(Like many people, I'm not overly concerned about being exposed to radiation from the Fukushima Nuclear plant. However, as a counterpoint to those who claim there is no problem or that officials have been forthcoming with info, I offer this article, complete with notes.--jef)
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Informational Uncertainty in the Wake of Japan's Nuclear Crisis
By GREGORY BUTTON
"In a disaster of this magnitude timely and accurate information is of utmost importance." Jim Ricco, nuclear expert. [1]
In recent days the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power have come under increasing criticism for their handling of the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Officials from both parties are under suspicion of withholding or manipulating vital information about the tragedy. After several days of incomplete and contradictory information, international nuclear experts, the international press, even the Japanese press along with some diplomatic officials have lashed out at both parties for their failure to provide sufficient information. [2] In turn, Japan's prime minister, no doubt in an attempt to point the finger in another direction, attacked the power company for not informing his government about explosions at the plant that occurred earlier last week. Yurika Ayukawa, a Chiba University professor of the environment explained, "there is no transparency about the information they are saying."[3] Uncertainty and cynical speculation about authorities' motives have become of central concern to many at home and abroad.
Recently, Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, dispelled any doubts that there were grave inconsistencies in the way in which the Japanese government was representing the seriousness of the event when he gave a grimmer appraisal posed by the threat than that of the Japanese government. On the heels of this searing criticism came the news that levels of radiation exceeding government standards of safety had been detected in spinach and milk ninety miles from the Fukushima plant.
Eight days after the nuclear emergency began a senior official in the Japanese government stated that government officials should have admitted the severity of the crisis much earlier. [4] Whether this admission will change the government's ongoing response remains to be seen. Even if there is a serious sea change in the government's crisis communication policies such a maneuver can hardly undo all the unnecessary harm that has been inflicted by the information distortion to date. If the historical record of the behavior of officials in previous disasters is any indicator, the odds are this mea culpa may not prove to be long-lived.
Governments and corporations often downplay a disaster and provide the public with overly optimistic accounts of the severity of an event. In order to avoid public scrutiny and to safe guard corporate interests (in this case the nuclear power industry) governments often withhold vital information not only from its citizens but also from outside experts and the international community.
In the days, weeks and even months that follows in the wake of a disaster people feel uncertain about real and perceived risks. Information about the nature and the extent of these risks is incomplete and typically conflicting. The parties involved in the disaster, as well as the media, public agencies, and non-profits release a cacophony of communications that the afflicted population and the general public often sees as conflicting and confusing.
This sense of confusion is accentuated when, as in the present nuclear crisis in Japan, knowledge is withheld and uncertainty is amplified. In such instances both disaster victims and outside experts have to struggle to obtain credible sources of information. A common phrase that is often heard in such circumstances and has been re-iterated in the current nuclear nightmare, is "It is hard to know who to believe." For those living in close proximity to the affected area, the availability of reliable information about potential threats is critical in order for people to make accurate appraisals of how to respond to environmental threats.
The kind of informational uncertainty that has abounded in Japan in recent days generates public discourse about not only who is to blame for perceived threats and actual harm, but also who is responsible for an effective and timely remediation. It also raises questions about the severity of the event and the potential long-term harm that may ensue particularly in the case of the current crisis. Moreover, the informational vacuum that exists in the wake of a disaster, let alone a major catastrophe, can produce harmful rumors and misinformation that can obstruct a timely response. One of the major negative effects of this uncertainty and confusion is that it can seriously impede an effective and timely response to a disaster. In short, critical hours and even days can be lost in the resulting misinformation and confusion.
Science and technology are often involved in disasters especially technological ones like the one unfolding at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan. Citizens commonly turn instinctively to scientists for answers, as do politicians and corporations. While the media seeks immediate answers to meet daily deadlines and the public demands instant answers, science by virtue of its methodologically rigorous approach cannot readily respond to these demands. Science can be a slow and painstaking process that often cannot produce the sound bites the media craves or the reassurances and insights the public demands. The situation is worsened when information is withheld not only from the media and the public but from the larger scientific community as well. The present crisis in Japan is unfortunately a supreme example of this type of obfuscation.
Usually such a vortex of conflicting information and lack of transparency generates a climate of controversy among scientists and the lay public. Lay people in particular are often confused by the ambiguous or contradictory statements made by some experts and puzzled about how to make sense of the ambiguities. In the present instance the media and outside experts are just as puzzled.
