Japan heavily censored any news coverage of radiation contamination. Following the Lucky Dragon Number 5 incident, however, the public suddenly became sensitised to such disasters and reminded of the horrors of atomic weapons, although the US continued testing and Japan continued to be subjected to contaminated rain and ocean-caught fish. By the summer of 1955, a petition started by a housewife had been signed by one-third of the population of Japan. As a result of this strong public opinion, the Atomic Energy Basic Law was established in December 1955, forbidding military uses of nuclear energy on Japanese soil or in Japan-controlled waters. Incidentally, recently declassified documents reveal that, despite the ban, US Navy warships routinely docked in Japanese ports loaded with nuclear weapons. Further, the Naval fleet was brimming with nukes, and many were nearly detonated as a consequence of accidents. For example, in December 1965, The USS Independence, on its way to Yokosuka, Japan lost a pilot and an aircraft loaded with a nuclear weapon when it suddenly rolled off the deck and sank into 5,000 metres of water. It was never recovered and remains deep in the ocean today.
Meanwhile, other forces were at play. The Japanese economic recovery plan, also known as the “economic miracle”, was an ambitious programme created by the Japanese government to spur the economic recovery of a country devastated by war. The government saw economic development as a way for Japan to find a new role in the world and make up for the setback caused by World War II. The primary policy to serve this goal was the Yoshida doctrine, and many scientists, business leaders, and governmental elites chose nuclear power by elimination as the energy source to usher in a technological and industrial revolution that would put a new and better Japan back on the world’s stage. Unsurprisingly, the task of convincing a sceptical Japanese public was vast indeed.
A Reluctant Japan Embraces Nuclear: The Selling of Nuclear Power to Housewives
It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
Niccolò Machiavelli,
The Prince (1513)
The force of American hard power that culminated in the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led directly to American soft power. In President Truman’s message to Congress in 1945, he detailed the need to renounce the bomb and instead foster cooperation between world powers for the good of humanity. President Truman also proposed the formation of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE), which Congress created soon thereafter. The AEC and JCAE both effectively put nuclear energy under civilian control, from the mining of the ore to the production of nuclear fuel. Although the primary objective of the AEC was the production and control of nuclear weapons, they also started a nuclear power programme.
Toward the end of the Truman presidency and the beginning of his successor, Eisenhower’s, tenure, it became apparent that nuclear disarmament was not likely due to the inability to account for all the fissile material that had been produced by that time, with the Soviet Union detonating its first atomic weapon on 29 August 1949. This, of course, meant that since the US no longer had a monopoly on nuclear weapons, it now required a solution to calm the nuclear fears of a jittery American public. While still a candidate in 1952, Eisenhower worked closely with C. D. Jackson, whom he had known since World War II. In 1944 and 1945, Jackson served as Deputy Chief at the Psychological Warfare Division of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, the headquarters of the Commander of Allied Forces in north west Europe, who was U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Later, at the time of Eisenhower’s campaign, Jackson was an editorial executive from the Time-Life media empire and a leading proponent of “psychological warfare.” When Eisenhower was inaugurated as the 42nd President of the United States on 20 January 1953, he appointed Jackson as his special assistant for psychological warfare. Eisenhower also appointed the President’s Committee on International Information Activities, known as the Jackson Committee, headed by William Jackson, to study America’s overseas propaganda and make recommendations. 2
2. After declassification of the Eisenhower documents in 1980, it became known that while Eisenhower was concerned that a nuclear-armed world was headed for catastrophe, he responded to this fear with a deep commitment to public relations, spending a great deal of time and effort on collaboration with his committee members, speech writing, and propaganda campaign planning, which coloured his administration’s approach to the Cold War.
Josef Stalin died on 6 March 1953, and suddenly the West faced a new Soviet leader. Though the West had no immediate plan to take advantage of the new diplomatic circumstances, the new Soviet leader, Georgi Malenkov, called for relaxation of tensions and negotiations on international issues. Malenkov and Lavrenty Beria, the new Minister of Internal Affairs, both appeared to show interest in raising the living standards of the Soviet people, but years of Stalin’s state censorship and cultish style of leadership, similar to modern-day North Korea, allowed the communication apparatus on both sides to atrophy. However, the populace on each side appeared ready for relief, and a possible reopening of dialogue could not go unheeded. On 15 March 1953, Malenkov launched his “peace offensive”, announcing, with reference to the United States, “there is no dispute or unresolved question that cannot be settled peacefully by mutual agreement of the interested countries” (Brooks, 2000).
Eisenhower’s Chance for Peace address was delivered a few weeks after Stalin’s death on 16 April 1953. In the words of C. D. Jackson, Stalin’s death was “the biggest propaganda opportunity offered to our side for a long time”. This speech was Eisenhower’s opening announcement of his intent to separate the world powers into Western (US-centred and pro-peace) and the Soviet Union and its captives (warlike). Eisenhower’s Blue Sky and Dark Sky Monument Building did not begin with this speech, but was carried over from his campaign rhetoric and inaugural address. In this speech, Eisenhower outlined the intent of the US and its allies that were seeking “true peace” in an almost Christian sense, whereas the atheistic Soviets were cast in a warlike posture with “huge armies, subversion”, and “rule of neighbour nations”. This rhetoric gave the Soviets the chance, if they were willing, to end Stalin’s era, and move forward with a more open and less militaristic and confrontational path. The plan that followed this speech outlined the language and proposed deployment of the plan to promote Eisenhower’s vision for the projection of American soft power through a massive propaganda campaign that could make way for nuclear disarmament and allow both the Soviet Union and the US to save face and pivot from nuclear weapons to civilian nuclear power.
That same year, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace programme was developed. This was an umbrella term for various multi-legged programmes that originally had the stated aim of facilitating peace through reduction of nuclear weapons on both sides. It was the logical extension of the Chance for Peace address, designed for Blue Sky Monument Building oriented towards gaining the support of the American people and providing propaganda fodder for repetition in all available channels, especially those of RFE (Radio Free Europe) and RL (Radio Liberty). The Atoms for Peace speech, written by C. D. Jackson, John Foster Dulles and others, was given as an address by President Eisenhower to the United Nations General Assembly on 8 December 1953, the twelfth anniversary of the United States’ declaration of war on Japan.
The vision was to demonstrate not the power of the US arsenal to rain down destruction upon its foes, but to use the power of the atom to provide constructive usefulness to the world. A nuclear stalemate, he warned, “would be to confirm the hopeless finality of a belief that two atomic colossi are doomed malevolently to eye each other indefinitely across a trembling world”, and to avoid this despair we should remember that, “it is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.” 3
3. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Atoms for Peace” (8 December 1953): https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/eisenhower-atoms-for-peace-speech-text/
The American occupation of Japan ended on 28 April 1952, as the Treaty of San Francisco went into effect. During this occupation period, the current constitution was adopted, under the auspices of The Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), General Douglas MacArthur, whose aims included the suppression of Japanese militaristic nationalism. The SCAP maintained strict control of the Japanese media, prohibiting among other things criticism of the SCAP, any form of Japanese Imperial Propaganda, and discussing the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Criticism of Allied policy both pre- and post-war was also prohibited, and by the time these restrictions were relaxed, the Americans had deep knowledge of Japanese industry and media and who the key people were. After the war, much of the power generation and transmission infrastructure was either destroyed or had fallen into neglect, leaving the Japanese political and industrial leadership ripe for the introduction of nuclear power.
The United States Information Agency (USIA)
Following World War II, Congress acknowledged the need for the federal government to communicate with and influence foreign populations, continuing the wartime exchange of information into a permanent fixture. The Jackson Committee subsequently recommended the establishment of a permanent agency responsible for the strategic dissemination of an American message to foreign peoples—which would be the role of the United States Information (USIA). The USIA was created by executive order in 1953 by President Eisenhower with the mission to understand, inform, and influence foreign publics in promotion of the national interest, and to broaden the dialogue between Americans, American institutions, and their foreign counterparts. The USIA was headquartered in Washington, and oversaw its field offices around the world (The US Information Service, or USIS). This mission was to be carried out through four distinct functions:
Explain and advocate US policies in terms that are credible and meaningful in foreign cultures;
Provide information about the official policies of the US, and about the people, values, and institutions which influence those policies;
Bring the benefits of international engagement to American citizens and institutions by helping them build strong long-term relationships with their counterparts overseas;
Advise the President and US government policy-makers on the ways in which foreign attitudes will have a direct bearing on the effectiveness of U.S. policies.
The aim of the Occupation was to transform a defeated imperial Japan into a democratic, America-friendly pacifist nation, a change that required not only the dismantling of Japan’s war machine, but also the replacement of a Japanese belief system entrenched in the pre-war system of education. This educational system was the primary means of indoctrination in the belief system of the Japanese, which guaranteed a steady supply of militaristic young Japanese willing to sacrifice their lives for the Emperor and the glory of the imperial nation. In order to begin to change hearts and minds, a number of American intelligence agencies became established in Japan and began to consolidate their power. The two agencies with the most power in the early days of the occupation were the Civil Intelligence Section (CIS) and the US Army’s G2 intelligence section, both of which made way for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), newly created only in 1947, to take over the oft-clashing intelligence-gathering efforts of the prior agencies. When General MacArthur was dismissed in 1951, the CIA already had a foothold in Japan and was poised to receive files and contact lists from the outgoing intelligence gathering units (Tessa Morris-Suzuki, 2014).
One of the key players known to the American Occupation forces was the prominent anti-communist media mogul Matsutarō Shōriki, the owner of the Yomiuri Shimbun, a very influential newspaper, and Nippon Television Network (NTV). It is clear that Shōriki, along with many opinion leaders worldwide, held the belief that nuclear technology could lead to an almost utopian future for all mankind, and could help Japan by revolutionising its economy (Nelson doctoral thesis, 2014), and that if Japan was not willing to bring nuclear technology to its benefit, it would certainly fall behind. Shōriki was considered a CIA asset, but with his own goals and ambitions. His experience in propaganda dated to the pre-war era (Krooth, 2015), and he was a linchpin in the CIA’s effort to propagandise the Japanese public in the post-war atomic years. In the immediate years following the “Atoms for Peace” speech, Japanese newspapers including the Yomiuri Shimbun collaborated with the USIA to promote the events that kickstarted the propaganda campaign: the 1956 “Atoms for Peace” exhibits in Japan. These exhibits, which travelled to seven cities altogether, was extensively hyped and partially sponsored by the Yomiuri Shimbun. These exhibits emphasised the peaceful uses of radiation such as medicine, agriculture, and manufacturing, along with nuclear power. The “Magic Hands” demonstration, which showed how radioactive materials could be manipulated by an operator, was especially popular. The demonstration featured the operator manipulating objects with no direct line of vision, only by CCTV, and using the device to delicately pin a diaper on a doll. While the Japanese government supported the exhibitions, it did not directly participate in the exhibits per se, instead restricting their role to statements made at the opening ceremonies, including Matsutarō Shōriki (Nelson doctoral thesis, 2014). Hundreds of thousands of Japanese visited the exhibits touting “The Power of the Atom.”
