Louanne Bowles Peter Smith Megan Ray

Unclear about Fukushima

How would have a transparent crisis plan affected the outcome of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster? We are reviewing the communication regarding the crisis plan during the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster. Our mission is to figure out what affect poor communication of a disaster/crisis plan had in the mist of the disaster. Our group starting conducting research into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, we were focusing on the entire disaster. We then decided there was too much information to go through and narrowed it down to focusing on the government, the company, and the culture. As we divided and attempted to form our ideas into a project, we became lost and confused. We had to rethink our project once again. As you probably assumed from the first sentence we decided to focus on the crisis communication plan. As a group, we begin researching together which gave us relief that we had finally found a topic worth keeping. Mr. Birraux said, "I want to stress that crisis communication can only work properly as part of the comprehensive management of nuclear safety, based on transparency, independence of the nuclear safety authority, repeated alert exercises, involving the general public and, overall, an impregnable will to achieving constant progress in nuclear safety. This quote focused on many of the key points we are researching.

Today our group will be discussing the communication problems involved with the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear disaster. To begin I would like to introduce our group to you, I am Megan, this is Louanne, and last but definitely not least this is Peter. I will be discussing the Japanese Governments role in the disaster of a nontransparent communication crisis plan. Image if there were a fire here at school. We would know what to do. We would know who was in charge. We have been practicing and had the ideas of the proper way to behave in a disaster pounded into our heads since a very young age. We have earthquake drills, fire drills, and evacuation plans. This downward communication has been in our lives since we were born. Communication is a very important part of handling any disaster, natural or man-made, but as you will soon hear about having a natural disaster with a lack of communication can transform the event into something worse, a man-made disaster. Without knowing what is excepted or needed you can take something bad like the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and make it a lot worse for everyone involved. This paraphrased quote comes from Chairman Kiyoshi Kurokawa, 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...A multitude of errors and willful negligence left the Fukushima plant unprepared for the events of

Louanne Bowles Peter Smith Megan Ray

March 11. In addition, there were serious deficiencies in the response to the accident by Tepco and the government. What must be admitted - very painfully - is that this was a disaster "Made in Japan. As you think about what transparent communication, there should be an idea of clarity, completeness, and structure that comes to mind. For example, think of doing a group presentation like this one with four people. If two people meet in the classroom and two people meet in the lobby upstairs, then when the two different groups finally come together to present the ideas there would be a lack of control and a ton of unneeded confusion. It would a mess. As you will soon find out something very similar happened in the Fukushima nuclear plant. Of course that did not get affect a grade or a GPA, if had an impact on the entire world. I got the following information from an article found on The Asahi Shim bun. Soon after
the March 11 earthquake struck, then Prime Minister Naoto Kan and other senior officials gathered in his fifth floor office and effectively became the central decision-making body for the nuclear accident unfolding in Fukushima. However, largely unaware of this formation was a task force in the

basement of the same building that was set up under a special measures law to deal with nuclear accidents. Communication was lacking between the two groups--both of whom initially thought they were in charge of dealing with the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. In addition, that was just one of the many major problems in handling information that caused the slow response to the nuclear disaster, according to a report issued Dec. 26 by a government panel. The panel cited not only the warped organizational structure, but also a careless attitude toward collecting information and an insistence on controlling the flow of data by those in the Prime Minister's Official Residence. Those problems worsened the confusion and affected decisions on cooling the damaged reactors, securing the safety of Tokyo Electric Power Co. workers at the plant, and issuing evacuation orders for residents living near the site, the panel said. The task force was established at the crisis management center in the basement of the Prime Minister's Official Residence soon after the quake and tsunami struck. The team consisted of high-ranking officials of various government ministries who were coordinating a swift gathering of information to allow appropriate decisions to be made. But Kan's group, including Nobuaki Terasaka, then director-general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), and Haruki Madarame, chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission, gathered on the fifth floor to discuss how to respond to the accident as well as deciding on the evacuation zones. There was no legal basis for the formation of Kan's group, the panel said, but it appointed itself the leader in decisions regarding the nuclear accident.

Louanne Bowles Peter Smith Megan Ray

"At a time when the central government had to deal with the accident by bringing together all of its capabilities, communications between the fifth floor and the basement were insufficient. Data that never bridged that communications gap included the results of a forecast made by the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI), which is designed for use in deciding if evacuation orders should be issued in the event of a nuclear accident. On March 11, officials of the science ministry, which has jurisdiction over SPEEDI, calculated the expected spread of radioactive materials. The results were passed on to NISA, which handles information dispersal during nuclear accidents. NISA officials, in turn, sent the forecast to the Prime Minister's Official Residence. Attached to the forecast was a supplementary document noting that the results were of low reliability since they were based on a hypothetical source of radioactive materials. A Cabinet Secretariat official in the basement who received the information decided it was only reference material and did not report it to the fifth floor. The panel's report said a different course in discussions could have taken place if the SPEEDI forecast had been passed on to those on the fifth floor. Claude Birraux, First Vice President of the French Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices said, "I want to stress that crisis communication can only work properly as part of the comprehensive management of nuclear safety, based on transparency, independence of the nuclear safety authority, repeated alert exercises, involving the general public and, overall, an impregnable will to achieving constant progress in nuclear safety.
Communication is vital as is shown by the results of the lack of communication by the Japanese Government during and after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Think about the how transparent communication would have changed the outcome of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster The two areas of communication break- down, or lack of transparent communication, that I have decided to talk about are the evacuation procedures used and the emergency response procedures that were in place on March 11, 2011. A report from the BBC states, although such an event should have been predicted and planned for, the Japanese Parliamentary panel said it found gaping holes in safety standards and emergency procedures. The commission concludes in a summary of key quotes, findings and recommendations from the 88 page executive summary of the Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commissions report that the residents confusion over the evacuation stemmed from the regulators negligence and failure over the years to implement adequate measures against a nuclear disaster, as well as a lack of action by previous governments and regulators focused on crisis management.

