The Nuclear Mismanagement of Chernobyl and Fukushima
“The general strategy behind these tactics was to deny damaging evidence and admit only what could not, in the face of overwhelming evidence, be repudiated”.[1] Kate Brown’s statement in Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future, is a critique of behaviour she noticed during each nuclear disaster — a downplay of the health effects and the severity of the problems. This is done not only by embarrassed officials trying to save face during a severe crisis, but also from UN agencies such as the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation).[2] Brown explains that these groups classify data, limit and stonewall questions, and block funding to research that looks at the dangers of nuclear energy following these disasters. It is an attempt to preserve the legitimacy of nuclear power and has been a tactic used following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and again used in the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown.[3] Both Chernobyl and Fukushima are ranked as two of the worst nuclear disasters in the history of nuclear energy.
Following the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters, there was a recorded shift in opinion towards nuclear power and its safety.[4] Most reports noted a negative perception of nuclear power following each respective disaster.[5] The Fukushima Daiichi disaster seems to have had a longer-lasting impact in recent years in negatively affecting views towards nuclear power, but the shift in perceptions that began with Chernobyl, and was only exacerbated 25 years later. According to reports and studies, perceptions of nuclear energy following Chernobyl and Fukushima shifted notably due to a mismanagement of the disaster, the lasting environmental effects, and international responses.
Both disasters can be described as poorly managed by officials put in charge to confront their respective disasters. Two specific works, “Shifting Public Perception of Nuclear Risk: Chernobyl’s Other Legacy” by Christoph Hohenemser, and “Effect of The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster on Global Public Acceptance of Nuclear Energy” by Younghwan Kim, argue that the mismanagement of these disasters ultimately led to a loss of faith in nuclear energy and the authorities assigned to handle such disasters. Both emergencies suffered from similar problems, particularly a fault in communication and arrogance by managers in reactor safety and design.
In the case of Fukushima Daiichi, PBS Frontline’s documentary Inside Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown[6] explained that TEPCO (Tokyo Electrical Power Company) was put in charge of the disaster response at Fukushima because they owned the plant. However, almost immediately, the information from TEPCO was unreliable since they did not fully explain the situation to the Japanese government.[7] It would take another several months after the initial meltdown for TEPCO and the Japanese government to recognize the severity of the disaster and the meltdown.[8] The Japanese Prime Minister at the time, Naoto Kan, was later forced to resign due to his mismanagement of the crisis and TEPCO was forced to pay billions in reparations for the disaster.[9]
Chernobyl suffered from similar but more egregious failures at communication. They tried their best to cover up the severity of the problem and keep the population ignorant of the severity. As Brown describes in Manual for Survival, an order was issued “to confiscate radiation-counting devices from Belarusian research institutes as a prophylactic against panic”.[10] The intention from Moscow was to keep people in the dark to avoid alarmism and preserve the status quo even if it was dangerous to the health of the population. This tactic would come to haunt the Soviet administration, as Western news reports started to leak into the Soviet Union, and three weeks later, on May 14th, 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev was forced to acknowledge the disaster during a televised speech publicly.[11]
Gorbachev’s public acknowledgement of the disaster and its severity in 1986 was not the full story. The continued attempt to hide the truth of the situation only served to undermine the Soviet government. As Brown states:
When the truths of Chernobyl came to light three years later, the load of public skepticism and doubt would speed downhill like a runaway truck, knocking out Gorbachev and his administration with it.[12]
The lies and the cover-ups did nothing to save lives, nor did they preserve the already faltering government in 1989. Chernobyl would continue to haunt the collapsing Soviet system following the revelation of the truth to the Soviet population, especially those living in Ukraine and Belarus most affected by the disaster.
The truth that came out in 1989 was that there was a fault in the RBMK reactors, the model used at Chernobyl and across the Soviet Union. It was known that the reactor had flaws leading up to the disaster, making catastrophe more likely but was ignored by Soviet officials. Brown quotes nuclear physicist Valery Legasov who explained that the RBMK reactors:
…[did] not meet international and domestic standards of several levels: There is no safety system, no structure for radiation monitoring, and no containment. We are guilty of not following up on a new design for this reactor. The poor rating of the RBMK reactor has been known for fifteen years […] We [were] carrying out the Zaslon mission, and the RBMK is more reliable for that project.[13]
It can be argued that not only was the emergency mishandled by Soviet authorities, but the reactors themselves were mismanaged. There were known safety flaws, but they were ignored to achieve the goal of a mission implemented by the government. The safety concerns were ignored in an arrogant attempt to fulfill a mission at the risk of catastrophe.
