Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster

by David Lochbaum

  TEPCO ranked alongside Japan’s internationally known corporations—Panasonic, Toyota, Sharp—in dollars invested for advertising. But when things went awry, TEPCO seemed to have no crisis communications plan in place, just as it lacked a workable accident plan.

  As for government officials, they also had incentives to downplay the accident. Japan had pinned its energy future on nuclear power. Every journalist was aware of the historically close ties between industry and government. What confidence could reporters have that public officials would now provide crucial information that reflected poorly on such an influential industry—or on the policy decisions that had promoted its expansion?

  Public trust was an early casualty. Yet trust is critical, noted a Diet-appointed committee, led by Yotaro Hatamura, that investigated the crisis and detailed its findings in a lengthy report. The Investigation Committee on the Accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations of Tokyo Electric Power Company wrote, “Inappropriate provision of information can lead to unnecessary fear among the nation.”

  The report echoed the findings of another independent investigative commission, which criticized the government for withholding information on the basis that it had yet to be completely verified. By “sacrificing ‘promptness’ in order to ensure ‘accuracy,’ there is conversely a danger of inviting citizen’s [sic] mistrust and concern,” the committee noted, acknowledging the difficult balancing act that often faces officials in times of emergency. That was particularly true when news was flooding in from multiple sources other than the government.

  Perhaps the greatest chasm between what was being said and what the public needed to hear concerned the complex issue of radiation exposure and health risks. The looming question on everyone’s mind was the obvious one: are we safe? There could be no unqualified answer; a “safe” level of radiation is an issue on which scientists and health experts often disagree. Even so, the government failed to provide basic guidance, a criticism leveled by the Hatamura committee.

  Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano and others repeatedly used the ambiguous phrase “it does not have immediate effects on health.” As the Hatamura investigation noted, that expression could be interpreted in two conflicting ways: that the radiation was harmless, or that it might produce cancer, just not right away. Citizens were left to ferret out the truth on their own.

  Time and again, the government bungled its handling of the radiation and health issue. On March 16, for example, as the United States was ordering a fifty-mile evacuation for its own citizens in view of rising radiation levels, Edano declared that only the government’s Nuclear Safety Commission could provide an accurate analysis of radiation data. But the chairman of the NSC, Haruki Madarame, was occupied advising Prime Minister Kan and apparently unavailable. On March 23, nearly two weeks into the accident, Madarame held his first news briefing and informed reporters that no analyses were available “because we are very understaffed.”

  By then, citizen activists, armed with their own radiation monitoring equipment, had begun to gather readings around the country and post them online. The flurry of numbers—some reliable, some unverifiable—only compounded the confusion. For parents desperate to protect their children, trustworthy answers were hard to find.

  A child receives radiation screening at a gymnasium in Fukushima on March 24, 2011. AP

  In an effort to avoid arousing fears, the government also deliberately withheld crucial information—a fact that confirmed the suspicions and inflamed the distrust of many when the omissions came to light.

  It wasn’t until June, for example, that officials publicly acknowledged meltdowns at the three reactors—information the government had possessed since March 12, based on the off-site detection of tellurium-132, a fission product that could only have come from a melted core. By June it was old news to anyone in Japan who had Internet access and cared to search for Fukushima analysis from other sources. Moreover, the Japanese had acknowledged on April 12 that Fukushima Daiichi was a level 7 accident on INES, a ranking that certainly implied a meltdown. The official disclosure of the meltdowns finally arrived shortly before details about them were to be released at an international conference.

  And there was the Japanese media itself. It, too, operated under a cloud. Reports about Fukushima Daiichi frequently came colored with the built-in biases of the publication or broadcast outlet: for or against nuclear power, for or against the political party in office, for or against Japan’s powerful but faceless elite who influenced policy but seemed unaccountable for their actions.

  Japan’s news media for decades have functioned through a system of press clubs whose “members”—the journalists from mainstream media—work from newsrooms inside government offices and have ready access to the public officials and agencies they are assigned to cover. Nonmembers, who include reporters working for the growing number of Web-based or independent news organizations as well as freelance journalists, are left to their own devices, briefed less frequently and otherwise isolated from the daily official media loop. (Foreign journalists have their own press club, which accords them certain privileges, but they also are generally less constrained in their relationships with public and private newsmakers.)

  Critics of the press club system have long argued that it fosters a too-cozy relationship between reporters and those they cover. Journalists can be reluctant to challenge the official line for fear of alienating sources and losing access. Politicians and bureaucrats, for their part, know their pronouncements will be duly reported without countervailing views because that is what’s expected of Japanese press club members. Aggressive investigative reporting, common in many other countries, has been the exception rather than the rule for many years in Japan.

  The press clubs also can limit coverage of those who take issue with government policies. Japanese antinuclear activist Aileen Mioko Smith, who heads Kyoto-based Green Action, described the difficulty of attracting media attention to nuclear safety issues. “The Japanese press club system has proven very effective at keeping nuclear news out of mainstream media,” she wrote shortly after the accident. “I often say, ‘If you want to make sure that you don’t get any media coverage, go to the METI press club.’ ” (METI, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, oversaw nuclear safety until a government reorganization after the Fukushima Daiichi accident.)