In this vortex of uncertainty and lack of knowledge people can become skeptical about the reliability of scientific evidence. Some suddenly see science as lacking in certainty and incapable of resolving ambiguity. In the process, science's systematic invincibility is called into question and its monopoly on truth is challenged. Unfortunately, when officials behave as they have in the wake of this disaster, their behavior undermines the public's faith in the virtues of science.
At times, science and engineering are seen as being the cause of the disasters such as in the case of the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island or the catastrophic meltdown in Chernobyl, or the chemical explosion in Bhopal. As a result, some individuals view science as too narrowly focused to undertake a holistic approach to solve their dilemmas or adequately address the ontological challenges that they face.
In the early days of the crisis the Japanese government reassured their nation that they were in no danger of experiencing a major nuclear disasters and downplayed any health or environmental risks. The Tokyo Electric Power issued opaque statements, which described the ongoing events in extremely sparse, technical language totally de-contextualized from the everyday lives of the citizens whose lives have been placed at risk.
These early statements by both the government and the power company failed to disclose the true nature of the situation. Their reports were conflicting and ambiguous to the Japanese public, the media, and international nuclear experts. In fact, according to at east one report, nuclear experts have doubted the accuracy of the official information that has been issued throughout the crisis. [4] The credibility of the government's statements has also been undermined by reports that they had previously downplayed and covered up previous, less serious, nuclear events.
The Guardian reported WikiLeaks released a diplomatic cable in which "a high profile" Japanese politician told US diplomats that the Japanese governments ministry responsible for nuclear power has been "covering up nuclear accidents and obscuring the true coasts and problems associated with the nuclear industry."[6]
Examples of what have been termed "hidden episodes" include incidents reported in the New York Times. According to the Times, a fire and small amount of radiation leaked at a nuclear plant located in Kashiwazaki City. Reportedly, Tokyo Electric Power built the world's largest nuclear power plant, however unknowingly, on an active seismic fault according to an investigative report that came out in the wake of an accident. [7]
Paul Dorfman, a member of a now defunct UK advisory committee, expressed concern when he declared, "we are seeing a clear pattern of secrecy and denial" in commenting on the present crisis. According to Dorfman, "There is a profound uncertainty about the impact of the disaster. [8]
Aileen Mioko Smith, who once lived near Three Mile Island and is now a member of a member of an environmental organization in Tokyo underscored these statements by saying, "People aren't getting the information they need."[9]
Similar concerns were echoed by Kenneth Bergeron, a physicist and former Sandia Scientist, that industry assurances stressing that the situation was under control flew in the face of the fact that, "we don't know what is going on." [10]
All of which suggests that the optimistic appraisals by the government were not based so much on fact as a pubic relations campaign (and no doubt a certain degree of confusion) to downplay uncertainty and reassure the public and the international community.
In a press conference sponsored by several groups, Robert Alverz, who served at one time as a Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Department of Energy and a deputy Assistant secretary for National Security and the Environment, galvanized Bergeron's claim by saying, "There is a lot we don't know." In another words what these men are saying is that there isn't sufficient scientific evidence to support the downplaying of potential harm. [11]
Representative of the uncertainty and confusion surrounding the crisis is one of the updates issued Tokyo Electric Power: "Unclear if radiation was released;" terse statements such as this fail to disclose much useful information. Moreover, when speaking of potential health threats little has been said about all important topics like ignoring the health risks to low level exposure, exposure rates and cumulative risk. In short, the nuances of public health risks are glossed over and given a fuzzy presentation that fails to fully inform those especially at risk.
Indeed, thus far there have been conflicting and contradictory reports issued by the government, the power company and others making it extremely difficult to accurately assess the exact threat of radiation releases let alone what ever else may have been happening at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Questions have been raised about the water levels in the various cooling chambers as well as questions about whether there has been damage to the containment vessels or if so, how much. Questions have also been raised about the source of some radioactive releases, the amounts of the releases, and of late, whether one of the reactors sustained structural damage prior to the present crisis during the catastrophic earthquake. These and many other questions remain unsolved in the minds of both experts and citizens alike.