USIS FILMS and Cultural Exchange
The occupation of Japan from August 1945 until April 1952 saw an extraordinary variety of films produced by the USIS and distributed around Japan. There were only about 2,000 theatres in Japan at the start of the occupation, and the vast majority of villages had no motion picture theatres. The USIS therefore made 1,300 mobile projectors available, complete with instructions on how to conduct the film showing and the following discussions. More than 400 films were eventually made available, and the films were shown by Japanese film educational specialists that fanned out to all corners of each Prefecture for presentations. The programme was designed for cultural exchange between the US and Japan and to groom the Japanese to become receptive to, and even dependent on, the US and its culture and technology, including nuclear power, and to erase the perceived taint on America’s intentions fostered by Soviet Propaganda and of course the bombings of two Japanese cities. Categories included community life, democracy, communism, the English language and grammar, health and medicine, intercultural education, Japan, religion, sports, and travel-focused films on regions of the US. There was only one film on Atomic Power from this era; however, that was about to change.
According to historians Yuki Tanaka and Peter J. Kuznick, the intense USIS effort of the 1950s began to exert its intended effect, noting that :
A classified report on the US propaganda campaign showed that in 1956, 70 percent of Japanese equated ‘atom’ with ‘harmful,’ but by 1958 the number had dropped to 30 percent. Wanting their country to be a modern scientific-industrial power and knowing Japan lacked energy resources, the public allowed itself to be convinced that nuclear power was safe and clean. It had forgotten the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 4
4. Yuki Tanaka and Peter J. Kuznick, “Japan, the Atomic Bomb, and the ‘Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Power’,” The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus 9, May 02, 2011.
There are some things to keep in mind when one attempts to understand the insular nature of Japan. First of all, Japan was never colonised. The closest experience Japan had to colonisation was the American Occupation after World War II. There is no influential Japanese diaspora, such as in the case of Israel to name one example, and the language of business and academia in Japan is not English, like the vast majority of developed nations, but Japanese. While Korea, for example, has embraced Western Religion to a certain degree, by contrast the penetration of western religion (1.5% Christian) in Japan has been minimal. This fact alone can give you an idea of the depth of penetration of foreign culture in Japan. Therefore it is no surprise that the American or Western criticism that sprang up around nuclear power was left behind as the technology was brought into Japan.
Further, since about 1955, through a merger of two right-wing conservative parties, the Liberal Party and the Japan Democratic Party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has ruled Japan almost completely without effective opposition. In 1994, the New York Times exposed decades of CIA support of the LDP. After declassification of US Government records, the story was beginning to take shape. In October 1994, journalist Tim Weiner described the Cold War effort to “make the country a bulwark against Communism in Asia and undermine the Japanese left”, to achieve which the CIA “spent millions of dollars to support the conservative party that dominated Japan’s politics for a generation”.
From the “Iron Triangle” to the “Nuclear Village”
In the West, we are steeped in the tradition of cheques and balances, notions of effective but limited government oversight, and the power of markets to decide winners and losers. In contrast, Japan has a longstanding cooperation between politics, bureaucracy, and big business which is often referred to as the Iron Triangle by western scholars. The Iron Triangle consists of multiple moving parts and both formal and informal relationships between the elites of these three institutions, providing the conduits for negotiation and cooperation, with the assumption that cooperation and alignment between these three corners of political economy produces the best outcome for Japan Inc. There are two essential components of Japan Inc. or the “Iron Triangle” that lubricate those moving parts and provide what is seen as optimal interinstitutional cooperation: money and the amakudari system, both of which played prominent roles in the morphing of the Iron Triangle into the Nuclear Village.
Currency has been in use since ancient times to demonstrate both the power and reach of a ruler, and the Japanese government has been very cunning and successful wielding its monopoly control of the public purse to achieve its goals in the establishment of nuclear power stations in rural Japan. In Japan, the government was deliberately involved in conflict resolution between industrial needs and political problems arising in the public sphere as a backlash to those unwanted solutions. Policy tools selected by the state to shape industrial outcomes included a “credit-based financial system with government-administered prices which facilitates and encourages government intervention in industrial affairs.” 5 The intervention of the general public was considered unnecessary and, unlike the United States, had very few access points for the public to exert influence and become involved in policy decision-making processes. The governmental–industrial apparatus which was tasked with the siting of nuclear power stations had to compensate for the preferences of local citizens near to those proposed power station sites. Despite opposition due to the Japanese “nuclear allergy,” Japan has been relatively successful at siting nuclear power plants with these techniques. In September 2021, there were 60 units (54.6GW) of nuclear power plants in Japan.
5. John Zysman, Governments, Markets, and Growth: Financial Systems and the Politics of Industrial Change (Cornell University Press, 1983).
In Japan, It is long been understood that to get a nuclear power plant built, you essentially have to buy your way into the hearts and minds of the typically-impoverished depopulating towns and villages of Japan’s rural areas. According to Daniel Aldrich, author of Site Fights, resistance to nuclear power stations in rural Japan is sustained and even increasing over time, but Japan’s government remains committed to its nuclear power programme. The siting of dreaded industries like nuclear power or petroleum or chemical refining presents challenges in all democracies, “although private utility companies in Japan carry out the siting of nuclear power plants much like private firms in North America, the Japanese government plays a fundamental role in the process.” 6
6. Hajime Takizawa, “Current Status of Japan’s Nuclear Power,” Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), 2021, http://www.iges.or.jp.
During the 1960s and perhaps a bit later, nuclear operators such as TEPCO and Chugoku Electric would have been met with hostility by fishermen prepared to fight for their traditional, meagre livelihoods where they had harvested seaweed and fish for generations. Eventually, the fishermen gave in to lump sum payments made possible by subsidies created in 1974 by Conservative (LDP) Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, the legendary rags-to-riches politician both credited, and despised, as the architect of the political machine we now call the Iron Triangle. Tanaka grew up in the remote and snowy Niigata prefecture, long ignored by the centres of power in Tokyo. Flush with funds following a chance business venture in Korea after World War II, Tanaka made a bid for public office and was eventually successful at the age of 28. Once elected to the Diet, he found himself embroiled and jailed in a bribery scandal, but was able to beat the charges. He was first appointed as the Postal Minister, and later rewarded with an appointment as Minister of Finance, where he was able to exert considerable influence through the allocation of large financial resources for public works projects in Japan that originated with the postal banking system. These works included bridges, dams, and a number of unnecessary or dubious works such as the lining of riverbanks with concrete, to the delight of the owners of “chosen” construction companies that received the contracts.
In an article published in 1986, historian Chalmers Johnson wrote of Tanaka that what he recognised “above all was that money was indeed the mother’s milk of politics and that whoever controlled the largest amounts of it in the political system, controlled the system.” Instead of exclusively lining his own pockets, Johnson wrote that Tanaka used the money “to get things done.” 7 In an overview of corruption in Japan, economist Werner Pascha describes corruption in Japan as the “use of public office for private gains.” 8 While Japan is not a particularly corrupt country in comparison with other modern democracies, corruption in Japan is seen as a built-in structural feature that acts both as a lubricant and “payments for access by outsiders to the bureaucratic centres where the main decisions for the society are made.” 9
7. Chalmers Johnson, “The Reemployment of Retired Government Bureaucrats in Japanese Big Business,” Asian Survey 14:11 (November 1974).
8. Werner Pascha, “Corruption in Japan: An Economist’s Perspective,” Duisburg Working Papers on East Asian Studies, No. 23/1999, Gerhard-Mercator-Universität Duisburg, Institut für Ostasienwissenschaften, Duisburg, 1999.
9. Ibid.
Civil servants in Japan traditionally worked for the Japanese Emperor, who was considered a deity in human form. Working for the deity, and for the Japanese government after World War II, was in itself a type of reward, but the pay was quite meagre when compared with those of similar stature in Japanese Industry. Those same bureaucrats would be rewarded for their selfless toil (i.e., faithful service to the conservative party and/or to their masters in industry) by placement into highly paid positions in large corporations upon retirement or cabinet positions. This is known as the amakudari system, literally “descent from heaven” or, from the sacred service of the Emperor to the profane world of profit-seeking corporations. This system has counterparts in other democratic systems; for example, in the US it is common for industry insiders to gain political access through contributions to the campaigns of politicians through lobbying. In the US the right to petition the government is enshrined in the Constitution, although the practice of this right is unpopular with Americans who implicitly understand that accessing and swaying a system so dependent on money for attention is essentially impossible for the average individual. In Japan it is the bureaucrats who both originate and enact legislation, and the amakudari system has been a mechanism used by industry to keep the bureaucrats in line. This system came into play in the Nuclear Village.
The term “nuclear village” is specific to Japan and refers to an informal network of people who in general have vested interests in nuclear power in Japan. These interests can be considered either economic, patriotic, and even academic, and run along the same lines as the so-called “Iron Triangle.” While those who were essentially team players could, in general, enjoy the benefits of being included in the club, those who do not support the group were denied the same benefits and in a sense ostracised from the ranks. As Jeff Kingston wrote in his article that came out shortly after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster:
The Village shares a common commitment to nuclear energy, and that means ostracising naysayers and critics and denying them the access and benefits that ‘members’ enjoy. This modern version of the traditional practice of murahachibu (village exclusion) has been the stick, while access to vast resources and corridors of power are the carrot. Researchers who do not support the Village consensus on the need, safety, reliability and economic logic of nuclear power do not get grants and are denied promotions. Journalists who criticise the nuclear village are denied access and other perks, while politicians seeking contributions, and media companies eager for a slice of the utilities’ massive advertising budgets, trim their sails accordingly. Crossing the nuclear village carries consequences just as support has delivered benefits; during the Fukushima crisis the chairman of TEPCO was in China treating favoured members of some of Japan’s largest media organisations to a luxury junket. 10
10. Jeff Kingston, “Japan’s Nuclear Village,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 10, no. 37, no. 1 (September 10, 2012).