Fukushima suffered from similar dismissals of safety concerns, particularly regarding the height of the seawall protecting the reactor from threats of tsunamis. Although the massive size of the tsunami that hit the northeastern coast of Japan and flooded the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant could not have been anticipated, there is evidence of discussions of raising the seawall in case of a crisis. Erik Hollnagel and Yushi Fujita explain in their article, “The Fukushima Disaster — Systematic Failures as Lack of Resilience”[14], that the seawall was built too low under the assumption that only some aspects of the plant would fail. They explain:
The probability of a large earthquake hitting the affected areas was known to be very high, well before the earthquake hit the region. But the initial investigation did not assume that more than a few faults would be activated simultaneously. With the Tsunami, the assumptions were also based on a historical review, but tsunamis are few and far between. The tsunami wall was designed with a height of 5.7 meters, although the reason for that is not clear.[15]
There is evidence of a discussion occurring in which there was a historical precedent for large tsunamis hitting the northeastern coast, the last one happening in the 9th century, but it was still plausible.[16] Officials at TEPCO ignored the warnings about safety and kept the seawall at 5.7 meters.
Such hubris on the parts of officials in both the Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters cost lives and led to a loss of faith. Not only did faith in the safety of nuclear power but also confidence in the officials managing the plants. As Hohenemser explains in his article on Chernobyl, the acceptance of nuclear power collapsed following the disaster.[17] In particular, he explains that the loss in support for nuclear power came from a loss of faith in authorities and officials; in particular, they were regarded as unreliable by the population surveyed. He explains: “Frequently, citizens were convinced that the government was not telling the truth (63 percent of the French population, for example)”.[18] This loss of faith is significant in that nuclear power is seen as unsafe not just because of the possibility of disaster, but because of the inability to trust the information coming from the authorities tasked with dealing with the disaster.
There was a similar situation in Fukushima, as Younghwan Kim describes in his article that government responses directly correlated to public acceptance of nuclear power and belief in its safety. As he describes, “After the Fukushima accident, the Japanese government was criticized for releasing inaccurate or unreliable information, which appears to have reduced public acceptance of nuclear energy”.[19] Public acceptance of nuclear power directly correlates to how governments and agencies can respond to the disaster and how they disseminate information. Both the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters reveal an arrogance on the side of governments and agencies when confronting nuclear power and its hazards. All of this caused a loss in confidence in nuclear energy, and the view that it is an unsafe form of power.
A significant aspect of the negative perception of nuclear energy and the associated disasters of Chernobyl and Fukushima’s role is related to the environmental impact of radiation from these disasters. Data on the environmental impact of Chernobyl is more readily available than Fukushima because it is an older disaster and, as a result, more studies have been done on the environmental impact of radiation. Brown addresses the narrative that the exclusion zones are nature preserves. She explains that there is more going on than simply nature taking over, as some might argue.[20] It is explained in the documentary film, The Babushkas of Chernobyl[21], “all samples from the Zone are radioactive”.[22] There is a danger in normalizing such disasters, and it ultimately works against the intentions of those propagating the lies.
The zones are not nature as normal. This is demonstrated most clearly when Brown joins two scientists collecting samples from the infamous Red Forest. There is something wrong with the forest, the lifecycle is off, with no smell of decay and little to no insects. “In the Red Forest, most of the new growth was in the form of birch trees,” She begins,
…which grow better than pines because they secrete radioactivity annually when they shed leaves. The pines that did root were more like shrubs than the straight, tall trees normally grown for board lumber. The floor of the Red Forest had little vegetation. The forests did not smell like forests with the smell of decomposition. The ground was littered with pine needles and fallen leaves that had no decomposed because the microbes, fungi, and insects that drive the process of decay also suffered from contamination.[23]
The effects of radiation from Chernobyl are long-lasting and widespread. The millions of curies of radioactive particles, especially Cesium and Strontium, which have long half-lives, will pollute areas for centuries rendering them uninhabitable.
In the case of Fukushima, there is a 12-kilometre exclusion zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Some areas are so polluted, they will remain uninhabitable for decades, maybe even longer.[24] Lives are uprooted due to these exclusion zones, with hundreds and thousands evacuated after both Chernobyl and Fukushima. People are aware of the environmental hazards, and they stand as reminders that here nuclear energy was not properly managed, and hubris won over dealing with emergencies. As Brown states, “The fencing and designation of ‘nature reserve’ normalize danger, soothe, and reassure”.[25] It is an attempt by the same people who failed to handle the disaster to downplay its effects.
