For the purpose of this analysis, risk assessment becomes the primary term and risk management the secondary term. The concept of risk management as a primary term is based upon a false ontology. Risk management implies that risk is already there, not created by the decision, but lies already inherent in the situation that the decision sets into motion. The risk that already exists in the objective situation simply needs to be “managed”. By considering risk assessment as the primary term, (...) the ethics of responsibility for risking the lives of others, the environment and future generations in the first place comes into the forefront. The issue of risk heeding is especially important as it highlights the need to pay attention to warnings of danger and to take action to redress problems before disasters occur. In this paper, the decision making that led to the choice of technology utilized and the implementation of such technology in the case of the space shuttle Challenger disaster will be used as a model to illustrate the need to take ethical factors into account when making decisions regarding the safety of technological systems and the heeding of danger warnings. While twenty-five years separates the decision to launch the Challenger and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster, the lessons of the Challenger disaster are still to be learned. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to develop a theory of peace education through an examination of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. It examines why Japan did not avoid this terrible nuclear disaster. This is an educational issue, because one of the major impacts of Fukushima's catastrophe is that it indicates the failure of peace education. In order to reestablish a theory of peace education, the concept of domestic tranquility is discussed. This article questions (...) whether the Japanese public order is consistent with democratic principles. Jane Roland Martin's examination of the concept of domestic tranquility is shown relevant. Martin's language analysis helps to distinguish whether or not Japanese domestic tranquility under nuclear crisis is democratic. I propose that post-Fukushima disaster peace education should be reformed as consistent with two democratic principles: acceptance of the diversity of peace and continuous negotiation among these different narratives. (shrink)

In October 2010, the German conservative ruling coalition and Free Democratic Party ) passed a law permitting the extension of contracts for Germany’s seventeen nuclear power plants. This policy amended a law passed in 2001 by a Social Democratic Party and Green Party majority to phase out nuclear energy by the early 2020s. The explosions in the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility, however, resulted in a decision to speed up the (...) phaseout of nuclear energy. The nuclear meltdowns in Japan sent hundreds of thousands of protesters onto the streets. Angry voters made their disillusionment with the nuclear politics of the conservative government coalition clear in local elections. The federal government responded by setting up an Ethics Commission for a Safe Energy Supply, which recommended an end to nuclear energy and a shift to a renewable energy-based economy. Within months of the Fukushima disaster, the government had permanently shut down eight of the country’s oldest nuclear power plants and issued a schedule for the phased shutdown of the remaining nine plants by 2022. In addition, the government reaffirmed its climate change plans, which call for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by around forty percent of 1990 levels by 2020 and eighty percent by 2050. Thus, out of a crisis, the German government is forging an opportunity to become a global leader in the promotion of new renewable energies, energy efficiency, and greenhouse gas emission reductions. In Japan, the nuclear crisis has also weakened support for nuclear energy, but with a strong industrial coalition calling for its continued use, both for energy stability and in response to climate change, a complete nuclear phaseout is less certain, at least in the short term. (shrink)