The Nuclear Safety Myth
Japan’s nuclear establishment took over the American effort to persuade the Japanese public that Nuclear Power is absolutely safe. The handoff resulted in the establishment of the JAERO, the Japan Atomic Energy Relations Organisation. According to their website, the “JAERO was established in 1969. Since its establishing, JAERO has striven to enlighten the people on peaceful use of nuclear energy”. The website also lists the organisation’s “major activities”:
-Lectures for the wide public
-Dispatching of experts and providing experimental workshops on radiation to educational institutions
-Holding of study lectures for the press
-Holding of briefing sessions at municipalities with nuclear power plants
-Operating a website which provides information on nuclear power
-Publishing
-Conducting opinion surveys 11
11. https://www.jaero.or.jp/index_en.html
Tobias Weiss, an academic who studies pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear journalism and the reporting on nuclear power in Japanese media, wrote of the continuation of the massive effort:
The 1990s and early 2000s saw the emergence of various ‘pro-nuclear consumer and environmental groups.’ From 1989, JAERO took responsibility over the nuclear power monitor system. The dispatch of speakers (kōshihaken) for various kinds of events was stepped up. Subcontractors of JAERO and other companies and organisations connected to the nuclear industry started to conduct regular education seminars for opinion leaders from various social strata to educate them about energy issues, radiation and related topics. These opinion leaders are then mobilised to spread their ‘educated opinion’ among followers and the general public on symposia and various kinds of events. 12
12. Tobias Weiss, Civil Society and the State in Democratic East Asia (Chp. “4. The Campaign for Nuclear Power in Japan before and after 2011”), Between State, Market and Civil Society (2020).
This centralised propaganda effort harks back to the USIS FILMS and Cultural Exchange programme conducted by the American occupation forces in Japan in the immediate aftermath of the war. Logically, the success demonstrated by the dramatic shift in Japanese public opinion concerning the peaceful uses of nuclear technology would foster a repeat attempt to shore up support. This effort was not exclusive to JAERO, however, as Weiss observes: “According to the Asahi Shimbun, in 1989 TEPCO alone was dispatching speakers to a hundred events per month… Together, the multiple events by various organisations make for a large-scale pro-nuclear education campaign”.
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station
The power station consisted of six reactors, all of which were designed by General Electric (GE), and began commercial power generation with Unit One in 1971. Fukushima Daiichi Unit One is considered the grandfather of all other nuclear power plants in Japan. Nuclear power plants are designed to manage large amounts of heat generated by the nuclear fuel. When a reactor goes critical, i.e., begins normal operation, it begins producing heat energy which is then used to produce the electrical power. This heat energy differs from traditional sources of heat energy like natural gas in that it cannot be suddenly switched off. In contrast, once a reactor is shut off for maintenance or SCRAMmed (a shut off in an emergency) due to a trigger, such as an earthquake, the core continues to produce tremendous amounts of excess heat that must be removed in order to prevent the core from melting. Cooling water is needed to remove excess heat, which ultimately keeps the core temperature within safe operating limits and as a moderator to slow down the neutrons and capture their kinetic energy as heat. For these reasons, there is a tendency to locate nuclear power plants near large bodies of water. In Japan, where there are few rivers that could fulfil the requirements for the large amounts of cooling water needed by the GE nuclear power plant design, the majority of nuclear reactors are on the coasts.
The oceanside bluff chosen as the site for the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station was originally 35 metres high. This height was well above any recorded tsunami wave that had hit Japan, but the construction of the plant at this height would have had the disadvantage of requiring much more power to run the lift pumps that supplied the cooling seawater to the plant. Any backup system installed designed to circulate coolant would be required to power the lift pumps, and the higher they had to lift the seawater, the more power required from the backup system. It was therefore decided to lower the height of the coastal bluff. In so doing, it was argued that since the loose rock and soil was removed down to the bedrock, the plant would be more resistant to seismic activity. The regulation that specified the design-basis height of the nuclear power plants was based on a tsunami from an earthquake in 1960, when a 3.1-metre tsunami hit Chile. Unbelievably, in the country which coined the term “tsunami,” it was thought that 10 metres above sea level would provide an adequate safety margin for the plant, with the seawater pumps located 4 metres above sea level. The elevations for Fukushima Units 1 to 4 were 10 metres above reference sea level, and units 5 and 6 were 13 metres above sea level. 13
13. Costas Synolakis and Utku Kânoğlu, “The Fukushima accident was preventable,” The Royal Society Publishing (Published: October 28, 2015), https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2014.0379.
Design of the Daiichi NPP
The family of nuclear reactor designs that the Fukushima Daiichi NPP belonged to was originally a design developed by the Argonne National Laboratory in Idaho in 1952. This prototype first went critical in 1956, followed by the Vallecitos Nuclear Centre, the first privately-owned NPP to deliver significant quantities of power to a public utility grid in 1957. After the success of the design was demonstrated and operating personnel were trained, General Electric adopted the design for its first large-scale commercial NPP, built in Illinois in 1960 and known as Dresden Unit 1. It had a generating capacity of 280 MWe and was retired in 1978, with 91 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel stored on site in dry storage. The Fukushima Daiichi reactors are direct descendants of this General Electric BWR design which was essentially in its operational infancy at the time of construction of the Fukushima One NPP. Incidentally, Vallecitos Nuclear Centre’s main power production facilities closed in 1963, and power production ceased altogether in 1977 after an active fault line was discovered running directly beneath the facility.
In contrast to the Windscale accident of 1957, characterised by the graphite core overheating, fire, and subsequent release of radioactive material, light water reactors incorporated redundant safety systems designed to prevent core overheating and the breaching of containment. It was not until the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 that core meltdown was shown to be not just theoretically possible, but a documented occurrence, and by this time many NPPs of the earlier designs were already in operation, including the units at Fukushima Daiichi.
Further, knowledge of the Japanese seismic environment was also limited by instrumentation which was primitive by today’s standards, and likewise the computer modelling and simulation of the environment to facilitate prediction of the impact of seismic events of increasing magnitude on the design basis of the NPP were very limited or not available. Therefore, concrete information required to adapt the Dresden NPP design to seismically active Japan was non-existent at the time of the construction of the Fukushima Daiichi NPP, and instead the required modifications were based on engineering assumptions, judgement, and experience.
Disaster Strikes the Daiichi NPP
When the 2011 earthquake struck, three reactors, Units One, Two, and Three, were operating, while reactors Four, Five, and Six had been shut down for routine maintenance work. The intense vibrational energy of the earthquake triggered a SCRAM on the operational reactors immediately. Of the three backup systems in place—line connections to the existing power grid, battery backup systems, and the diesel backup generators—the line connection to the power grid was unavailable due to earthquake damage or mismatched sockets, leaving only the backup diesel generators and battery systems to circulate the coolant water immediately after the earthquake.
Key Subsequent Events: Approximately 40 minutes after the earthquake stopped, the first wave of the tsunami swept the coastline, followed by the second 10 minutes later. All of the connections to the external power grid were damaged by the tsunami, and all but one of the backup diesel generators were inundated by seawater and rendered inoperable. Incredibly, the backup diesel generators were all installed in the basements of the buildings. The one that survived, Unit Six, was approximately 3 metres above the others.
The instrumentation was non-functional without power, and the coolant pumps stopped working after the battery backups became discharged. Thus, the condition of the cores could be only estimated, and there was no time to assess the containment vessels for cracks resulting from the violent shaking. The personnel were so desperate to monitor the status of the cores that they took car batteries from tsunami-wrecked vehicles and connected them to get instrument readings.
The first release of radioactive materials occurred at about 8 to 14 hours post-tsunami, and the first hydrogen gas explosion occurred in Unit One at about 24 hours. Over the next week, a barrage of hydrogen explosions and fires continued, with subsequent releases of radioactive material into the environment. The Japanese government evacuated about 160,000 people from a 20-kilometre radius around the plant.
Fertile Soil for Nuclear Power
In an article in the New York Times on 24 June 2011, Norimitsu Onishi described a series of exhibitions near a nuclear power plant in Japan that “extols the virtues of the energy source with help from ‘Alice in Wonderland'”. Characters from the children’s tale tell Alice that “we’re running out of energy!” Next, a robot shaped like the Dodo “declares that there is an ‘ace’ form of energy called nuclear power”. The robot goes on to explain, “it is clean, safe and renewable if you reprocess uranium and plutonium”. The bureaucrats learned their USIS lesson well. The Lewis Carroll-themed exhibit is a testimony to the effectiveness of the Atoms for Peace campaign of the 1950s, and reminiscent of the travelling exhibits that were so instrumental in swaying Japanese public opinion to have a positive outlook on nuclear power. Onishi continues:
Over several decades, Japan’s nuclear establishment has devoted vast resources to persuade the Japanese public of the safety and necessity of nuclear power. Plant operators built lavish, fantasy-filled public relations buildings that became tourist attractions. Bureaucrats spun elaborate advertising campaigns through a multitude of organisations established solely to advertise the safety of nuclear plants. Politicians pushed through the adoption of government-mandated school textbooks with friendly views of nuclear power. 14
14. Norimitsu Onishi, “‘Safety Myth’ Left Japan Ripe for Nuclear Crisis,” The New York Times, June 24, 2011.
As with the idea of “unsinkable” ships we traced in the last chapter, this intense indoctrination gradually led to acceptance by the general public, and even the nuclear power operators themselves came to believe that they were indeed exceptional. When the earthquake and tsunami hit the nuclear power plant, they were totally unprepared and lacked “some of the basic hardware to respond to a nuclear crisis and, after initial resistance, had to look abroad for help. For a country proud of its technology, the low point occurred on March 31 when it had to use a 203-foot-long water pump—shipped from China, an export market for Japanese nuclear technology—to inject 90 tons of fresh water into the No. 1 reactor building. But perhaps more than anything else, the absence of one particular technology was deeply puzzling: emergency robots.
Japan, after all, is the world’s leader in robotics. It has the world’s largest force of mechanised workers. Its humanoid robots can walk and run on two feet, sing and dance, and even play the violin. But where were the emergency robots at Fukushima? The answer is that the operators and nuclear regulators, believing that accidents would never occur, steadfastly opposed the introduction of what they regarded as unnecessary technology.”