The negative perceptions of nuclear power that have arisen from the mismanagement of the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, as well as their long-term environmental impact, have had a significant impact on a global scale. In particular, the Fukushima Daiichi disaster had inspired Japan to cease all nuclear programs. Other countries have fallen suit or had inspired countries not to fund new projects and instead let the current reactors age out. In the article, “Risk Perception of Nuclear Energy After Fukushima: Stability and Change in Public Opinion in Switzerland,”[26] by Silje Kristiansen, Heinz Bonfadelli, and Marko Kovic, they state:
In the wake of the accident, debates in many countries addressed whether the benefits of nuclear energy were worth the damage it could cause, and as a result, three countries — Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland — decided to phase out nuclear energy.[27]
They describe that this trend happened in response to a growing concern over nuclear energy and concerns over safety. They continue on the same page explaining that,
Combined with a change in the valence of coverage, such heavy attention to nuclear energy created a context in which initial political decisions for a stepwise phasing out of nuclear energy in Switzerland made clear sense from the perspective of political actors involved.[28]
Much like how following the Chernobyl disaster faith in nuclear energy declined, the Fukushima disaster did likewise. However, the cancelled nuclear energy projects in Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium, signals a dramatic shift in politics and belief. The perception became that nuclear energy is dangerous.[29] As Ewing states in his 2012 article, “Fukushima Daiichi: More Than a Year Later”[30]: “The great Tohoku earthquake has certainly shifted the ground under the future of nuclear energy in Japan, and the seismic waves of change have spread across the globe”.[31] The global response to the disaster has been to turn its back to nuclear energy, a process that is unlikely to be reversed. It is in direct result to the poor management of such disasters.
The 1986 Chernobyl and 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disasters stand as two of the worst nuclear disasters in the world. They had created long term impacts still felt by people and nature and will continue to do so for decades. Both disasters suffered from mismanagement, whether during the disaster in communicating and acknowledging the severity of the problem, or the arrogance before the disaster to ignore safety warnings and concerns. As a result of decisions made, whether out of arrogance or fear, there was a subsequent loss of faith in the nuclear energy and its safety, especially paired with the long term environmental effects that are today continuously downplayed, despite the two massive exclusion zones where people are not allowed to return.
As a result of the negative environmental impacts and a loss of popular faith in nuclear energy, there has been a global movement against nuclear power, in particular in Europe and also in Japan. The mismanagement of both crises only served to exacerbate fears and suspicions regarding nuclear power because of the lies that were propagated and continue to be propagated around radioactive environments. As Ewing asserts at the end of his article, “a less confident person would have built a higher seawall”[32], and acknowledged the severity of the disasters.
[1] Brown, Kate (Kathryn L.). Manual for Survival: a Chernobyl Guide to the Future First edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2019., 256
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., 256–7
[4] Hohenemser, Christoph, and Ortwin Renn. “Shifting Public Perceptions of Nuclear Risk: Chernobyl’s Other Legacy.” Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 30, no. 3 (April 1, 1988): 4–45. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00139157.1988.9928895. ; Kim, Younghwan, Minki Kim, and Wonjoon Kim. “Effect of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster on Global Public Acceptance of Nuclear Energy.” Energy policy 61 (2013): 822–828.
[5] The studies done by Hohenemser and Kim suggest a notable decrease in popular support of nuclear power by those surveyed. Hohenemser states on page 9 that following the Chernobyl disaster, “opposition to nuclear power increased in all countries. In spite of some recovery in recent months, the opposition has in no case returned to pre-Chernobyl levels”. Kim presents a similar image in his work but makes the argument that it is not only the disaster that causes a loss of confidence in nuclear power but also how close the disaster occurs respectively to the country. As is explained on page 826, “The negative coefficients of the variable after_tsunami across the four regression models show that the Fukushima accident decreased the level of public acceptance of nuclear energy (pro_nuke), as expected. This result is also consistent with other cases of serious nuclear accidents such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl”. The most dramatic decreases in acceptances happened in countries closest to Fukushima, while more distant countries saw a less dramatic fall in public support.
[6] Inside Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown. PBS Frontline. Public Broadcasting Service, 2012. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/japans-nuclear-meltdown/.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Brown, Manual for Survival, 45
[11] Ibid., 55
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid., 54
[14] Hollnagel, Erik, and Yushi Fujita. “THE FUKUSHIMA DISASTER — SYSTEMIC FAILURES AS THE LACK OF RESILIENCE.” Nuclear Engineering and Technology 45, no. 1 (February 2013): 13–20.
[15] Ibid., 16
[16] Ibid., 16–17
[17] Hohenemser, Shifting Public Perceptions, 9
[18] Ibid.
[19] Kim, Effect of the Fukushima, 827–8
[20] Brown, Manual for Survival, 10
[21] The Babushkas of Chernobyl. Chicken And Egg Pictures, 2015.
[22] Ibid., 52:33
[23] Brown, Manual for Survival, 128
[24] PBS Frontline, Inside Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown
[25] Brown, Manual for Survival, 10
[26] Kristiansen, Silje, Heinz Bonfadelli, and Marko Kovic. “Risk Perception of Nuclear Energy After Fukushima: Stability and Change in Public Opinion in Switzerland.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 30, no. 1 (March 2018): 24–50.
[27] Ibid., 2
[28] Ibid.
[29] Ibid., 20
[30] Ewing, RC, and T Murakami. “Fukushima Daiichi: More Than One Year Later.” Elements 8, no. 3 (June 2012): 181–182.
[31] Ibid., 181
[32] Ibid., 181