Lack of transparency and the downplaying of events and the ensuing uncertainty is not only a legacy of previous disasters (e.g. Love Canal, the TVA ash spill, the BP Gulf oil spill and countless others) but the world's two nuclear disasters. Industry authorities downplayed the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island (TMI/1979) much to the chagrin of many Pennsylvania residents and their governor. Governor Thornburgh and his staff were frustrated in their attempts to reliable information from Metropolitan Edison, which tended to smooth over inconsistencies over the facts surrounding the accident. Evaluations in the wake of the event found that despite an abundance of uncertainties, the utility company adopted a public relations strategy that tended to over look the uncertainties and create more of an air of certainty.
The degree of uncertainty that existed is best characterized by a statement made by the NRC chairman, Joseph Henrie, "We are operating almost totally in the blind…its like a couple of blind men staggering around trying to make decisions. [12] Although, we must be careful to acknowledge the over-all specificities of each case are vastly different in some ways the ambiguity of the situation surrounding TMI bares an uncanny relation to the present situation in Japan and to a lesser degree to Chernobyl.
While there was also a withholding of information and a considerable uncertainty surrounding the terrible tragedy in Chernobyl there are some extreme differences.
Most notably, in direct contrast to both TMI and recent events in Japan, the Soviet Union did not acknowledge the world's worst nuclear accident until almost three days after a series of explosions destroyed one of the reactors in Chernobyl. Nor did they evacuate the nearby town residents until almost a full day after the accident. Their acknowledgement of the catastrophe only came as the result of a radioactive plume triggered alarms at a nuclear reactor in Sweden three days after the initial explosion.
While the U.S. government was extremely critical of the Soviet Union's lack of transparency, the U.S. government itself tried to obstruct the access of information about the world's worst nuclear disaster by attempting to withhold information that might be deemed harmful to the U.S. nuclear industry. For example, both the U.S. Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission imposed a gag order on their employees and contractors as well as scientists at national labs. In an attempt to limit public information and avoid any comparison between Soviet Nuclear power plants and U.S. reactors, strict instructions were issued to the above personnel to avoid press inquiries about Chernobyl or to provide only simple background information. [13] To some observers this response came as no surprise given the U.S. government's decades long downplaying of the radioactive legacies of the cold war (14].
In the wake of a disaster, governments and corporations can play a decisive role in framing the event and creating an "official" narrative. How such efforts interpret, shape and dispense knowledge and sometimes produce additional uncertainty is crucial. The ways in which knowledge is produced, or withheld, in an atmosphere of pervasive ambiguity is critical to how, and to what degree, a disaster ultimately affects both people and the environment. No matter what the nature of the institutional motive to downplay such threats the primary effect is the same: it not only denies those who are disproportionately affected by the disaster the ability to accurately appraise the threats and adopt the effective coping strategies it also seriously thwarts the ability to arrest the threats and successfully remedy the problem. In the case of the present day nuclear crisis in Japan the stakes couldn't be higher.
It is absolutely imperative that Japanese officials become more transparent in their crisis communication. It is equally imperative, as this present crisis makes clear, that officials around the world realize the severe harm that can be inflicted by the obfuscation and distortion of critical information in the wake of catastrophe.
Notes10 & 11. http://www.psr.org/12. Cora Bagley Marrett , The Accident at Three Mile Island and the Problem of Uncertainty, in The Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident: Lessons and Implications, 1988, 146-156. New York: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.13. Nelkin, Dorothy, 1995, Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.14. Johnston, Barbara, ed., 2007, Half-Lives & Half Truths: Confronting the Radioactive Legacies of the Cold War. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research.
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What They're Covering Up at Fukushima
By HIROSE TAKASHI
Introduced by Douglas Lummis - Okinawa
Hirose Takashi has written a whole shelf full of books, mostly on the nuclear power industry and the military-industrial complex. Probably his best known book is Nuclear Power Plants for Tokyo in which he took the logic of the nuke promoters to its logical conclusion: if you are so sure that they're safe, why not build them in the center of the city, instead of hundreds of miles away where you lose half the electricity in the wires?
He did the TV interview that is partly translated below somewhat against his present impulses. I talked to him on the telephone today (March 22 , 2011) and he told me that while it made sense to oppose nuclear power back then, now that the disaster has begun he would just as soon remain silent, but the lies they are telling on the radio and TV are so gross that he cannot remain silent.
I have translated only about the first third of the interview (you can see the whole thing in Japanese on you-tube), the part that pertains particularly to what is happening at the Fukushima plants. In the latter part he talked about how dangerous radiation is in general, and also about the continuing danger of earthquakes.