***
At the time of writing, the salvage and clean-up operation is ongoing 10 years later, and is expected to continue for decades. About 90,000 people from the group evacuated from the immediate area surrounding Fukushima Daiichi have not been able to return to their homes. The melted core continues to be cooled by water, which is then stored in giant above-ground leaking containers.
TEPCO is now pushing for the controlled dumping of this wastewater into the Pacific Ocean. Retired nuclear engineer and former nuclear industry executive Arnold Gundersen stated that the Fukushima nuclear disaster is “the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind.” 15
15. Daniel Pope, “The Unkept Promise of Nuclear Power,” Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, March 2021, https://origins.osu.edu/article/unkept-promise-nuclear-power.
Interpretation and Analysis: Fukushima Daiichi, the man-made disaster
Like the Titanic, the Fukushima Daiichi NPP and its siblings and cousins were built with design assumptions. Like the iceberg that struck the Titanic, the 2011 earthquake and resulting tsunami were not entirely unpredictable. Whilst the Titanic was speeding through known ice fields, Fukushima Daiichi was built on seismically active ground, where strong earthquakes were commonplace. Both the Titanic and Fukushima Daiichi were subjected to regulatory failures, Blue-Sky Monument Building, and the resulting cognitive biases and regulatory capture.
The Japanese nuclear power plants were designed, constructed, and operated imperfectly, and like the Titanic these failures were identifiable and preventable. The obvious conclusion here is that the basic intelligent design could not account for its immediate, physical environment.
Reactor containment vessels are extremely robust, designed to withstand constant forces over long periods of time. Within these vessels, a subdued, restrained version of a nuclear blast occurs, almost as if lightning could be contained, slowly released, and harnessed. It only works if the enormous quantities of heat energy produced by the reaction are carried away from the reactor core.
The earthquake was powerful enough that a reactor vessel in at least one of the reactors might have been damaged enough to result in leakage, but the Achilles heel was the vulnerability of the power plant to the tsunami. The whole system depends on circulation pumps to carry away the enormous quantity of heat generated. The circulation pumps in turn depend on power from the grid, and in case of failure, there are battery backups and diesel generators. However, like a cardiac patient, the reactor vessel is subject to certain plumbing failures. If the flow of coolant is interrupted by broken pipes or pump failure, the whole system will fail and cause a meltdown disaster. As I am writing these words, it is not yet known whether the pipes connecting the reactor to its cooling supply were unaffected by the intense shaking caused by the earthquake, due to the intense radiation that persists at the site preventing human inspection.
The design and engineering were up-to-date for 2011, but the location of the diesel generators below grade made no sense. The “navigation” maps, which should contain the seismic information and/or the tsunami information, were furthermore incomplete, and thus not incorporated into the design. This is akin to piloting the Titanic without the use of maps. Fukushima Daiichi’s iceberg was, of course, the earthquake and tsunami. Those who were operating the Fukushima Daiichi “ship” believed that the ship itself was so safe, there was no need for any safety drills or any thought of lifeboats—in this case safety measures—which were deemed unnecessary due to the perceived absolute safety of the technology.
Building a nuclear power plant with 1960s technology is similar in many ways to building a giant passenger ship in the early 1900s. The regulatory environment and public opinion were lulled into a false sense of security despite the high catastrophic potential of industrial accidents. This resulted in a deliberate collective cognitive bias, a manufactured blind spot which functioned to disable objective evaluation of an industry that cultivated an image of safety. Starting with an intense re-education programme of the Japanese public begun in the post-war period, a significant segment of the Japanese people became captive right along with the regulatory apparatus.
Fukushima design specifics
The power plants should have had an earthquake and tsunami stable emergency cooling system—which would have meant perhaps gravity-fed cooling water stored in high towers or in a lake on the bluff at a higher elevation than the plant. The emergency cooling system at the moment of disaster was largely unchanged from the initial installation more than 40 years prior. This brings to mind the consequences of failure to update the design of nuclear power plants, which are staggeringly expensive to build and maintain. Due to the robust characteristics of the construction, the designs are by nature difficult and expensive to adapt to changing conditions. What I mean by this is that any fission-based nuclear power plant built will risk being built in one set of economic conditions, while being paid for and maintained in another, perhaps largely different, set of economic conditions. Today we are over half a century on from the design and construction of the first generation of nuclear power plants. We have learned a great deal since those early days, and we have seen that at least in Japan and probably other locations, there will be resistance to changes to the physical structure of the plants themselves, even as they age and become more affected by nuclear corrosion and breakdown. Nuclear reactors are subjected to extreme heat, pressure, and neutron bombardment, sometimes 24 hours a day for 40 to 60 years. We should have built-in regulations with teeth and a cross-border independent regulator that will force the operators to make necessary changes when they are needed.
Of course, there were other design shortcomings: Venting—the build-up of hydrogen gas inside the reactor buildings caused explosions that scattered radiation over a wide area. The particulates were found spread around the region, and were present in the air and found their way into the ocean. Passive ventilation rather than electrically-powered venting, or a passive hydrogen-scavenging system, would have done much to mediate the crisis.
Location—the plant was located on a bluff that was originally 35 metres high, lowered supposedly to bedrock, to reduce the risk of building damage by soil liquefaction. The added benefit here was that the pumps that were needed to lift seawater up to the plant for cooling purposes could be lower-powered, which also would help in the case of emergency power needed for reactor cooling. There was also an added benefit to the transportation of construction equipment and material, which would have come by sea and been much easier to deliver at the reduced bluff height. But given the high seismic activity of Japan and the presence of multiple faults, the location of any nuclear power plant should not be taken lightly. As we saw, the location chosen was ultimately hazardous both for seismic activity and tsunami risk. The Tohoku earthquake, at a magnitude of 9, was referred to as a “once-in-a-millennium event”. This was based on historical records dating to 869 AD, the Sanriku Japan Trench earthquake. In the year 869, there were no instruments to measure the magnitude of the earthquake, but there was a written historical record that implied the effects were roughly equivalent to the Tohoku earthquake of 2011.
One need only glance at the other data used to locate the nuclear power plant to identify a serious error. The seismic single data point was a magnitude 9.5 earthquake in Chile in 1960. This earthquake, completely on the other side of the “Ring of Fire”, caused a tsunami wave that travelled all the way to Japan, resulting in a wave height of 3.1 metres observed at Fukushima. However, if you consider just one other local data point, you can see that the design basis of a 3.1-metre tsunami was absurd even in the 1960s: the Sanriku Earthquake in 1933, for example, which also occurred in the Japan Trench, had a magnitude of 8.4, the centre of which was located only 180 miles offshore, and caused a tsunami with waves up to 28.7 metres. This shows that there was a disregard for the immediate local seismic environment in the design process. In psychology this bias is known as the availability bias, aka the “high water mark” which is a mental shortcut that typifies the human tendency to think that examples of things that come readily to mind are more representative than is actually the case. This would be akin to Captain Smith basing the course of the Titanic on conditions at a port thousands of miles away, or on his memory of the conditions that were present in the local environment the last time he took that route.
Seawall—There was a report that documents filed with the Japanese authorities agreed to use a data point from Typhoon no. 28 in February 1960, which produced a maximum wave height of 8 metres, as the storm wave design basis. Therefore, TEPCO was allowed to lower the grade of the reactor building to 10 metres, making the seawall essentially 10 metres high. As we know, the 14–15 metre tsunami that resulted from the Tohoku earthquake easily breached the 10-metre elevation. Further, the shifting of the earth’s crust caused by the earthquake lowered the elevation of the seawall relative to the sea level.
Regulatory environment—To summarise what was previously discussed, Japan imported the vast bulk of its energy requirements prior to World War II. Recovery and modernisation would need to be accomplished as quickly as possible, including getting as many people as possible working. Japan Inc. was created from the ashes of the Empire. All this industrial activity required increased electric power, far beyond the capability of pre-war Japan. The United States had the answer in the form of nuclear technology, and the Americans brought with them the financial backing to mount a huge propaganda campaign to support the conservative LDP and suppress the social elements of Japanese political activity. The newly-created Japanese nuclear industry arrived in, and evolved within, the existing Japanese regulatory structure. According to Florentine Koppenborg, “consecutive LDP governments put METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) in charge of nuclear policy implementation, which treated the nuclear industry as a partner rather than subject to state control.” 16
This was partly due to Japanese culture, but mainly due to the design of the regulatory agencies tasked with policy implementation.
16. Florentine Koppenborg, “Nuclear Restart Politics: How the ‘Nuclear Village’ Lost Policy Implementation Power,” Social Science Japan Journal 24, no. 1 (Winter 2021): 115–135, https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyaa046
The regulators had no ability to claw-back licences and were unable to penalise plant operators. This was played out after the 2007 Kashiwazaki–Kariwa nuclear power plant following an earthquake of magnitude 6.8 on the Richter scale. The damage to the nuclear power plant following the earthquake caused a significant radiation leak into the sea, and was initially reported as 50% less than the actual amount. Further, TEPCO, the plant operator, also underreported a radiation spill where “hundreds of drums were overturned in the storage facility, and the lids of several dozen of these drums were open, but no radioactive material was detected in the air in the storage facility.” 17 Only 100 storage drums were initially reported. An article in the Asahi Shimbun reported that the seismic survey of the area upon which the nuclear power plant was built in 1980 found that there were up to four fault lines in the area, but construction of the plant went ahead when it was determined that the faults were no longer active. The Asahi Shimbun also reported that it was the mayor of Kashiwazaki, Hiroshi Aida, who ordered the power station to shut down, and not Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA). The Kashiwazaki–Kariwa nuclear power plant was the largest nuclear-generating station in the world by net electrical power generating capability while it was in operation.
17. Ryu Honma, Genpatsu puropaganda [Nuclear Power Plant Propaganda] (Iwanami shinsho). Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2016. (Book in Japanese), 67.
