A detailed account of what took place at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant beginning on March 11, 2011 is provided in the book Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster, by David Lochbaum, Edwin Lyman, Susan Q. Stranahan and the Union of Concerned Scientists (The New Press, 2014). On the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Web site there is a detailed description of what the book covers.

You’ll find reviews of the book here and here. (Of course, if you do a search on the book’s title, you’ll encounter more than just these two.)

The book is pretty well-indexed, so readers can look up words/phrases such as “beyond design basis” or “sea wall” or “potassium iodide” or “complacency and overconfidence” & find all the pages on which the particular topic is mentioned. There is also a glossary of terms.

As the list below indicates, the book goes into much detail about earthquake & tsunami research (both what was known & what was ignored), how the Japanese nuclear regulator operates, how TEPCO (owner/operator of the reactors at Fukushima) operated in the years before the disaster & then during the early days of the disaster, how the media in Japan operate, how emergency planning broke down, etc. etc.

Covered very thoroughly indeed, toward the end of the book, is how the U.S. NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) operates – which, as it happens, has a major bearing on how the Japanese regulator operates.

Much of what this book reveals is enough to cause nightmares, or at the very least, some lost sleep – especially if you live in the neighbourhood of an aging nuclear reactor –  or 10, as we do here in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

Topics the book covers:

• Emergency exercises are good mostly for PR purposes

• Emergency plans fell apart badly in Japan

• “Defense in depth” is not something that can be relied upon

• How information about genuine risks (earthquakes, tsunamis) is swept under the carpet

• “It can’t happen here” has basically been the nuclear industry/nuclear regulators’ mantra ever since the Three Mile Island accident (March 1979)

• Regulatory agencies cannot be counted on to regulate

• Risk analysis is not a real science & is essentially meaningless

Topics the book covers, cont’d

• Information about Japan’s history of earthquakes & tsunamis & technology related to predicting/preparing for them

• A day-by-day accounting of the accident’s progression in the early days: quite detailed & technical

• Explanation of what is meant by “design basis” & design-basis accidents

• U.S. NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) involvement, including specifics about NRC head Gregory Jaczko (including his 2012 resignation)

• Related information about U.S. reactors of similar design (General Electric boiling water reactors or BWRs)

• Corruption at TEPCO

• Collusion between nuclear industry & government

• Manipulation of public opinion to favour nuclear energy

• Revolving door between regulator & nuclear industry

• Infrequency of inspections by the regulator (NISA)

• Falsified reports, repairs that were not made, employees fired for reporting problems (** hair-raising information in Chapter 2)

• Reliance on computer modelling vs. actual reality (i.e., ignoring evidence of possible tsunami if computer model says it is unlikely)

• Communication manipulation (& “bungled communication”) during early days of crisis (Chapter 3) – among TEPCO officials, between various groups, to the public

• No monitoring of quantity of radioactivity being released (Ch. 3)

• “Lackadaisical attitude” toward robustness of spent fuel pools (Ch. 3)

• Description of the lamentably poorly-thought-out care of spent fuel storage

• Dangerousness of crowded fuel pools at U.S. reactors

• Evacuation of U.S. citizens within 50-mile radius

• Safety of dry cask storage at site during earthquake & tsunami (pg. 83)

• “Sluggish” response of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (p.105)

• Media coverage: choppy, contrast between the foreign & the domestic (Ch. 5) which gave TEPCO a “free ride” (p. 107)

• Explanation of Japanese “press clubs” (p. 110)

• Bungled gov’t handling of radiation exposure/health risks (p. 108)

• Public’s loss of trust in government due to not being told the truth (p. 111)

• U.S. & its 31 boiling water reactors – questions about U.S. safety with respect to earthquake risks

• Evacuees’ situation (some “forced to relocate 6 times or more”) – pg. 117

• Futaba Hospital: bungled evacuation. Patients who died (pg. 118)

• Iitate: symbol of breakdown of gov’t response (25 miles /40 km from plant. Gaps/failures in emergency planning: zones arbitrary, evacuations far beyond 10K necessary, people evacuated in direction plume was going, hospital patients abandoned & then died. Etc. Failure to trust data saying plume going that way. Early awareness of it being a “hot spot” – yet a long delay in evacuation) (pg. 118, Ch. 5)

• Three Mile Island: March 1979: lessons NOT learned – Davis-Besse 1977 incident (Ch. 7)

• 2011 incidents at 2 U.S. nuke plants (Fort Calhoun-flooding & North Anna-earthquake)

• Value (or not) of biennial emergency exercises – pg. 154 (Ch. 7)

• Nearly 160,000 evacuees (pg. 157, Ch. 8)

• Fallout contamination (pg 159, Ch. 8)

• Anti-nuclear protests at prime minister’s office in Tokyo (pg. 163, Ch. 8)

• NRC safety measures discussions (pg. 167, Ch. 8)

• Japan’s PM goes anti-nuclear (pg. 171, Ch. 8)

• More NRC safety discussions

• TEPCO bailouts

• Gregory Jaczko’s resignation (Pg. 177, Ch. 8); Allison Macfarlane replaces him

• “It can’t happen here” myth at the NRC (Chapter 9)

• Inadequacy of reliance on “design-basis” accidents/rules (pg. 188, Ch. 9)

• The problems with risk analysis & “probabilistic risk assessment” (PRA) – pg. 192

• The issues with GE Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactors (pg. 195, Ch. 9)

• U.S. loose rules emulated by Japanese regulator (pg. 202, end of Ch. 9)

• NRC manipulations to present nuclear as safe; unbelievable! (Ch. 10)

• The SOARCA (State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses fiasco): “Science” manipulated, obfuscated; this must be read to be believed! (Ch. 10)