Louanne Bowles Peter Smith Megan Ray The commission also concluded that the central government failed to convey the severity of the accident. Only 20% of the residents of the town hosting the plant knew about the accident when evacuation from the 3 km zone was ordered at 21:23 on the evening of March 11. There was confusion over the evacuation, caused by prolonged shelter-in-place orders and voluntary evacuation orders. Some residents were evacuated to high dosage areas because radiation-monitoring information was not provided. An article in the Shahi Shim Bun states at 9:23 p.m. the Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, asked the governor of Fukushima Prefecture and the mayors of Okuma and Futaba to evacuate all residents within a 3 km radius and order all people living between 3 km and 10 km to stay indoors, much of the public remained unaware of the crisis for day. An article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published by SAGE, states The Japanese Governments System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI) was designed to help governments decide when to evacuate in the event of a radioactive leak. The system was not used, negating the time and money invested in developing the system in the first place. A public myth of absolute safety nurtured by nuclear power proponents over decades contributed to the lack of adequate preparation. The public was also ill informed about the meaning of reported radiation levels. From a report by the AP, The government repeatedly issued evacuation advisories and then changed them, said Dr. Akira Isaka, a surgeon at the Futaba District Medical Association. Hospital administrators had to find through the media what was going on. This posed a huge problem for hospitals, which had to make plans on the spot and then completely change them as the zone widened, he stated. Moving to problems with emergency response, an article titled Managing Risk and the Fukushima Nuclear Crisis, by Jeff Kingston, he states a third party panel that investigated the nuclear crisis at Fukushima found that workers and their managers were inadequately trained to cope with an emergency situation and according to the panel lacked basic knowledge concerning the emergency reactor cooling system. The workers made critical errors in shutting off automated emergency cooling systems and wrongly assumed part of the cooling system was working when it was not. Their mishandling of emergency procedures contributed to the crisis. The station black out halted cooling systems, caused the meltdowns and disrupted communications among emergency workers and between the plant and the government. Workers were largely dependent on the mobile phones that could not be recharged while carrying out emergency work by flashlight. The crisis management center for Fukushima was only 5 km from the plant, and when the plant workers arrived, they found it wrecked, with no power or functioning communications and unusable because there was no air filtration system to filter out radiation. This poor emergency preparedness delayed the flow of information to the prime ministers office, slowing the governments response.

Louanne Bowles Peter Smith Megan Ray A look at Fukushimas crisis plan by the Wall Street Journal show a page from the plan that indicates the key to communication is via fax. The disaster plan, approved by Japanese officials, offer guidelines for responding to smaller emergencies and outline in detail how to back up key systems in case of failure. There are no references to Tokyo firefighters, Japanese military forces or US equipment, all of which the plant operators eventually relied upon to battle their overheating reactors. The two main documents examined by the Wall Street Journal focused on the technical operation of plant equipment in an accident, and nothing about the human element of a crisis. The main disaster readiness manual, updated annually, envisions the fax machine as a principal means of communication with the outside world and includes detailed forms for TEPCO managers when faxing government officials. One form offers a multiple-choice list of disasters, including loss of AC power, inability to use the control room and probable nuclear chain reaction outside the reactor. According to an official report by SIIA (Singapore Institute of International Affairs) NISA (Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency) officials left the plant, even though according to its own manual, officials should have stayed to monitor the plants status. An article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published by SAGE, states when on site workers referred to the severe accident manual, the answers were not there. Those who misjudged the condition of the emergency cooling system had never actually put the system into service; they were thrown into a crisis without the benefit of training. Japan uses simulators to mimic each specific nuclear power plant closely. This allows reactor operators to practice dealing with extreme emergencies, as they would experience them in their own control rooms. After the Fukushima disaster, Japan understands that 1) they do not have plant specific simulators; they have generic simulators for the types of plant they have 2) they do not have a simulator for every plant. This means less realistic training and less time to practice. Whether better training would have made a difference at Fukushima is something that should emerge from ongoing investigations. We came up with solution, so to say, that would aid in a better way of conducting transparent communication to avoid some of the situations that occurred in Fukushima. A major reform of TEPCOs crisis management system is much needed to improve future situations. They need to make boundaries responsibilities of local, national governments, and operators clear and establishing clear chain of command in emergency situation. They need to create a permanent committee in the Japanese parliament to oversee the regulators, with regular investigations and hearings. There should be dramatic corporate reform of Tepco and new relationships established among the electric power companies built on safety issues, mutual supervision and transparency. They need to make a new regulatory established on independence, transparency, professionalism, and consolidation of functions. We have learned from our research the importance of transparent communication in any business, including personal business. This project bought us together as a group where we had better communication as a group because we

Louanne Bowles Peter Smith Megan Ray were learning where others have failed. Of course, this project does not affect the world, just our grades.