After reading his account, you will wonder, why do they keep on sprinkling water on the reactors, rather than accept the sarcophagus solution [ie., entombing the reactors in concrete. Editors.] I think there are a couple of answers. One, those reactors were expensive, and they just can't bear the idea of that huge a financial loss. But more importantly, accepting the sarcophagus solution means admitting that they were wrong, and that they couldn't fix the things. On the one hand that's too much guilt for a human being to bear. On the other, it means the defeat of the nuclear energy idea, an idea they hold to with almost religious devotion. And it means not just the loss of those six (or ten) reactors, it means shutting down all the others as well, a financial catastrophe. If they can only get them cooled down and running again they can say, See, nuclear power isn't so dangerous after all. Fukushima is a drama with the whole world watching, that can end in the defeat or (in their frail, I think groundless, hope) victory for the nuclear industry. Hirose's account can help us to understand what the drama is about. Douglas Lummis
Hirose Takashi: The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident and the State of the MediaBroadcast by Asahi NewStar, 17 March, 20:00Interviewers: Yo and Maeda Mari
Yo: Today many people saw water being sprayed on the reactors from the air and from the ground, but is this effective?
Hirose: . . . If you want to cool a reactor down with water, you have to circulate the water inside and carry the heat away, otherwise it has no meaning. So the only solution is to reconnect the electricity. Otherwise it’s like pouring water on lava.
Yo: Reconnect the electricity – that’s to restart the cooling system?
Hirose: Yes. The accident was caused by the fact that the tsunami flooded the emergency generators and carried away their fuel tanks. If that isn’t fixed, there’s no way to recover from this accident.
Yo: Tepco [Tokyo Electric Power Company, owner/operator of the nuclear plants] says they expect to bring in a high voltage line this evening.
Hirose: Yes, there’s a little bit of hope there. But what’s worrisome is that a nuclear reactor is not like what the schematic pictures show (shows a graphic picture of a reactor, like those used on TV). This is just a cartoon. Here’s what it looks like underneath a reactor container (shows a photograph). This is the butt end of the reactor. Take a look. It’s a forest of switch levers and wires and pipes. On television these pseudo-scholars come on and give us simple explanations, but they know nothing, those college professors. Only the engineers know. This is where water has been poured in. This maze of pipes is enough to make you dizzy. Its structure is too wildly complex for us to understand. For a week now they have been pouring water through there. And it’s salt water, right? You pour salt water on a hot kiln and what do you think happens? You get salt. The salt will get into all these valves and cause them to freeze. They won’t move. This will be happening everywhere. So I can’t believe that it’s just a simple matter of you reconnecting the electricity and the water will begin to circulate. I think any engineer with a little imagination can understand this. You take a system as unbelievably complex as this and then actually dump water on it from a helicopter – maybe they have some idea of how this could work, but I can’t understand it.
Yo: It will take 1300 tons of water to fill the pools that contain the spent fuel rods in reactors 3 and 4. This morning 30 tons. Then the Self Defense Forces are to hose in another 30 tons from five trucks. That’s nowhere near enough, they have to keep it up. Is this squirting of water from hoses going to change the situation?
Hirose: In principle, it can’t. Because even when a reactor is in good shape, it requires constant control to keep the temperature down to where it is barely safe. Now it’s a complete mess inside, and when I think of the 50 remaining operators, it brings tears to my eyes. I assume they have been exposed to very large amounts of radiation, and that they have accepted that they face death by staying there. And how long can they last? I mean, physically. That’s what the situation has come to now. When I see these accounts on television, I want to tell them, “If that’s what you say, then go there and do it yourself!” Really, they talk this nonsense, trying to reassure everyone, trying to avoid panic. What we need now is a proper panic. Because the situation has come to the point where the danger is real.
If I were Prime Minister Kan, I would order them to do what the Soviet Union did when the Chernobyl reactor blew up, the sarcophagus solution, bury the whole thing under cement, put every cement company in Japan to work, and dump cement over it from the sky. Because you have to assume the worst case. Why? Because in Fukushima there is the Daiichi Plant with six reactors and the Daini Plant with four for a total of ten reactors. If even one of them develops the worst case, then the workers there must either evacuate the site or stay on and collapse. So if, for example, one of the reactors at Daiichi goes down, the other five are only a matter of time. We can’t know in what order they will go, but certainly all of them will go. And if that happens, Daini isn’t so far away, so probably the reactors there will also go down. Because I assume that workers will not be able to stay there.