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and thirty-eightmeter high tsunami destroyed Tokyo Electric’s Fukushima nuclear power complex. The disaster was not a high-damage, low-probability event. It was a high-damage, high-probability event. Massive earthquakes and tsunamis assault the coast every century. Tokyo Electric built its reactors as it did because it would not pay the full cost of a meltdown anyway. Given the limited liability at the heart of corporate law, it could externalize the cost of (...) running reactors. In most industries, firms rarely risk tort damages so enormous they cannot pay them. In nuclear power, “unpayable” potential liability is routine. Privately owned companies bear the costs of an accident only up to the fire-sale value of their net assets. Beyond that, they pay nothing — and the damages from a nuclear disaster easily soar past that point. Government ownership could eliminate this moral hazard — but it would replace it with problems of its own. Unfortunately, the electoral dynamics in wealthy modern democracies combine to replicate nearly perfectly the moral hazard inherent in private ownership. Private firms will build reactors on fault lines — but so will governments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nuclear Power after Fukushima 2011:Buddhist and Promethean PerspectivesGraham ParkesDuring 2010 many environmentalists previously opposed to nuclear power were deciding, in the face of anthropogenic climate change from burning fossil fuels, that the only way to prevent runaway global warming would be to build more nuclear power plants after all.1 There are risks involved—though fewer than with carbon-based sources of energy.2 When one compares the detrimental (...) effects of nuclear power with those of burning fossil fuel, it is clear that the human injury and death toll (not to mention environmental devastation) resulting from the former have been nothing compared to the damage caused by the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels, owing to mining accidents, oil spills, and so forth—not to mention the massive carbon dioxide emissions.On the other hand, the problem of how and where to store the growing amount of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, which remains deadly for many thousands of years, has yet to be solved. Costly security measures have to be taken to guard against terrorist attacks and theft of materials usable for nuclear devices. When full safety features are included, nuclear power plants become ever more expensive to build, and the costs of insuring them against accidents are so prohibitive that governments have to subsidize them, which they are increasingly unwilling to do.Not long after the explosions and meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in March 2011, two dismal world records were announced: in 2010 we discharged a record amount of carbon dioxide (more than 30 gigatons) into the atmosphere, mainly by burning fossil fuels, and, as a direct consequence, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere (as measured at the Earth Systems Research Laboratory in Hawai'i) reached a record level of 395 parts per million. These figures suggest that we are continuing to generate a rise in global average temperatures that is already destroying the livelihoods of millions and will soon jeopardize the lives of hundreds of millions more.As a consequence of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Japan—long a leading promoter of nuclear power—has begun to enforce some widely neglected safety regulations and is seriously reconsidering its reliance on nuclear energy. China has put construction of [End Page 89] new power plants on hold. Other nations (such as Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Thailand, and Malaysia) have decided to phase out or cancel plans to build more nuclear power stations. Yet the primary motivations remain unclear, since people's attitudes toward the dangers of nuclear radiation are anything but rational—as evidenced by the mass departure of foreigners from Japan after the catastrophe at Fukushima, when health dangers beyond the vicinity of the power station were minimal.In Europe, the reaction to the Fukushima disaster has clearly been aggravated by memories of the catastrophe at Chernobyl in 1986. While Chernobyl was a more widely destructive event than Fukushima, releasing a much greater amount of radioactivity, its effects on human health continue to generate disagreement. According to the third report on the effects of the Chernobyl catastrophe issued by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), among the 134 plant staff and emergency workers who suffered acute radiation syndrome (ARS), the condition proved fatal for twenty-eight of them. By 2006 another nineteen ARS survivors died, although their deaths were not directly attributable to the effects of ionizing radiation. Although the report attributes "a substantial fraction" of the six thousand cases of thyroid cancer in people who were children at the time of the accident to their consumption of milk contaminated with iodine-131, only fifteen cases had proved fatal by 2005, some twenty years later.3 The death toll, then, was fewer than fifty.By contrast, a study by a group of scientists from Belarus, Russia, and the Ukraine, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, estimates the number of deaths attributable to the meltdown at around 980,000—almost twenty thousand times greater than the estimate by the UN scientific committee.4 What are we to make of this vast discrepancy, especially since the UNSCEAR report "was prepared in close cooperation with... (shrink)

On 11 March 2011, Japan experienced a major disaster brought about by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and a massive tsunami that followed. This disaster caused extensive damage to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant with the release of a large amount of radiation, leading to a crisis level 7 on the International Atomic Energy Agency scale. In this report, we discuss the obligations of physicians to provide care during the initial weeks after the disaster. We (...) appeal to the obligation of general beneficence and argue that physicians should go to disaster zones only if there is no significant risk, cost or burden associated with doing so. We conclude that physicians were not obligated to go to Fukushima given the high risk of radiation exposure and physical and psychological harm. However, we must acknowledge that there were serious epistemic difficulties in accurately assessing the risks or benefits of travelling to Fukushima at the time. The discussion that follows is highly pertinent to all countries that rely on nuclear energy. (shrink)

The March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake caused extensive damage to the Tōhoku district of Japan and gave rise to many arguments concerning the meaning of “disaster” as well as the road to recovery. In particular, the severe accident of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant reminded us of the overconfidence of science and technology. In this article, I will discuss concepts such as “disaster of civilization,” “impermanence,” “betweenness,” and the double structure of the Japanese (...) view of nature. (shrink)

After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the Japanese government tried to democratize energy policy-making by introducing public participation. Over the course of its implementation, however, public participation came to be subordinated to expert committees as the primary mechanism of policy rationalization. The expert committees not only neutralized the results of public participation but also discounted the necessity of public participation itself. This trajectory of public participation, from its historic introduction to eventual collapse, can be fully explained (...) only in reference to complex interactions between the macroinstitutions and microsituations of Japanese policy-making at the time of the nuclear disaster: the macroinstitutional reassembling of the developmental state to reallocate more power from the bureaucracy to the cabinet office and the civil society vis-à-vis the microsituational, shifting power dynamics involving political parties, citizens and NGOs, businesses and labor unions, and other relevant actors. This case study thus helps advance the growing science and technology studies research on how the macro and microparameters of policy-making, ranging from the durable institutions of nation-states to situationally specific political struggles, combine to shape the designs, implementations, and policy influences of public participation at particular places and times as well as in particular policy domains. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss from a philosophical viewpoint the so-called radiation problem that resulted from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station accident after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. The starting point lies in the conceptual distinction between “damage due to radiation” and “damage caused by avoiding radiation.” We can recognize the direct “damage due to radiation” in Fukushima as not serious based on the empirical data so that I focus upon the problem of (...) the “damage caused by avoiding radiation,” particularly the damage due to evacuation actions. Actually, evacuation actions caused more refugees to die of suicide and diseases than supposed. Obviously, there is a practical problem on whether the forceful and emergent evacuationwas needed. In addition, I will point out that some people psychologically had negative feelings about the radiation problem altogether, for example, absurdity, discomfort, anxiety, or distrust, where some of them tend to twistedly solve those by giving moral censure to people and the product in affected areas. This brought about serious harm to people in Fukushima. I will interpret some people’s careless adoption of precautionary principle and their misunderstanding of the legal standard in radiation protection as being latent in this tragedy. (shrink)