Studying impacts of earthquakes and tsunamis on Japanese nuclear power plants U.S. Committee on Lessons Learned from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident for Improving Safety and Security of Nuclear Plants has, among other things, concluded that:
Noggerath et al. (2011) noted that construction of the Fukushima plants began in 1967, well before the moment magnitude scale was introduced. At the time, the largest magnitudes were expected not to exceed 8.5, and seismic moment was not yet being used by engineers, regardless of the seismic moment. On the basis of the introduction of the moment magnitude (Kanamori, 1977), we now know that earthquakes larger than magnitude 9 do exist; the largest recorded event was a magnitude 9.5 in Chile in 1960. Earthquakes may be even larger than this but have not occurred since the introduction of modern seismic technologies in the 20th century. Noggerath et al. (2011) note that Professor Hiroo Kanamori had used the original surface wave approach to find that the Tohuku Earthquake (i.e., Great East Japan Earthquake) measured 8.2, versus the 9.0-9.1 based on the moment magnitude scale. Several studies after the 2004 Sumatra earthquake (Stein and Okal, 2007; McCaffrey, 2008) suggested that earthquakes with a moment magnitude of 9 could occur at any subduction zone throughout the world, but these studies do not appear to have been considered by disaster preparedness planners in Japan. 18
18. Committee on Lessons Learned from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident for Improving Safety and Security of U.S. Nuclear Plants; Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board; Division on Earth and Life Studies; National Research Council. Lessons Learned from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident for Improving Safety of U.S. Nuclear Plants. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2014 Oct 29. 3, “Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami and Impacts on Japanese Nuclear Plants.” Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK253933/.
Coverups and Scandals
Prior to the Fukushima disaster, TEPCO had a long history of coverups that suggest a deliberate disregard of basic safety protocols for running nuclear power plants which, after each instance of wrongdoing, seemed to be punished with merely a slap on the wrist. TEPCO is the biggest power company in Asia, and this begs the question—is TEPCO considered too big to fail? Tepco’s past record is indicative of a pattern of corruption that had infiltrated the culture of the company.
According to the Citizen’s Nuclear Information Centre (Tokyo), a former engineer at General Electric International, Inc. blew the whistle and gave information to the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) on 3 July 2000 that “revealed the falsification of inspection records regarding cracks in a steam dryer, as well as the attempt to hide the repair work for the cracks by the editing of video tapes”. This tip-off was never taken seriously by MITI, and sat neglected for two years. After January 2001, NISA took over administrative authority from METI, and the new agency found that the name of the whistle-blower was revealed to TEPCO. While TEPCO never took overt action against its former employee, the fact divulges the level of collusion and corruption endemic to the nuclear operator and its regulator.
TEPCO was forced to acknowledge its fraudulent activity, and it was subsequently revealed that there were twenty-nine cases of falsification of records related to core components of reactor vessels, which upon inspection proved far worse than had been reported in cases going back to 1993. The fallout from this revelation:
On 29 August 2002, NISA announced that the above falsification had occurred.
On 30 August 2002, NISA ordered electric utilities and nuclear-related business operators to review inspection records comprehensively.
On 2 September 2002, TEPCO announced the resignation of five executives, including President Nobuya Minami.
On 20 September 2002, Tokyo, Tohoku, and Chubu electric utilities announced that there had been a cover-up of damage to recirculation system piping.
In particular, falsified containment vessel airtightness test data was revealed at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Unit One.
On 15 April 2003, Fukushima Daiichi Unit Six was shut down. As a result, all TEPCO nuclear power plants (10 at Fukushima and 7 at Kashiwazaki–Kariwa) were shut down.
The MOX fuel programme planned for Fukushima Daiichi Unit Three and Kashiwazaki–Kariwa Unit Three is indefinitely frozen.
Economic Environment of Nuclear Power in Japan
After the 2011 Fukushima disaster and its aftermath, the Japanese government had the policy of idling most of the nuclear power stations in Japan. Since the onset of the war in Ukraine, there has been a rethinking of nuclear within the Japanese government concurrent with a shift in public opinion. As of summer 2022, fully 60% of the Japanese public support restarting the idled power stations. This comes after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced in May that the country will take firm steps to restart idled nuclear plants to stabilise energy supply and prices. The restarting of Japan’s rapidly ageing fleet of nuclear reactors is expected to be an economic decision, and no new nuclear power projects have been announced.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority, created in response to the Fukushima disaster, has set new safety standards for restarts. Older reactors, with less time left on the clock and generally of lower output, will experience the law of diminishing returns, while newer and more modern reactors may be more economically viable. The nuclear village of the past, in which the tight-knit nature of the state–industry partnership was impervious to outside influences in the decision-making process, now has chinks in its armour in the form of opportunities for veto-players to challenge individual reactor restarts. Only the court system has the authority to override the NRA rulings.
The question now is: are the courts—which in the past heavily favoured the LDP—open to giving citizen groups a voice in the process of restarting individual reactors, or will the LDP maintain its grip on the judiciary and revive the machinery of the village? Since Japan is a large importer of energy, robust support of nuclear power at both governmental and public is expected to be maintained.
Disaster Summary
Nuclear Power in Japan was transplanted directly from UK and US designs conceived very early in the evolution of nuclear power in the world and were built in Japan with minimal precautions or modifications to account for the seismic and political environments of Japan. During the time Fukushima Daiichi and its siblings were in operation, significant new information became available that called into question the assumptions made during the siting, design, and construction phases of the first generation of nuclear power stations in Japan. Further, the nuclear regulatory apparatus was merely adapted from existing institutions and was not designed and built to handle the unique risks and requirements of nuclear power in Japan. These assumptions were clearly grossly inadequate for both the physical and regulatory environments of Japan.
The lack of large bodies of water in the interior of Japan resulted in the stations being located and concentrated along the coastline, exposing the stations directly to both seismic and tsunami risks. Like the countless maritime catastrophes that preceded the Titanic disaster, many nuclear incidents involving fissile material occurred in Japan well before the great earthquake and tsunami of 2011 that should have triggered a complete redesign and overhaul of nuclear safety and regulatory systems, but unfortunately did not occur due to multiple factors including endemic corruption, accident coverups, and regulatory capture, all under the cover of active Blue Sky Monument Building by the vested interests of the Japanese Nuclear Power Village, an unopposed LDP with a major policy goal of introducing nuclear technology to Japan, which altogether resulted in the so-called “Safety Myth” monument pushed into the public space. Active Blue Sky Monument Building, as discussed in prior chapters, is a method of manufacturing the consent of the general public for a given monument, in this case a national cultural monument, primarily using public media including newspapers, television, radio, manga, and now the internet. In this case it is very similar to the “Unsinkable Titanic” cultural monument. 19
19. Post-war Japan has seen numerous movement and monument-building efforts, for example the kaizen movement which started in the 1950s. During the war, Japanese factories had been largely destroyed. While the American production system had been involved in the war effort and was intact, Japan was in need of a miracle, and was open to constructive criticism. This role was filled by the arrival of the American statistical quality control expert W. Edwards Deming. Beginning in 1947, and again in 1950, Edwards Deming was invited to Japan by General MacArthur to assist in the first post-war census. In 1950, one of General MacArthur’s staff invited Deming to give a lecture to the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers on statistical quality control in Tokyo. The lectures were so popular they were transcribed and translated into Japanese and sold thousands of copies. This was the beginning of Japan’s economic miracle.
Prior to the Fukushima disaster, regulation of the nuclear power industry in Japan was characterised by revolving doors, regulatory capture, and outright corruption, but above all functioned to prop up a very subsidy-hungry industry and its vast support network. Japan needed an economic miracle to recover from the humiliating defeat it suffered at the end of the war in the Pacific in 1945. Japanese government and industry were desperate to prove Japan’s modernity and industrial and technical prowess, and to do so it needed a cheap, safe, and reliable source of power. Upon this altar, safety concerns were pushed aside to make room for nuclear power technology imported from the USA. The resulting agglomeration was described by many as much less of a regulatory framework and more as a cooperative partnership. The regulatory agency MITI and its subsidiary NISA had the power to grant operating licences for nuclear power projects, but any licence granted could not be suspended or revoked. Therefore, the regulators operated more as partners, since they had no means by which to force utility companies to comply with updated standards, thereby making only non-binding recommendations. 20 Further, had nuclear plant regulations been tightened, there was no legal framework to enforce and check whether existing plants met the new criteria. 21 This is, in my opinion, a regulatory system which does not only discourage Toyota style continuous improvement, but it actively encourages what I call post-engineering supervised neglect.
20. Florentine Koppenborg, “Nuclear Restart Politics: How the ‘Nuclear Village’ Lost Policy Implementation Power,” Social Science Japan Journal 24, no. 1 (Winter 2021): 115–135, https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyaa046
21. Takizawa, Hajime. (2021) “Current Status of Japan’s Nuclear Power.” Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES). http://www.iges.or.jp.
While writing this article, it occurred to me that a country with a history as long as Japan might be expected to be more conscious of the social contract between generations, like the Aboriginal Australians in the Uluru chapter of the book The DNA of Disaster: Catastrophe by Design. In Japan, with its dense population, scarce farmland (only 12% of its total area) and few natural resources, the risk of fouling large swathes of arable land with nuclear waste seems unthinkable.
Fukushima Daiichi was one of the grandfathers of all the nuclear power stations in Japan. An old design which was never retrofitted with safety features, it could not withstand the iceberg thrown into its path by the environment (Marie and Pierre Curie folly). A technological transfer from the US and UK, nuclear power was transplanted into a regulatory environment more suitable for producing electronics and automobiles (Trojan Horse folly). As we saw with the White Star Line as it commissioned the construction of the Olympic and Titanic, risk management became largely voluntary; the lifeboats were almost an anachronistic decoration.
The regulatory apparatus of the Japanese government was not set up to adequately regulate an industry that handled material with such a high catastrophic potential as is found in a nuclear power station, instead acting as an enabler of an expensive, new, and unknown technology that utilises highly toxic material in a process that produces highly toxic waste, waste which possesses a high catastrophic potential for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years and must be sequestered from the habitable environment indefinitely. Only the past generations will not be affected by radiation contamination and decision making. Therefore, all risk from these industrial enterprises is borne by current and future generations. Governments which exclude the living population from decision making concerning high-risk, high catastrophic potential operations are acting with colossal hubris.
In this example, I will go over the assumptions made by the designers of the system. We will start with the Americans, who sold nuclear power to the Japanese. Of course we cannot know the exact thinking at the time, but we will try to approximate the main assumptions as closely as we can.
Assumptions:
1. Japan has few natural resources and can benefit from nuclear power. This base assumption is likely quite true, Japan can and did benefit from nuclear power, however due to the existence of the following assumptions, Japan also suffered from nuclear power, just as it suffered from nuclear weapons.