I’m speaking of the worst case, but the probability is not low. This is the danger that the world is watching. Only in Japan is it being hidden. As you know, of the six reactors at Daiichi, four are in a crisis state. So even if at one everything goes well and water circulation is restored, the other three could still go down. Four are in crisis, and for all four to be 100 per cent repaired, I hate to say it, but I am pessimistic. If so, then to save the people, we have to think about some way to reduce the radiation leakage to the lowest level possible. Not by spraying water from hoses, like sprinkling water on a desert. We have to think of all six going down, and the possibility of that happening is not low. Everyone knows how long it takes a typhoon to pass over Japan; it generally takes about a week. That is, with a wind speed of two meters per second, it could take about five days for all of Japan to be covered with radiation. We’re not talking about distances of 20 kilometers or 30 kilometers or 100 kilometers. It means of course Tokyo, Osaka. That’s how fast a radioactive cloud could spread. Of course it would depend on the weather; we can’t know in advance how the radiation would be distributed. It would be nice if the wind would blow toward the sea, but it doesn’t always do that. Two days ago, on the 15th, it was blowing toward Tokyo. That’s how it is. . . .
Yo: Every day the local government is measuring the radioactivity. All the television stations are saying that while radiation is rising, it is still not high enough to be a danger to health. They compare it to a stomach x-ray, or if it goes up, to a CT scan. What is the truth of the matter?
Hirose: For example, yesterday. Around Fukushima Daiichi Station they measured 400 millisieverts – that’s per hour. With this measurement (Chief Cabinet Secretary) Edano admitted for the first time that there was a danger to health, but he didn’t explain what this means. All of the information media are at fault here I think. They are saying stupid things like, why, we are exposed to radiation all the time in our daily life, we get radiation from outer space. But that’s one millisievert per year. A year has 365 days, a day has 24 hours; multiply 365 by 24, you get 8760. Multiply the 400 millisieverts by that, you get 3,500,000 the normal dose. You call that safe? And what media have reported this? None. They compare it to a CT scan, which is over in an instant; that has nothing to do with it. The reason radioactivity can be measured is that radioactive material is escaping. What is dangerous is when that material enters your body and irradiates it from inside. These industry-mouthpiece scholars come on TV and what to they say? They say as you move away the radiation is reduced in inverse ratio to the square of the distance. I want to say the reverse. Internal irradiation happens when radioactive material is ingested into the body. What happens? Say there is a nuclear particle one meter away from you. You breathe it in, it sticks inside your body; the distance between you and it is now at the micron level. One meter is 1000 millimeters, one micron is one thousandth of a millimeter. That’s a thousand times a thousand squared. That’s the real meaning of “inverse ratio of the square of the distance.” Radiation exposure is increased by a factor of a trillion. Inhaling even the tiniest particle, that’s the danger.
Yo: So making comparisons with X-rays and CT scans has no meaning. Because you can breathe in radioactive material.
Hirose: That’s right. When it enters your body, there’s no telling where it will go. The biggest danger is women, especially pregnant women, and little children. Now they’re talking about iodine and cesium, but that’s only part of it, they’re not using the proper detection instruments. What they call monitoring means only measuring the amount of radiation in the air. Their instruments don’t eat. What they measure has no connection with the amount of radioactive material. . . .
Yo: So damage from radioactive rays and damage from radioactive material are not the same.
Hirose: If you ask, are any radioactive rays from the Fukushima Nuclear Station here in this studio, the answer will be no. But radioactive particles are carried here by the air. When the core begins to melt down, elements inside like iodine turn to gas. It rises to the top, so if there is any crevice it escapes outside.
Yo: Is there any way to detect this?
Hirose: I was told by a newspaper reporter that now Tepco is not in shape even to do regular monitoring. They just take an occasional measurement, and that becomes the basis of Edano’s statements. You have to take constant measurements, but they are not able to do that. And you need to investigate just what is escaping, and how much. That requires very sophisticated measuring instruments. You can’t do it just by keeping a monitoring post. It’s no good just to measure the level of radiation in the air. Whiz in by car, take a measurement, it’s high, it’s low – that’s not the point. We need to know what kind of radioactive materials are escaping, and where they are going – they don’t have a system in place for doing that now.
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