• Proposed nuclear re-start in Japan & associated citizen protest (Ch. 11)

• Back to business as usual at the NRC (Ch. 11)

• Re-org of Japanese regulator (pg. 240, Ch. 11)

• Great map of evacuation zones illustrating the lack of “neatness” of where fallout goes, & where evacuations are necessary (pg. 242, Ch. 11)

• Political scene in Japan – Abe re-elected (pg. 243, Ch. 11)

• Finger-pointing after the accident, including TEPCO blaming first Mother Nature, then the regulator for not being strict enough (pg. 244, Ch. 12)

• “It can’t happen here” mindset, both in Japan – & the U.S. (pg. 247)

• Casual attitude of politicians in U.S. (pg. 247)

• Fires at U.S. reactor, new regs, regulations NOT enforced (pg. 247-8, Ch. 12)

• Other examples of problems at U.S. reactors (pg. 249)

• Defense-in-depth both “a blessing and a curse” (pg. 250); its strengths & limitations

• Problems with evacuation in Fukushima situation (pg. 251)

• Various things that were not planned for in emergency planning (pg. 251)

• NRC’s 2011 NTTF (near-term task force, immediately post-Fukushima) & how NRC task force recommendations for change in U.S. regulation came to naught (pg. 252-3)

• NRC refusal to address beyond-design-basis accidents (pg. 252-3)

• Industry’s FLEX (“diverse and flexible mitigation”) strategy: how this prevented necessary changes at the NRC & avoids dealing with stubborn risks/issues (255-6)

• NRC’s continued defense of 10-mile planning zones in spite of lessons from the experience proving inadequacy of this approach (pg. 256, Ch. 12)

• NIRS (Nuclear Information and Resource Service) proposal re: U.S. planning zones for emergency measures, i.e. evacuation, potassium iodide (pg. 256, Ch. 12)

** Conclusions: the NRC needs to make big changes in safety analysis

“In the end, the NRC must be able to tell the American public, “We’ve taken every reasonable step to protect you.” And it must be the public, not industry or bureaucrats, who define “reasonable.” (pg. 260, Ch. 12)

This document provides a lengthy compilation of quotations from the book. Many more pithy & informative quotations could have been included if recording all these quotes were not so time-consuming!

This is a very important book.

Why this posting now?

The problems that this book details about the intransigence of the nuclear regulatory agencies have not begun to be solved. The problems of collusion among regulators & industry & governments have not begun to be solved.

Since most “average citizens” (& even politicians) seem unaware that these problems exist (while those in power who do know, deny them), rassling with & solving them will be a very great challenge indeed.

In Durham Region (& of great interest across the entire Greater Toronto Area), we’re about to witness an expensive hearing process involving Ontario Power Generation (OPG)’s request to Canada’s nuclear regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), for a 13-year license for the aging reactors at Darlington (hearing to take place in early November).

People need to understand the kinds of problems that led to the Fukushima disaster that are laid out so very thoroughly in this book.

“Fukushima Daiichi unmasked the weaknesses of nuclear power plant design and the long-standing flaws in operations and regulatory oversight. Although Japan must share the blame, this was not a Japanese nuclear accident; it was a nuclear accident that just happened to have occurred in Japan. The problems that led to the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi exist wherever reactors operate.” (from the introduction to the book)

The Fukushima disaster was not caused by the earthquake or the tsunami; it is a man-made disaster that could happen anywhere there are nuclear reactors.

Toshimitsu Homma of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency stated in April 2013 at an international conference on Emergency Management (held in Ottawa) that the most important lesson of Fukushima was that before the accident, “There was an implicit assumption that such a severe accident could not happen and thus insufficient attention was paid to such an accident by authorities.”

** Note: same deal here in Ontario! Emergency planning predicated on a minor accident, not a major one. Plans = utterly inadequate. Recent editorial from Japan regarding evacuation issues there.

“The earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011 were natural disasters of a magnitude that shocked the entire world. Although triggered by these cataclysmic events, the subsequent accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant cannot be regarded as a natural disaster. It was a profoundly manmade disaster – that could and should have been foreseen and prevented. And its effects could have been mitigated by a more effective human response.” – Kiyoshi Kurokawa, Chairman of The official report of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (Pg. 9)

“A “manmade” disaster: The TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by said parties. They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents. Therefore, we conclude that the accident was clearly “manmade.” We believe that the root causes were the organizational and regulatory systems that supported faulty rationales for decisions and actions, rather than issues relating to the competency of any specific individual. (see Recommendation 1)” — from The official report of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (pg. 16)

“The Commission has verified that there was a lag in upgrading nuclear emergencypreparedness and complex disaster countermeasures, and attributes this to regulators’ negative attitudes toward revising and improving existing emergency plans.” – from The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (pg. 19)

** More quotations about the Fukushima nuclear disaster can be found here.

** Other recent, relevant posts on this blog:

• Emergency Exercises: valuable? Or mostly PR?

• Fukushima: Emergency Planning? Failing grade

• Nuclear Health: 1959 agreement you’ve likely never heard of between IAEA & WHO

• Nuclear Safety? Former high-profile supporters now campaign against it

• Quotations about limitations in emergency planning & the causes of the Fukushima disaster

2 outstanding (& related) articles:

• Collusion between regulator & industry = worldwide problem

• Resignation of U.S. NRC Chair Gregory Jaczko a year after Fukushima

P.S. on October 17/15: On October 14th, DNA donated copies of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ book to each of Durham Region’s eight municipal Councils (& the Regional Chair) & reminded them all of inadequate nuclear emergency planning as well as the untruth of the “It Can’t Happen Here” myth. Media article here. Copies were also later given to the Premier of Ontario & to the Minister of Community Safety & Correctional Services (the provincial ministry in charge of emergency planning).