2. The Japanese, who did not themselves develop nuclear power, are capable of originating and maintaining a nuclear regulatory apparatus that will ensure safety in location, design and operation of the nuclear power stations and are able to do so in a timely fashion, without delays due to a learning curve, organisational delays or external factors. (Remember the time frame is the 1960s up to 2011) Assuming the presence of intelligent design when merely semi intelligent design or no intelligent design is present. (The Divine Intervention Folly)
3. This new nuclear regulatory apparatus will fit into the existing Japanese bureaucratic system and remain an independent watchdog over the Japanese nuclear power industry. This line of thinking would imply misunderstanding the true nature of an intelligent design. (The Trojan Horse Folly)
4. The nuclear power regulatory apparatus will wield sufficient power to coerce the NPP operators to correctly maintain and update the nuclear power plants as needed. Misunderstanding the true nature of an intelligent design. (The Trojan Horse Folly)
5. The NPP operators will maintain a watchful eye over the immediate physical environment to avoid any encounters with ‘icebergs.’ Assuming the presence of intelligent design when merely semi intelligent design or no intelligent design is present. (The Divine Intervention Folly)
Now let us explore assumptions made by the majority Japanese public, who were sceptical of the ‘power of the atom’ up to the mid-1950s, but soon learned to embrace that technology.
First, two main assumptions:
Nuclear weapons technology is very destructive, but nuclear power technology is very safe. Misunderstanding the true nature of an intelligent design. (The Trojan Horse Folly) and Assuming the absence of intelligent design where it is present. (The Propaganda Folly) This is demonstrated by the uncritical buy-in of American nuclear power technology combined with the buy-in of the local propaganda campaign feeding the general public information designed to engender blind trust in the prowess of Japanese nuclear power technology. The Japanese, along with the rest of the world, learned just how destructive nuclear weapons can be with the bombings of the two Japanese cities. However the assumptions about safety were largely manufactured by the NPP operators like TEPCO, and were maintained by strict obedience and control over the gatekeepers of the marketplace of ideas. As Honma put it:
The PR activities to promote nuclear power, which were led by the national government as a national policy since the 1950s and developed by the political, administrative, academic, and business communities centering on the electric power industry, were truly propaganda to capture the public, unparalleled in the world, considering the period of implementation and the huge budgets spent.”
[…] In a dictatorship or military state, people can be forced to sit in front of a TV or radio to listen to statements and speeches of the rulers in order to convey the will of the state and those in power, but this is of course not possible in a liberal society during peacetime. Therefore, another means was needed to effectively convey the arguments of those in power to the people without undue effort. This role was played by “advertisements,” which permeated every corner of Japanese life after the war. And it was the major advertising agencies, with Dentsu at the top, that actually created them and drew up and executed the most effective development plans.
At first glance, they did not appear to be coercive, and various experts, celebrities, cultural figures, and intellectuals spoke of the safety and rationality of nuclear power plants with smiles on their faces. Again and again, advertisements were run, by all possible means, cloaked in the illusion that nuclear power would create a prosperous society and contribute to the happiness of individuals. The nine electric power companies (excluding Okinawa Electric Power Company, which has no nuclear power plants) spent a total of 2.4 trillion yen (according to the Asahi Shimbun) over the 40 years from the 1970s to March 11, 2011, to promote the advertisements. (According to Asahi Shimbun). This was an amount that would have taken even huge global companies such as Toyota and Sony, which spend more than 50 billion yen a year on advertising in Japan, nearly 50 years to spend. 22
22. Honma, Ryu. 2016. Genpatsu puropaganda [Nuclear Power Plant Propaganda]. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. (Book in Japanese)
On the strict control over the media, Honma holds that the intentions of TEPCO, KEPCO, and the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan (FEPC), which did not want anti-nuclear news coverage, were conveyed to the media companies by both of these companies, and they became hidden and powerful. TEPCO and KEPCO acted ostensibly as “super sponsors” in the manner of well-paying patrons, but once they were displeased by any anti-nuclear news coverage, they showed their “dark side” by withdrawing (or reducing) one-sidedly the advertising fees they had agreed to provide. It was the advertising agency’s job to carry out such threats by:
holding advertising expenses hostage. And even the media that did not carry the nuclear power plant advertisements intentionally avoided critical coverage. The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan constantly monitored media reports, and when they found some published articles that contradicted their intentions, they were relentlessly rebutted by mobilising experts and demanded that the articles be revised or corrected. As a result, over time, the media side began to refrain from doing so. 23
23. Ibid.
In contrast to American Advertising companies, which, by law, must avoid becoming an oligopoly or cartel, Japanese advertising agencies have more freedom to engage in these practices. Therefore, the largest Japanese advertising agency, Dentsu, can represent all of the companies in a single industry. Dentsu, called the “master of the message,” can control the media simply by withholding advertising funds from a particular publication as a punishment for unfavourable reports. The huge budgets spent by the nuclear power industry become de-facto bribes to the media companies through Dentsu, according to Honma.
Next, two assumptions about the nature of the technology:
The Americans have brought to us a completely developed, well understood technology that will fit into the Japanese physical environment with few or no modifications. Misunderstanding the true nature of an intelligent design. (The Trojan Horse Folly) and misunderstanding of how that intelligent design will interact with its local natural environment (Marie and Pierre curie Folly).
Nuclear power was in its infancy when it was brought to Japan. Further, in the rush to adopt American nuclear technology, few or no individuals stopped to ask whether the American technology was appropriate for use without modification in such a seismically active area as Japan
Now an assumption made about the ability of the Japanese nuclear regulatory body and its ability to be independent:
The Japanese bureaucracy will be allowed to monitor the nuclear power industry as needed without any interferences. Misunderstanding the true nature of an intelligent design. (The Trojan Horse Folly) After Fukushima, the Japanese regulator was criticised for criticised for insufficiently maintaining independence from the industry, as I wrote previously.
Next, a little bit of propaganda from the past was brought in to sell the robustness of the reactor containment:
In his writings, particularly in the context of the Fukushima disaster, Yuki Tanaka notes that the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) proudly boasted of the robustness of the containment vessels of their reactors, claiming they were made with the same technology originally developed for the main battery of the battleship Yamato.
The construction of the NPPs in Japan was very robust and technologically advanced, like the construction of the Yamato battleship. (Fukushima Daiichi and siblings are as safe and reliable as a Toyota) Misunderstanding the true nature of an intelligent design. (The Trojan Horse Folly)
This is part of the construction of the Japanese nuclear safety myth and its intersection with the chain of authenticity. Linking to the Yamato battleship, which was a Blue Sky monument in the eyes of the Japanese who lived through the war, allowed the Fukushima NPPs to inherit the chain of authenticity which originated with that preexisting Blue Sky monument. This boast highlights a few key points that are central to understanding the cultural context:
Technological Hubris: TEPCO’s claim reflects a deep-seated belief in the superiority of Japanese engineering and technology, a sentiment that was also present in the design and construction of the Yamato. The containment vessels were presented as an invincible “super-weapon” against disaster, much like the battleship was intended to be against a superior naval force.
Symbolic Connection: The use of the Yamato as a point of reference was a deliberate choice to evoke a sense of national pride and technological excellence. It was an attempt to reassure the public that their nuclear power program was not only safe but also a continuation of a noble tradition of Japanese ingenuity.
The Shattering of the Myth: Tanaka argues that the Fukushima disaster, and the subsequent failure of these supposedly “Yamato-grade” containment vessels, shattered the myth of the “safe and durable reactor.” This, in turn, mirrored the symbolic tragedy of the Yamato’s sinking, which marked the ultimate failure of Japan’s “decisive battle” strategy.
Now an assumption about the nature of the above narrative:
The above narrative, that the construction of the NPPs was strong, advanced and robust was a grassroots narrative from actual knowledge and experience, not from the parties protecting their own interests by the promotion of such narratives. Assuming the absence of intelligent design where it is present. (The Propaganda Folly)
In conclusion, the Nuclear Village, through the advertising giant Dentsu, manufactured fables that made their industry look rosy in the eyes of the Japanese public while simultaneously quashing stories that cast them in an unfavourable light. This veil hid an industry rife with corruption, regulatory capture, kickbacks and huge subsidies that were not used to maintain and modernise the nuclear power plants but instead were siphoned off for other uses. The resulting antiquated, outdated nuclear power plants were unable to account for their very active seismic environment, causing an enormous industrial disaster that will reverberate for decades to come. The intelligent design which brought nuclear power to Japan could not account for the regulatory nor the physical environment present in Japan.
Notes
The Fukushima nuclear accident highlights potential dangers arising from the spent fuel pools which continue to accumulate in the United States. Accidents from spent-fuel handling are a risk that needs to be dealt with.
Fallout from nuclear weapons has tended to be from above: spread by wind currents throughout the atmosphere. In contrast, the ‘fallout’ from Fukushima Daiichi has been primarily into the world’s oceans. Dr. Caitlin Stronell explains:
Japan is an island country, and the Japanese people and culture are intertwined with the sea. Fish is the main staple source of protein in the Japanese diet. In Japan there is a reverence for the sea and a sense of awe at its power. The Japanese are no strangers to the destructive power of the sea and its relationship to earthquakes. In Tokyo, Japan and earthquakes are even connected by a special day. 1 September is known as “Disaster Prevention Day” where the public is reminded of disaster prevention steps.
The Fukushima reactor was a boiling water reactor of an older design, with a big flaw it shares with the Three Mile Island design: in the event of a coolant loss or loss of power to circulate coolant, the system heats up to the point it releases flammable hydrogen gas. This originates with the cladding material that surrounds the fuel rods, zircaloy. In the industry, this is known as a loss of coolant accident (LOCA).
The core of a nuclear reactor is a harsh environment indeed, and cladding material is necessary in the boiling water reactor designs to separate the uranium fuel pellets from the water coolant in order to prevent corrosion of the fuel and release of radioactive materials into the coolant circuit. Any cladding material surrounding the nuclear fuel pellets will be continuously bombarded by neutrons, and therefore must be relatively transparent and innocent to neutrons in order to allow the neutrons to freely pass. At the same time, it is chemically compatible with both nuclear fuel and reactor coolant, and must itself be impervious to chemical changes as it is bombarded continuously by the reaction neutrons. In BWR (boiling water reactor) designs, the fuel rods are by design intended to be continually immersed in the water coolant. When there is a coolant system failure, the reactor core temperature rises, and in a feedback loop will continue to rise until the fuel rods melt. At this high temperature, the zircaloy cladding material reacts with steam to produce hazardous hydrogen gas, further, the zircaloy material itself loses strength at higher temperatures. The material is known to lose structural integrity at about 1300 C and at normal operating temperatures, zircaloy itself degrades and must be replaced every 4 to 5 years.