The severe accident at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant caused by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 was a typical disaster in the age of “trans-science,” which means the situation that science and politics are closely connected and inseparable. The stage of trans-science requires a philosophy of trans-science instead of a philosophy of science such as logical positivism. I would like to characterize norms for techno-scientists in the risk society as RISK, which includes (...) Regulatory deliberation, Intergenerational ethics, Social accountability and Knowledge-product liability. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the problems of Tohoku earthquake in terms of engineering ethics. But as“engineers,”we also count seismologists. This is because, simply thinking, the recent disaster is partially attributable to seismologists. Through the discussion, including an overview of the earthquake, we reach the conclusion endorsing the abolition of nuclear power plants.

The world population is growing, yet we continue to pursue higher levels of well-being, and as a result, increasing energy demands and the destructive effects of climate change are just two of many major threats that we face. Engineers play an indispensable role in addressing these challenges, and whether they recognize it or not, in doing so they will inevitably encounter a whole range of ethical choices and dilemmas. This book examines and explains the ethical issues in engineering, showing how (...) they affect assessment, design, sustainability, and globalization, and explores many recent examples including the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Dieselgate, 'naked scanners' at airports, and biofuel production. Detailed but accessible, the book will enable advanced engineering students and professional engineers to better identify and address the ethical problems in their practice. (shrink)

Given the known hazards of nuclear energy in seismically active Japan after the Fukushima meltdowns as well as the presence of viable conservation and renewable energy options, the question of Japan’s stalled energy transition warrants critical interrogation. To better understand why, after Fukushima, Japan’s energy policy trajectory maintained the nuclear status quo and an increased reliance on fossil fuels, this article employs network and historical analyses to examine the confluence of post-Fukushima political forces connected to (...) Japan’s nuclear energy sector. Our novel network dataset combines with historical analysis to identify a dense network of overlapping executives and officials in Japan that forge long-term ties between the nuclear energy industry, the state, and the leading business federation in Japan. Following the 3.11 disaster and the meltdowns at the Fukushima-Daiichi facility, a long-standing nuclear safety myth and a tightly networked nuclear energy industrial complex provided an ideological and structural context to re-legitimize nuclear energy in spite of widespread public concern. Instead of a bold, ecologically rational policy to quickly phase out nuclear power and phase in renewable energy, well-worn class and state networks aligned to recommit Japan to a nuclear-reliant energy path. These findings support a theoretical synthesis around our concept of an energy industrial complex with applications in environmental and political sociology. (shrink)

In this paper, I will describe the history of Japanese science studies (In the Japanese language, the term ?science studies? [Kagaku-ron] is used to indicate a broad area, which covers the history, philosophy, and social studies of science and technology.) from the beginning of the twentieth century to around the mid-1980s, and will argue how depoliticization took place in its history. Japanese science studies was formed under the conspicuous influence of German philosophy before World War II (hereafter WW II), especially (...) in its neo-Kantian tradition. During the military regime, science studies offered a hiding place for Marxists. However, after the end of the Asian-Pacific War, British influence became stronger in the history and sociology of science in two stages. First, logical positivism arrived, in this case, mainly from the USA under the name of ?analytic philosophy.? Second, the American influence was furthered by the introduction of Kuhn?s theory of paradigm which unexpectedly depoliticized Japanese science studies. This trend seems to have reflected the course of the Cold War. After the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster, one of the most significant legacies of Cold War Science, we need to review the history of science studies in order to retrieve its ?critical? function. Even though this paper focuses on Japan, comparable reflections should be made worldwide. (shrink)

This comment argues for the importance of global institutions to regulate nuclear power. Nuclear power presents challenges across national borders irrespective of whether plants are maintained safely. There are international agreements in place on the disposal of nuclear waste, an issue of great concern in terms of environmental and health effects for any nuclear power policy. However, there remains a pressing need for an international agreement to ensure the safe maintenance of nuclear facilities. Safe (...) class='Hi'>nuclear power beyond waste disposal should receive more attention. Nuclear power policy is often a matter of pure state interest with national governments alone responsible for regulating the safe maintenance of nuclear facilities. It ought not be left to national governments alone to regulate the safe administration of nuclear power given the many threats to environmental safety and public health. This comment argues that global institutions may best address this problem. The comment concludes with recommendations on how nuclear power policy might be regulated. (shrink)

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 263-265, October 2011.