Practically no intelligent design is perfectly compatible with its environment, and that certainly holds true with the zircaloy cladding material. First, the zirconium metal in the cladding oxidises over time and loses its structural integrity due to the diffusion of free oxygen from the surface of the cladding material into the bulk of the material. Further, if there is a coolant loss incident, as the temperature rises, the risk of thermal shock to the cladding increases upon rewetting the reactor core with additional cooling water. This thermal shock can cause crazing, cracking, or even rupture, releasing the radioactive fuel into the surrounding water. This danger is present even prior to meltdown, and in the event of an accident, increases the risk of spewing radioactive materials into the environment.
Japan Times reporter note: Keiichi Ozawa is a Chunichi Shimbun reporter who covered nuclear power and earthquakes after an earthquake-triggered tsunami caused meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March 2011. Ozawa received the science journalist award, presented by the Japanese Association of Science & Technology Journalists in June, for this series published between October and December 2019.
The Tokyo Atoms For Peace Exhibition (Newsreel film) Produced by MITSUI ART FILM PRODUCTIONS
The typical nuclear fission plant in Europe would cost $10 billion and take 10 years to build. How much renewable energy capacity could we add in that time and for the same money?
Bibliography
“Extinct Species,” National Geographic, https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/med/med_chp2.html. Accessed April 29, 2023.
Chalmers Johnson. “The Reemployment of Retired Government Bureaucrats in Japanese Big Business.” Asian Survey 14:11 (November 1974).
Climate Feedback. “Article by Michael Shellenberger Mixes Accurate and Inaccurate Claims in Support of a Misleading and Overly Simplistic Argumentation about Climate Change.” https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/article-by-michael-shellenberger-mixes-accurate-and-inaccurate-claims-in-support-of-a-misleading-and-overly-simplistic-argumentation-about-climate-change/
Colignon, Richard and Chikako Usui. “THE RESILIENCE OF JAPAN’S IRON TRIANGLE ‘Amakudari’.” ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLI, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2001. https://library.fes.de/libalt/journals/swetsfulltext/14218811.PDF. Accessed April 30, 2023.
“The Fukushima Daiichi accident.” Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 2015.
Aoki, M., and G. Rothwell. 2011. “Coordination Under Uncertain Conditions: An Analysis of the Fukushima Catastrophe.” ADBI Working Paper 317. Tokyo: Asian Development Bank Institute. Available: http://www.adbi.org/workingpaper/2011/10/28/4771.analysis.fukushima.catastrophe/
Brooks, Jeffrey. 2000. “When the Cold War Did Not End: The Soviet Peace Offensive of 1953 and the American Response.” https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/19774/OP278.pdf.
Yanagisawa, H., Goto, K., Sugawara, D., Kanamaru, K., Iwamoto, N., and Takamori, Y. (2016), “Tsunami earthquake can occur elsewhere along the Japan Trench—Historical and geological evidence for the 1677 earthquake and tsunami.” J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth, 121.
Abe, K. (1979), “Size of great earthquakes of 1837–1974 inferred from tsunami data.” J. Geophys. Res., 84 (B4), 1561– 1568.
Rakhmanko, A. (2015). “The changing nature of the ‘Iron Triangle’ phenomenon: a case study of the ‘Iron Triangle’ in the postal industry and postal reforms in Japan.” Working papers in contemporary Asian studies; No. 44. Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University.
Flanagan, et al. The Japanese Voter. Yale University Press, September 25, 1991.
Maclachlan, Patricia L. (2004) “Post Office Politics in Modern Japan: The Postmasters, Iron Triangles, and the Limits of Reform.” The Journal of Japanese Studies Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer, 2004), pp. 281-313.
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. “Democracy’s Porous Borders: Espionage, Smuggling and the Making of Japan’s Transwar Regime (Part I).” The Asia-Pacific Journal. Japan Focus. Volume 12 | Issue 40 | Number 4 | Article ID 4198 | Oct 02, 2014.
Takizawa, Hajime. (2021) “Current Status of Japan’s Nuclear Power.” Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES). http://www.iges.or.jp.
Tanaka, Yuki and Peter Kuznick. “Japan, the Atomic Bomb, and the ‘Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Power’.” The AsiaPacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 18 No 1, May 2, 2011.
Tanaka, Akihiko. 2019. “Chapter 3. Japan after World War II.” In Seven Chapters on Japanese Modernization. JICA-Open University of Japan. Makuhari, Chiba: BS231, Apr.
Pascha, Werner (1999): “Corruption in Japan: An economist’s perspective.” Duisburg Working Papers on East Asian Studies, No. 23/1999, Gerhard-Mercator-Universität Duisburg, Institut für Ostasienwissenschaften, Duisburg.
Ramsayer, Mark and Frances McCall Rosenbluth. (1993) “Japan’s Political Marketplace.”
Kingston, Jeff. “Japan’s Nuclear Village.” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 10, Issue 37, No. 1, September 10, 2012.
Koppenborg, Florentine. 2021. “Nuclear Restart Politics: How the ‘Nuclear Village’ Lost Policy Implementation Power.” Social Science Japan Journal, Volume 24, Issue 1, Winter 2021, Pages 115–135. https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyaa046
Krooth, Richard. 2015. Nuclear Tsunami.
Kurokawa, Kiyoshi, MD, and Andrea Ryoko Ninomiya, MPhil. Politics.
Kurokawa, Kiyoshi, Examining Regulatory Capture: Looking Back At The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Disaster, Seven Years Later. Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository, 2018.
Honma, Ryu. 2016. Genpatsu puropaganda [Nuclear Power Plant Propaganda]. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. (Book in Japanese)
Nelson, C. D. 2014. Nuclear Society: Atoms for Peace and the Origins of Nuclear Power in Japan, 1952-1958. [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1409013318
Sakikawa, Noriyuki and Taiji Satō. Genshi no kuni no Arisu (Alice in Atom-Land). Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1954.
Simon SL, Bouville A, Land CE, Beck HL. 2010. “Radiation doses and cancer risks in the Marshall Islands associated with exposure to radioactive fallout from Bikini and Enewetak nuclear weapons tests: summary.” Health Phys.
Synolakis, Costas and Utku Kânoğlu. 2015. “The Fukushima accident was preventable.” The Royal Society Publishing.
Watt Holly, The Guardian. 2017. “Hinkley Point C: the ‘dreadful deal’ behind the world’s most expensive power plant.” https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/21/hinkley-point-c-dreadful-deal-behind-worlds-most-expensive-power-plant
Weiss, Tobias. 2020. “The Campaign for Nuclear Power in Japan before and after 2011.” In Civil Society and the State in Democratic East Asia.
Zysman, John. 1983. Governments, Markets, and Growth: Financial Systems and the Politics of Industrial Change. Cornell University Press.
Appendix to Fukushima I:
In 2000 the Science and Technology Agency’s radiation monitor programme was terminated. Starting around the same time multiple non-profit organisations (NPOs) promoting nuclear power began to appear. There had been a change in legislation in 1998, creating this new type of association.
This led to an “NPO boom,” the rise of a non-profit sector of about 70,000 organisations. The nuclear industry apparently saw promise in using NPOs to promote nuclear power. On the national level, utilities like TEPCO and Kansai Electric Power sponsored women’s groups focusing on consumer issues and environmental protection. An umbrella group named Asuka Energy Forum—active in the market areas of TEPCO and the utilities of Tōhoku, Hokkaidō, Chūbu, Hokuriku (except Fukui), and Chūgoku, with local women’s subgroups in various nuclear power plant locations and smaller cities—was created in 2001 and became an NPO in 2003. This group claims to have twelve local subgroups, some of them also registered as NPOs (Weiss 2019b: 5-13). Kansai Electric Power sponsored its own NPO in 2001. Another NPO was co-opted by Denjiren, the federation of utility companies. Its activities initially aimed at spreading ideas of recycling and waste management in Japan (see Weiss 2019b).
From 2007 the group became a partner of the government’s search for a nuclear waste disposal facility co-sponsoring several workshops. Asuka and the respective local groups started to conduct and promote various kinds of activities to attract new people to their activities. These activities are at times reflected in the names of the local subgroups. One of them, for example, is the Readers Circle Aomori, founded in 1995, and another local group is simply called Free Time, founded in 1993 (Weiss 2019b). The activities described in Asuka’s newsletter range from regular ‘energy cooking’ with celebrities to local ‘energy talks’ for women and power plant and facility tours (AEF 2001-2012). Asuka and other groups also placed expensive advertisements in newspapers to attract new members.
References: Weiss, T. (2019). Japan’s ‘pro-nuclear civil society’: Power in the analysis of social capital and civil society. Journal of Civil Society, 15(4), 326-352.
Rundown: This article examines the pro-nuclear civil society in Japan, arguing that it is not a grassroots movement but rather an “entangled” network of organisations supported by the state, corporations, and the nuclear industry. The paper uses the concepts of social capital and civil society to analyse the power dynamics within this network. It highlights how these groups, often referred to as the “nuclear village,” were able to maintain significant influence on policy and public opinion, even after the Fukushima disaster. The article demonstrates that a “civil society” can also be a vehicle for conservative, state-aligned interests, challenging the traditional view of civil society as an inherently progressive or oppositional force.
Weiss, T. (2019b). Journalistic autonomy and frame sponsoring: Explaining Japan’s “nuclear blind spot” with field theory. Poetics, 80.
Rundown: This paper focuses on the role of the Japanese media in the public discourse surrounding nuclear power. Weiss uses the framework of “field theory” to explain why there was a “nuclear blind spot” in Japanese journalism prior to the 2011 Fukushima disaster. He argues that pro-nuclear groups, with the backing of electric utilities and political actors, were able to influence media reporting through “frame sponsoring,” a process where certain narratives and angles are promoted and others are suppressed. He shows how these influences worked to limit critical coverage and create a general public belief in the safety of nuclear power. The paper explores the interplay between media, politics, and economic interests, and how this dynamic inhibited journalistic autonomy.