The development of nuclear energy technologies in the second half of the 20th century came with great hopes of rebuilding nations recovering from the devasta-tion of the Second World War or recently released from colonial rule. In coun-tries like France, India, the USA, Canada, Russia, and the United Kingdom, nuclear energy became the symbol of development towards a modern and technologically advanced future. However, after more than six decades of experi-ence with nuclear energy production, and in the (...) aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, it is safe to say that nuclear energy production is not without its problems.Some of these problems have their origins in the very materiality of the technolo-gies involved. For example, not only does the use of highly radioactive materials give rise to risks for the current generation (e.g., in the potential for disaster when reactors melt down) but high-level radioactive waste from nuclear energy production presents a serious intergenerational problem for which an acceptable final solution or its implementation remains elusive. Moreover, nuclear energy technologies have specific social and political consequences. For example, they have been said to be authoritarian technologies (Winner, 1980), requiring cen-tralized authority, secrecy, and technocratic decision-making. While some of these problems could have been foreseen before nuclear energy technologies were introduced, others only arose after these technologies were already integrated into the social and infrastructural fabric of our lives. Addition-ally, new technologies (e.g., Generation III, III+ and IV reactors) are still being developed, bringing with them new and uncertain hazards and risks. Ignorance and uncertainty about the possible deleterious effects of introducing a new technology are inevitable, especially if the technology is complex, large time-scales are involved, or risks depend on social or political factors unforeseen in the design stage. However, this should not deter us from developing and intro-ducing new technologies. Rather, it should motivate us to organize these ‘exper-iments’ with new technologies in society in such a way that we can learn about their possible hazards and risks as effectively and responsibly as possible (van de Poel, 2011, 2015). In this way, it is possible to minimize risks and avoid unwant-ed moral, social or political developments. However, organizing such experi-ments responsibly also means that one could come to the conclusion that continuing an experiment is no longer responsible or desirable. Should we be prepared for such a scenario, and if so, how could we do that? One possible strategy to tackle this issue is that the technology and its introduction should be reversible. The aim of this thesis is to further explore this strategy by answering the following main research question (RQ) and accompanying subquestions (SQ):RQ: What are the implications of reversibility for the responsible develop-ment and implementation of nuclear energy technologies?SQ1: Under what conditions can nuclear energy technologies be considered reversible?SQ2: Why should nuclear energy technologies be reversible?SQ3: If so, how could the reversibility of nuclear energy technologies be achieved?After the introductory chapter 1, the chapters that form the main body of this dissertation each provide a distinct contribution to answering the three subques-tions and, by extension, the main research question. Guided by three historical case studies of nuclear energy technology development (i.e., India, France and the USA), chapter 2 answers the first subquestion by formulating the two condi-tions under which it can be considered reversible, i.e., 1) the ability to stop the further development and deployment of a that technology in society, and 2) the ability to undo the undesirable outcomes (material, institutional or symbolic) of the development and deployment of the technology. Chapter 3 subsequently tackles the second subquestion by establishing the general desirability of technological reversibility by virtue of its relation to responsibility in Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical phenomenology. It argues that technology development is a legitimate response to responsibility but inevitably falls short of the responsibility that inspires it, incessantly calling for technological and political change in the process. Having thus argued that nuclear energy technologies should ideally be reversible, chap-ters 4 and 5 work towards specific strategies to achieve technological reversibil-ity. Chapter 4 first investigates the processes that make it difficult to stop the further development and implementation of a nuclear energy technology in society, thus provid-ing input on how to fulfill the first condition for the reversibility of nuclear energy technologies. To do so, it presents a phenomenological perspective on technology and its adoption based on the work of Alfred Schutz. It also explores different ways in which technology adoption drives the processes of path depend-ence towards technological lock-in. Chapter 5 examines the history of geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste in the USA. It identifies a number of concrete policy pitfalls that could lead to lock-in and that should consequently be avoided. It also presents a number of general design strategies that could facilitate the undoing of undesirable consequences of a technology, thus providing input on how to fulfill the second condition for the reversibility of nuclear energy technol-ogies.Chapter 6 summarizes the central findings of the thesis and explains how these help to answer the research questions. On top of this, it reflects on a number of complications connected to reversibility considerations. Based on this, it is concluded that the question of irreversibility and reversibility is context- and technology-specific and a matter of degree. The chapter concludes with a reflec-tion on generalizations and limitations of the results. Finally, chapter 7 discusses the implications of this dissertation’s results for responsibly experimenting with nuclear energy technologies in society. (shrink)

In the aftermath of the Fukushima power plant disaster, autoradiography became an increasingly widespread artistic technique for producing cameraless photography. By exposing photographic film directly using contaminated objects and materials, contemporary artists autoradiograph the geopolitics and local histories of atomic contamination due to bombing, testing, nuclear reactor explosions, mining or uranium disposal cells. In my article, I discuss the implications these autoradiographic works have for the concept of photography by drawing on Timothy Morton’s notion of hyperobjects. (...) Being hyperobjective, radioactivity confronts human beings with a vast non-human temporality, which, in turn, necessitates a shift in our understanding of photography. While photo theory has often been modelled on snapshot photography, privileging instantaneity and pastness, autoradiography is a durational and pluri-temporal procedure that points emphatically towards the future and invites us to reconceptualize the basis of photographic ontology. (shrink)

The management of radioactive waste, particularly of High-Level Radioactive Waste (HLW) containing isotopes, whose half-life exceeds one million years, is a wicked and aporetic problem. The amount of waste increases continuously, while the question of management remains technologically and politically unsolved. Not only do the technological challenges involved exceed the horizon of scientists, but the ethical problems raised by the use of nuclear power have been neglected from the beginning. The history of nuclear power is as well a (...) history of neglecting its consequences. No country is able to provide a suitable concept of storage for HLW. Instead, we have failing approaches: for example, decaying barrels in the Channel and the Atlantic Ocean, and in Germany two salt mines stuffed with unregistered amounts of waste on the edge of collapse.After the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi in March 2011, the German Federal Government decided for the second time to stop using nuclear power as an energy source, and on July 5th 2013, it passed a law mandating a new search for a storage site. In the beginning of 2013, an interdisciplinary project—ENTRIA—was launched to investigate options for radioactive waste management from the perspectives of the technical sciences and the humanities. ENTRIA is evaluating three possible options for storage: deep geological disposal, retrievable deep geological repository with monitoring, and permanent dry cask storage above ground. Each of the three options bears particular technological and ethical challenges. (shrink)

「3・11」大震災は哲学に何を突きつけたか。大震災は、日本に張りめぐらされた権力構成体=「原発ペンタゴン」を明るみに出したが、これを機に哲学が問うべきは、近代において理性が、技術・テクノロジーに依存す る「技術的理性」に変貌したという事実である。本書は、原発をはじめとする技術問題を俎上に載せて「技術的理性」の諸特質について論じ、その変革可能性を考察する。.

The nuclear disaster that Japan suffered at Fukushima in the months following March 11, 2011 has been compared with other major nuclear disasters, especially, Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986). It is more like Chernobyl in severity, the only other 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale; more like Three Mile Island in long-term effects. Yet Fukushima is not just another nuclear disaster. In ways important to engineering ethics, it is much (...) more like Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans than like any nuclear disaster. It is (primarily) a consequence of a natural disaster, the enormous earthquake and tsunami that wrecked much of northeast Japan. One lesson of Fukushima, one shared with Katrina, concerns the different roles engineers have at different stages in an engineering project (planning, designing, management, and operations). In the planning stage, engineers seem to have relatively little power to affect certain early large-scale trade-offs between public safety and public welfare. Another lesson may be the importance of not leaving complex technical systems untended. The events that made the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl inevitable lasted only a few minutes or hours; the events that made the disasters in New Orleans and Fukushima inevitable were spread over several days. Fukushima avoided a more serious disaster because the plants were not abandoned in the way New Orleans was. A third lesson concerns our ideas of heroism, especially our sense that heroism is sometimes one’s duty. An engineer’s duty sometimes includes protecting others from harm even at the risk of the engineer’s life. (shrink)

Using critical discourse analysis, this article analyzes the discursive representation of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in The Daily Yomiuri, part of the largest and most influential media conglomerate in Japan. A critical discourse analysis of The Daily Yomiuri reveals that Japanese national identity and the ideology of technoscience are reproduced through two discursive constructions: a diminished ‘risk’ from Fukushima radiation and citizens’ national duty in the nuclear crisis. Within these two constructions, 11 major techniques are (...) identified by which The Yomiuri discursively mitigates the risks from Fukushima and calls Japanese national identity into the service of the nuclear industry. The article concludes with implications for understanding the impact of political discourse in mass media on other policy debates in Japan and elsewhere. (shrink)

Despite the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, a growing number of countries are interested in expanding or introducing nuclear energy. However, nuclear energy production and nuclear waste disposal give rise to pressing ethical questions that society needs to face. This book takes up this challenge with essays by an international team of scholars focusing on the key issues of risk, justice, and democracy. The essays consider a range of ethical issues, (...) including radiological protection, the influence of gender in the acceptability of nuclear risk, and environmental, international, and intergenerational justice in the context of nuclear energy. They also address the question of when, and under which conditions, nuclear energy should play a role in the world's future supply of electricity, looking at both developing and industrialized countries. The book will interest readers in ethics and political philosophy, social and political sciences, nuclear engineering, and policy studies. (shrink)

Literature expects that an attitude toward nuclear power is in direct proportion to the perceived risk of accidents at an operational nuclear power plant; that is, the oppositional attitude is based on the view that nuclear technology is risky and support for nuclear power is related to a perceived low risk and/or potential benefit. However, it is misleading to assume that individuals’ risk perception alone can linearly explain their position after such an accident. The association between (...) risk perception and attitude toward nuclear power varies significantly according to country but, until now, has been largely unexamined. This article takes into consideration the effects of structural factors on that relationship by examining public attitudes toward nuclear energy after the Fukushima nuclear accident in March 2011 and reveals that the need for the efficient production of electricity (i.e., nuclear energy) outweighs concern for the potential danger of a nuclear incident. Although a country's dependence on nuclear power for the production of electricity engenders anti-nuclear attitudes, it is evident that a level of economic development largely alleviates any negativity relative to that energy source. (shrink)

The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which occurred on the occasion of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, caused enormous damage to the political, social, cultural and natural environments in Japan and still continues to create problems.What can we learn from the case of Fukushima from the viewpoint of the philosophy of technology?First, I emphasize that technology is not considered a closed system constituted only of a technological factor in the (...) narrow sense of the term, but must be considered an open system related to and constituted of various factors, including social, cultural, and natural environmental factors. In this sense, technology is inherently multidimensional.Second, as there is no guarantee that multiple factors maintain a harmonious and stable unity under various circumstances, technology inevitably brings about unintended consequences. We must always consider the unmanageable and unpredictable character of technology, which can be characterized as the “otherness” character of technology and is to be considered a central problem of the philosophy and ethics of technology. (shrink)