Focus: The work of Jun Sugimoto and the NAIIC in 2013 continued to focus on the human and organisational factors behind the Fukushima disaster, a theme also explored by Weiss. The emphasis was on the cultural and systemic failures that contributed to the accident, rather than simply technical failures.
Key Arguments: The work argued that the disaster was “profoundly manmade” and could have been prevented. It pointed to deep-seated issues in Japanese culture, such as a “reflexive obedience” to authority, a reluctance to question the status quo, and “groupism.” This mindset allowed the “nuclear village” (the network of government, utilities, and regulators) to operate with a “single-minded determination” that made it “immune to scrutiny by civil society.” This directly connects with Weiss’s analysis of pro-nuclear civil society. The ongoing work in 2013, including presentations and follow-up reports, reinforced the original commission’s findings. It highlighted how Japan’s post-war drive for economic growth and energy security created a self-confident but insular elite that disregarded international best practices and critical lessons from previous nuclear accidents like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
______________________________________________________________________________
Appendix to Fukushima II:
The top-down construction of the political–industrial apparatus that brought nuclear power into Japan also brought with it merely voluntary risk management measures for nuclear power companies. Even if nuclear power plant regulations had been updated, there was no legal framework to enforce and check whether existing plants met the new criteria.
The Civil Information and Education Division (CIE) was the educational reform arm of SCAP in Occupied Japan. Nelson (2014) paper notes:
Chapter four explores the Atoms for Peace exhibitions outside of Tokyo and focuses on promotional efforts run by the USIS and its cosponsors. Each exhibition was cosponsored by a national or regional newspaper, which also ran the publicity campaign around the exhibition. The media cosponsors were essential to the success of the Atoms for Peace exhibitions. They lent their legitimacy to the exhibitions by showing that nuclear power was welcomed by local institutions and was not something that was being imposed by a former occupier.
(…) Chapter three focuses on the role of Shoriki Matsutaro in promotions of the pro-nuclear agenda in 1955, particularly regarding the Atoms for Peace exhibition in Tokyo. Shoriki viewed nuclear power as a means to gain political power, improve his international standing, and to promote his newspaper. As the publisher of the Yomiuri Shimbun, Shoriki had decades of experience running publicity campaigns and promoting science and technology and his election to the House of Representatives in February of 1955 left him perfectly placed to promote nuclear power. With assistance from the CIA, Shoriki brought the Hopkins Mission to Japan and went on to cosponsor the Atoms for Peace exhibition in Tokyo. A joint effort with the USIS, the Atoms for Peace exhibitions sought to establish the “peaceful uses of nuclear power” as an alternative to the destructive capacity of nuclear weapons. They did so by offering a suite of nuclear technologies that would positively benefit humanity, including tools for medicine, scientific research, agriculture, industry, and transportation.
After the 2011 earthquake, tsunami deposit location comparisons have led some scientists to reconsider that the magnitude of the Sanriku 869 AD earthquake could have been severely underestimated and could have been as high as 9.0, placing it in the Megathrust category.
According to the International Tsunami Information Centre, the word tsunami is composed of the Japanese words “tsu” which means harbour and “nami” which means wave. This name has been adopted internationally since it covers all forms of impulse wave generation including seismic disturbances, volcanoes and landslides. Since fluids are non-compressible, a large disturbance in the ocean will likely generate a tsunami that is proportional to the amount of water displaced by the generating force, but may be mitigated by increased depth of the disturbance or geographic distance.
About 1,500 earthquakes strike the island of Japan every year. Minor earthquakes occur on a daily basis, while the more powerful quakes strike less often. Situated on the western boundary of the Ring of Fire, Japan is the world’s earthquake zone. The Pacific Plate is a tectonic plate that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean and constitutes the world’s largest tectonic plate. Almost the entire plate lies at the ocean floor and the boundary areas of the Pacific Plate constitute the Ring of Fire. Many of these areas are undergoing a process called subduction in which one plate is forcefully pushed under another. The Pacific plate is much denser than the surrounding continental plates and therefore gets shoved under the continental plates. It is exactly in these areas where the stresses associated with the plate movements cause the accumulation of energy, which is released suddenly in the form of an earthquake. Volcanoes are also spawned in these seismically active areas. The Ring of Fire contains about 60 percent of the world’s volcanoes that have been active for the last 12000 years and the four largest volcanic eruptions during that period have all been along the Ring of Fire. Of the 15 tectonic plates in the world, four converge on Japan making it the World’s most seismically active earthquake zone. Japan is to earthquakes what Kansas is to tornadoes.
The Japan Trench is a subduction zone at the point where the dense Pacific Plate is subducting under the Okhotsk Plate which contains the land on which Northern Japan lies. This boundary along the Ring of Fire has been associated with a series of powerful earthquakes and the resulting tsunamis which have been recorded in the history of Japan. To the south of the Japan Trench is the Nankai Trough which is a subduction zone caused by the subduction of the Philippine Sea Plate beneath the portion of southern Japan which rests on the Eurasian Plate. The Nankai Trough is a would-be deep Trench, but is filled in with sediment. The entire area has been seismically active for millions of years, but the Japan Trench has spawned the vast majority of the largest, most disastrous earthquakes since 1900.
Here are some of significant historically Recorded Earthquakes in Japan:
Sanriku 869 AD, (Japan Trench). One of the earlier historical earthquakes which occurred in 869 (AD) was the Sanriku earthquake. It was recorded in the True History of Three Reigns of Japan (Nihon Sandai Jitsuroku) and it reads:
五月廿六日癸未 陸奧國地大震動 流光如晝隱映 頃之 人民叫呼 伏不能起 或屋仆壓死 或地裂埋殪 馬牛駭奔 或相昇踏 城（郭）倉庫 門櫓墻壁 頽落顛覆 不知其數 海口哮吼 聲似雷霆 驚濤涌潮 泝洄漲長 忽至城下 去海數十百里 浩々不辨其涯諸 原野道路 惣爲滄溟 乘船不遑 登山難及 溺死者千許 資産苗稼 殆無孑遺焉
On the 26th day of the 5th month (9 July 869 AD) a large earthquake occurred in Mutsu province with some strange light in the sky. People shouted and cried, lay down and could not stand up. Some were killed by the collapsed houses, others by the landslides. Horses and cattle got surprised, madly rushed around and injured the others. Enormous buildings, warehouses, gates and walls were destroyed. Then the sea began roaring like a big thunderstorm. The sea surface suddenly rose up and the huge waves attacked the land. They raged like nightmares, and immediately reached the city centre. The waves spread thousands of yards from the beach, and we could not see how large the devastated area was. The fields and roads completely sank into the sea. About one thousand people drowned in the waves, because they failed to escape either offshore or uphill from the waves. The properties and crop seedlings were almost completely washed away.
Bōsō earthquake 1677 (Junction where Izu-Bonin Trench intersects with the Japan Trench and the Sagami Trench). The Bōsō Peninsula was struck by a major tsunami on 4 November 1677, caused by an earthquake at the southern end of the Japan Trench. It was felt onshore with only a maximum of 4 on the JMA intensity scale, but had an estimated magnitude of 8.3–8.6. Historical records show that a local pond (elevation 11m above sea level) and cottage were inundated by the resulting tsunami.
Sanriku Earthquake, 1933 (Japan Trench). Magnitude 8.4, centre located about 180 miles offshore, but caused a tsunami with waves up to 28.7 metres.
Nankai Trough Earthquakes of 1854, also called the Ansai Great Earthquakes (Nankai Trough). Tsunami: First maximum (Tōkai) 21 metres, second maximum (Nankai) 28 metres. The Nankai Trough is an earthquake zone that lies offshore and roughly south of the city of Osaka. The first two earthquakes hit one day apart, and had an estimated magnitude of 8.4 followed by a devastating tsunami. Over 10,000 people were killed on the island of Kyushu alone. Less than a year later the Ansei Edo quake (magnitude 7.0) struck what is now modern day Tokyo. Records show about 10,000 casualties and much of the city was destroyed by the fire following the quake.
Aomori (Tokachi) Earthquake, 1968 (Japan Trench) Tsunami: 6 metres. Magnitude 8.2- struck off the coast of Honshu near Misawa. Followed by a tsunami with a maximum height of 6 metres. The quake occurred at the junction of the Japan Trench and the Kuril Trench.
Meiji-Sanriku earthquake, 1896 (Japan Trench) Tsunami: 38.2 metres. The 1896 Sanriku earthquake (明治三陸地震, Meiji Sanriku Jishin) was one of the most destructive seismic events in Japanese history. The 8.5 magnitude earthquake occurred at 19:32 (local time) on June 15, 1896, approximately 166 kilometres (103 mi) off the coast of Iwate Prefecture, Honshu. It resulted in two tsunamis which destroyed about 9,000 homes and caused at least 22,000 deaths. The waves reached a then-record height of 38.2 metres (125 ft); this would remain the highest on record until waves from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake exceeded that height by more than 2 metres (6 ft 7 in).
Hoei earthquake and tsunami, 1707 (Nankai Trough) Tsunami: 25.7 m high at Kure, Nakatosa, Kōchi. It was the largest earthquake in Japanese history until surpassed by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake. It caused moderate to severe damage throughout southwestern Honshu, Shikoku and southeastern Kyūsh. The earthquake and the resulting destructive tsunami, caused more than 5,000 casualties. This event ruptured all of the segments of the Nankai megathrust zone simultaneously, the only earthquake known to have done this, with an estimated magnitude of 8.6 ML or 8.7 Mw. It might also have triggered the last eruption of Mount Fuji 49 days later.
2011 Tōhoku earthquake (Japan Trench) Tsunami: 40 metres. On March 11, 2011, a violent upward thrust of the ocean floor centred within the Japan Trench occurred that displaced billions of tonnes of seawater. The fault rupture involved was determined to be 450 km in length and 150 km wide. This magnitude 9.0 earthquake was considered to be the most powerful earthquake to hit Japan since modern record keeping began in 1900. The earthquake, now officially known as the Great East Japan Earthquake and the subsequent tsunami forced the evacuation of nearly 500,000 people and an estimated 20,000 dead or missing.
________________________________________________________________________________
Thank you to:
Dr. Neil Hyatt, United Kingdom
Dr. Caitlin Stronell, Japan
CNIC of Tokyo, Japan
Takashi Saito, Japan
_______________________________________________________________________________
With my kindest regards.
Devin Savage
Tübingen