On March 11, 2011, one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded occurred off the northeast coast of Japan. It destroyed buildings, damaged infrastructure, and killed people in the Tohoku region. The associated tsunami was even more destructive, engulfing coastal areas and obliterating whole towns. The earthquake and the tsunami together occasioned a third disaster: the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Like most people, Dr. Makoto Sato was horrified by the destruction and suffering that he (...) saw. He wanted to help and felt that he should, but doing something appropriate and effective was not easy. He is a general internist and bioethicist at a university medical center in Hokkaido, the large island north of Tohoku. What should Dr. Sato have done then? What should he do now? (shrink)

The 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami damaged the nuclear reactors in Fukushima. Prime Minister Naoto Kan took this crisis seriously, and made himself personally involved with damage control, especially during the first week. This study examines the responses to the incident by the prime minister's office.

On March 11, 2011, one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded occurred off the northeast coast of Japan. It destroyed buildings, damaged infrastructure, and killed people in the Tohoku region. The associated tsunami was even more destructive, engulfing coastal areas and obliterating whole towns. The earthquake and the tsunami together occasioned a third disaster: the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.Like most people, Dr. Makoto Sato was horrified by the destruction and suffering that he saw. (...) He wanted to help and felt that he should, but doing something appropriate and effective was not easy. He is a general internist and bioethicist at a university medical center in Hokkaido, the large island north of Tohoku.What should Dr. Sato have done then? What should he do now? (shrink)

This article examines public communication about atomic energy as an important vector in the political, institutional, and technological transformations of Ukraine's nuclear industry since the breakup of the USSR. It explores the ongoing effort to make the atom more domestic, familiar, human, and accessible against the not-so-distant backdrop of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. The central focus of this article is the analysis of children's drawings of nuclear power stations produced for art contests organized by (...) local nuclear information centers. These contests and other activities of the centers have contributed to the increased visibility of nuclear power in Ukraine. The drawings reveal the inscription of the atom into complex representations about the Ukrainian nation, its past, present, traditions, and modernity. The analysis of these drawings as well as government and nuclear power station (NPP) documents, press articles, and interviews indicates that the notion of the “domestication” of the atom is a particularly appropriate way to describe the banalization of nuclear technologies in Ukraine. (shrink)

In this book, the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy examines the nature of catastrophes in the era of globalization and technology. Can a catastrophe be an isolated occurrence? Is there such a thing as a “natural” catastrophe when all of our technologies—nuclear energy, power supply, water supply—are necessarily implicated, drawing together the biological, social, economic, and political? Nancy examines these questions and more. Exclusive to this English edition are two interviews with Nancy conducted by Danielle Cohen-Levinas and Yuji Nishiyama and Yotetsu (...) Tonaki. (shrink)

The Fukushima accident was a crisis in Japan, and a crisis elsewhere. In Europe, the aftermath of Fukushima was a period of intense questioning, about how to ensure the safety of nuclear reactors, and how, at the same time, ensure the ability of the European Union to act as a consistent political actor in the face of potentially catastrophic risks. Using empirical material related to the post-Fukushima stress tests and the subsequent discussions about the European regulatory (...) framework for nuclear safety, this paper shows that stress tests have provided a peculiar form of European intervention, restabilizing regulatory boundaries while extending the European gaze. It describes the overall operation thereby performed as the “normalization of the crisis” whereby the exceptional situation enters the realm of the normal functioning of the public administrations, and where the actions undertaken take the form of the legal norm. (shrink)

Japanese consumers are still hesitant to purchase products from Fukushima, although 7 years have passed since the Fukushima nuclear disaster and these products are officially considered safe. In this study, we examined whether Japanese consumers have negative implicit attitudes towards agricultural and aquatic products from the Fukushima region and whether these attitudes are independent of their explicit attitudes. Japanese students completed an implicit association test and a questionnaire to assess their implicit and explicit attitudes towards (...) products from Fukushima relative to another region. The results of two experiments reliably demonstrated that the public has negative implicit attitudes towards Fukushima products, whereas their explicit attitudes are consistently positive. These observations predominantly held for participants living close to Fukushima (Tokyo) as opposed to participants living far away (Hiroshima): Experiment 1 (n = 40). Furthermore, individual differences in aversion to germs contributed to the implicit attitudes; the implicit negative attitudes were attenuated among the participants with a relatively low aversion to germs: Experiment 2 (n = 60). These results suggest that the implicit attitudes associated with the behavioral immune system, which is conceptualized as a suite of psychological mechanisms designed to proactively resist pathogenic threats, may underlie the hesitation to purchase products from Fukushima. (shrink)

The discussion of the Anthropocene makes it clear that contemporary social thought can no longer take nature, or an external ‘environment’, for granted in political discussion. Humanity is remaking its own context very rapidly, not only in the processes of urbanization but also in the larger context of global biophysical transformations that provide various forms of insecurity. Disasters such as the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns and potentially disastrous plans to geoengineer the climate in coming decades highlight that the human (...) environment is being remade in the Anthropocene. Humanity is now a geological actor, not just a biological one, and that insight, captured in the term Anthropocene, changes understandings of both security and environment in social thought, requiring a focus on production of environments rather than their protection. Disasters help clarify this key point and its significance for considering geosocial formations. (shrink)

La catastrophe de Fukushima n’est pas considérée ici seulement comme le dernier désastre majeur qui oblige à repenser l’usage de l’énergie nucléaire. On envisage sa leçon de manière plus générale, en tant qu’elle manifeste l’interdépendance désormais inextricable des phénomènes dits « naturels » et des ensembles techniques, sociaux, politiques, économiques dont la connexion générale nous oppresse. Toutes les catastrophes ne sont certes pas équivalentes. Mais l’équivalence dont on veut parler ici est celle qui met en correspondance et qui fait (...) circuler dans la communication et dans la consommation générales tous les éléments de notre existence – les vies, les biens, les forces, les énergies. Le signe et le porteur de cette circulation n’est autre que la valeur en tant qu’argent, ou valeur du « march頻 : l’« équivalence générale » dont parlait Marx. C’est elle qui propage une catastrophe généralisée.Que veut dire « penser » dans cette condition qui est la nôtre? (shrink)

The teikei movement is a Japanese version of the alternative food movement, which emerged around the late 1960s and early 1970s. Similar to now well-known Community Supported Agriculture, it is a farmer-consumer partnership that involves direct exchanges of organic foods. It also aims to build a community that coexists with the natural environment through mutually supportive relationships between farmers and consumers. This article examined the history of the teikei movement. The movement began as a reaction to negative impacts of mechanized (...) and chemically intensive agriculture promoted by the Japanese government. The movement experienced a rapid expansion in the early 1980s, and then gradually declined thereafter. The organic market expansion and certification system intersected with both cultural and gender role changes, impacting the teikei movement negatively. Consequently, the membership of teikei consumer groups has shrunk. Furthermore, the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident caused unprece dented damage to organic farmers in the affected regions. Despite the scientific uncertain about the safety level of radiation exposure, the organic farmers and the teikei consumer groups managed the situation and found a way to inspect radiation contamination. They did so with the support by networking with other teikei-related actors. This response to the nuclear power plant accident suggests that although the level of embeddedness presumably varies among teikei actors, ethics guided by the teikei principles are effective in forging a resilient partnership between farmers and consumers and in keeping the teikei system alive as an agent for social change. (shrink)

The Fukushima nuclear accident from 2011 provided an occasion for the public display of radiation maps generated using decision-support systems for nuclear emergency management. Such systems rely on computer models for simulating the atmospheric dispersion of radioactive materials and estimating potential doses in the event of a radioactive release from a nuclear reactor. In Germany, as in Japan, such systems are part of the national emergency response apparatus and, in case of accidents, they can be (...) used by emergency task forces for planning radioprotection countermeasures. In this context, the paper addresses the epistemology of dose projections by critically analyzing some of the sources of epistemic opacity and non-knowledge affecting them, and the different methods and practices used by German radioprotection experts to improve their trustworthiness and reliability. It will be argued that dose projections are part of an entire radioprotection regime or assemblage built around the belief that the effects of nuclear accidents can be effectively mitigated thanks to the simulation technologies underlying different protocols and practices of nuclear preparedness. And, as the Fukushima experience showed, some of these expectations will not be met in real emergencies due to the inherent uncertainties entailed by the use of dose projections when planning protective countermeasures. (shrink)

One might think that nuclear energy is a simple issue, with economists loving it and environmentalists hating it. But climate change complicates matters. Global warming reveals fossil fuels as the real problem. For reining in climate change, it would make sense to use any and all solutions that work; and nuclear power might presumably serve as a stopgap measure until the global economy can run on renewables alone. However, decades of tinkering with fission have not led to engineering (...) breakthroughs. Fast breeder technology could not get off the ground, nuclear reprocessing turned out to be a dead end, safe underground storage facilities were never located, and what to do with nuclear waste continues to be an open question. Major accidents, as in Fukushima 2011, can happen. Insurance companies still demand liability protection when underwriting fission. And running nuclear reactors over time indicates that their economic competitiveness is not impressive. So climate change, engineering d .. (shrink)

Vietnam is a vibrant and emerging South East Asian economy. However, the country faces a challenging task in meeting rising energy demand and the need to securitize energy while addressing the negative environmental impact of fossil fuel utilization. Growing concerns about sustainable development have led Vietnam to develop civilian nuclear energy for electricity generation. Nuclear power is widely recognized as a clean, mature and reliable energy source. Its inclusion in Vietnam’s energy mix by 2030 is expected to supplement (...) other energy sources from fossil fuel, hydropower plants, renewable resources and energy imports. Despite strong reservations in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, Vietnam has pursued its national nuclearization program. Civilian nuclear energy development has been widely regarded as a controversial issue, although it is intended for peaceful purposes and as a solution for long-term energy security. Anxiety over nuclear safety measures, inadequate nuclear regulatory mechanisms, lack of institutionalized radioactive waste management, the threat of nuclear accident, theft and terrorism, and nuclear proliferation have marred public perception. The apprehension towards nuclear energy development has raised serious questions on the ethics and risks of the technology. Using a qualitative approach of reviewing published scholarly research, we investigated the ethical and risk issues that manifest in civilian nuclear energy development in Vietnam. Our findings reveal that the conundrum of civilian nuclear energy revolves around balancing energy security, environment preservation and societal well-being with ethical and risk predicaments of nuclear energy. (shrink)

In this commentary, I reflect on the differences between two independent citizen approaches to monitoring radiological contamination, one in Belarus after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident and the other in Japan following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident. I examine these approaches from the perspective of their contribution to making radiological contamination more publicly visible. The analysis is grounded in my earlier work, where I examined how we have come to know what we know about post–Chernobyl contamination and (...) its effects in Belarus, a former Soviet republic most heavily affected by the fallout. As I described in this study, much of what we know about the consequences of Chernobyl is based on the work of the Belarusian nonprofit Institute of Radiation Safety, “Belrad.” I compare Belrad’s approach to radiological monitoring with the work of the volunteer network Safecast, arguably one of the best-known citizen science projects in the world, which is working to monitor the scope of the post–Fukushima contamination. Through this comparison of approaches, I raise broader questions about a form of sensing practices—data-related practices of citizen science that make environmental hazards publicly in/visible. (shrink)

THE FACULTY OF Arts at the University of Sydney is a disaster-area, and not of the merely passive kind, like a bombed building, or an area that has been flooded. It is the active kind, like a badly-leaking nuclear reactor, or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle.

An integrated approach of the topics ‘population’, ‘energy’ and ‘climate’ results in conclusions contrary to public opinion. Population growth will lead to disaster ten times faster than global warming. 2.5 billion people in the poor countries account for a population growth of one billion every 12 years. Fertility rates decrease with increasing gross domestic products (GDPs). Increasing GDPs correlate with increasing energy consumption. Wind power and solar energy are too expensive for the poor countries. Low-price energy can only be (...) produced with coal, gas, oil and uranium. Therefore, many more coal-fired power stations and nuclear reactors need to be built and hopefully population growth will slow down. Once population is stabilized environmental issues can be addressed. (shrink)

Looking back, the process in which Ulrich Beck’s epoch-making work of Risikogesellschaft was introduced and translated into Japanese attracted great public interest there. This paper revisits the significance of the concept ‘risk society’ in the context of postwar Japan. Facing both the natural and artificial disasters caused by the huge earthquake in Fukushima in 2011, Japanese society was compelled to reconsider its atomic energy policy implemented after the end of the Second World War. While the general public has strongly (...) embraced an anti-nuclear sentiment after witnessing the 3/11 disasters, the government and leading LDP are still eager to restart the atomic plants that have been suspended since the tragedy in Fukushima. Considering those complicated sociopolitical conditions concerning the legitimacy of the atomic energy policy in Japan, Risikogesellschaft redux might be a useful way through which we can envisage a future direction to take. (shrink)

The Fukushima catastrophe has led to important practical and conceptual shifts in contemporary Japanese architecture which in turn has led to a re-evaluation of the influential 1960s Japanese modern architecture movement, Metabolism. The Metabolists had the ambition to create a new Japanese society through techno-utopian city planning. The new generation of Japanese architects, after the Fukushima event, no longer seek evolutionally social change; rather, the disaster has made them re-consider what architecture is and what architects can do (...) for people who had everything snatched from them by technology (nuclear power station) and nature (earthquake and tsunami). Drawing on the architectural projects of Tange Kenzo and Metabolists in the 1960s and Ito Toyo’s ‘Home-for-All project’ in 2011, the paper explores this major paradigm shift in Japanese architectural theory and practices. (shrink)

Amid continuing social unrest from the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent Fukushima nuclear accident of 2011, the Japanese government announced plans for a major biobanking project in the disaster-stricken areas, to be administered by the ‘Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization’ (ToMMo). This project differs from previous biobanking projects in that it 1) was initiated mainly to boost post-disaster recovery and reconstruction; and 2) targets the area’s survivors as its primary subjects. Here, we review the ethics of (...) the ToMMo biobanking project within the wider context of disaster remediation. (shrink)

The 3/11 triple disaster, comprising the powerful earthquake, devastating tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power complex, has drawn worldwide attention to Japan's crisis management capabilities. This article lays out key concepts used in analyzing crises and addresses major trends in contemporary crisis management endeavors. It then turns to the Japanese case, identifying six key themes in the debates about the country's crisis management capabilities. In tracing and exploring past reform efforts, the article assesses (...) characteristics and highlights perceived deficiencies in Japan's approach. The final part provides a brief overview of the case studies presented in this special issue, pinpointing recurrent themes and enduring problems observed in recent crisis management efforts. (shrink)

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 279-283, October 2011.

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 291-295, October 2011.