  And thus, in the frantic days following March 11, when information became the coin of the realm, millions of Japanese felt themselves abandoned. The institutions they had long depended on and trusted—government, corporations, the media—now seemed ineffectual, even suspect, failing to deliver as a result of intent, ineptitude, or the sheer immensity of the unfolding crisis.

  The experience left its mark on many Japanese. “There is a sense of betrayal,” says Dr. Evelyn Bromet, a psychiatric epidemiologist at the University of New York at Stony Brook whose research includes the mental health impacts of the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima accidents. She visited Fukushima and examined detailed survey responses collected from evacuees. The responses reveal a high level of fear, anger, and emotional stress among many Japanese, she says. “There’s nobody that they trust any more for information.”

  “You shouldn’t assume that people can’t handle the truth,” says Bromet. “It may be difficult to swallow, but it’s better to be open and straight with them.”

  During the Fukushima Daiichi accident, Japanese authorities ignored that basic tenet of crisis management, concluded Japan’s Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission in its July 2012 report. “[T]he government chose to release information purely from a subjective perspective, rather than reacting to the needs of the public.”

  Just as the NRC’s technical staff rapidly geared up in response to the events at Fukushima Daiichi on March 11, so did the commission’s public information arm. Although the accident was taking place halfway around the world, U.S. media would have questions.

  As the hours passed and details trickl
ed out of Japan, it became increasingly clear that these distant events could have major implications for American citizens abroad, and even at home, if radiation releases became severe enough. In addition to those issues, the public affairs staff also was sensitive to possible repercussions for the U.S. nuclear establishment, only now getting back on its feet after a lengthy, involuntary hibernation.

  Construction had resumed on the first new American reactor in decades, and the NRC was well on its way toward approving combined construction and operating licenses for four more reactors. The White House supported the expansion of nuclear power in the U.S. energy mix, and the NRC was systematically extending the licenses for aging plants, giving them another twenty years of operation. Some were even calling this a nuclear “renaissance.”

  Now, however, opponents of the growing footprint of nuclear power in the United States, including those who had long argued that it posed serious risks to public health and safety, would be able to bolster their case by uttering one word: Fukushima. Three Mile Island had had the same impact three decades earlier, and the U.S. industry was only now recovering.

  One thing was certain as the disturbing reports continued to arrive: this was a developing drama that would dominate the twenty-four-hour news cycle for days, if not weeks. As a result, some serious messaging would be required by all sides in the nuclear debate, and the NRC would be in the thick of it.

  Shortly after 5:00 a.m. on March 11, just as word was reaching the United States of the crisis in Japan, Scott Burnell of the NRC’s Office of Public Affairs e-mailed the headquarters operations officer at White Flint that he was headed in to work. “Always interesting to wake up and find huge news has occurred,” he noted. At this point, he had no idea how huge.

  The job of public relations, whether performed for a public agency or a private enterprise, entails dual missions: to provide accurate information and to deliver that information in the light most favorable to the presenter. Those missions can conflict. At the NRC, the Office of Public Affairs has to perform a particularly challenging balancing act. The agency is often caught in the crosshairs between critics who feel the agency is too lax on safety issues, too “pro-nuke,” and an industry that pushes back against regulations it sees as too strict and has the political muscle in Washington to get its way.

  Although regulatory conflicts with industry and its allies do arise, they usually occur under the media radar. As a result, the NRC is far more accustomed to defending its performance against critics in the public sector who claim the commission is too lax. And when those critics take aim, the NRC’s public affairs staff tends to circle the wagons to protect its own.

  Fukushima wasn’t an accident in a backwater country; it was occurring in highly educated, science-savvy Japan, using technology and a regulatory playbook largely borrowed from the Americans. Thirty-one aging carbon copies of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi were operating around the United States. Assurances about reactor safety, repeated so often in the United States, had also become the mantra in Japan. Regulators and industry were cozy—another complaint heard in both countries. Those connections were pretty hard to ignore, and the news media latched on to them almost immediately.

  By 10:30 a.m. on March 11, the media calls and e-mails were pouring in to the NRC, and the Office of Public Affairs had already assembled its first set of talking points, a script of sorts to make sure everyone delivered the same message. A list of likely questions and their answers was prepared for Chairman Jaczko, who would soon be in front of cameras fielding queries from politicians and the media. The list included the obvious:

  Q: “Can this happen here?”

  A: “The events that have occurred in Japan are the result of a combination of highly unlikely natural disasters. It is extremely unlikely that a similar event could occur in the United States.”

  Q: “Is there a danger of radiation making it to the United States?”

  A: “Given the thousands of miles between the two countries, Hawaii, Alaska, the U.S. Territories, and the U.S. West Coast are not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity.”

  Q: “Has this incident changed the NRC perception about earthquake risk?”

  A: “There has been no change in the NRC’s perception of earthquake hazard (i.e., ground shaking levels) for U.S. nuclear plants. As is prudent, the NRC will certainly be looking closely at this incident and the effects on the Japanese nuclear power plant in the future to see if any changes are necessary to NRC regulations.”

  Those were the responses marked “public answer” on the briefing materials, with this note attached: “Talk from but do not distribute.” They were not to be shared without “explicit” permission from Jaczko’s office. As for the NRC staff itself, the communications lid was clamped tightly; all comments had to come through the Office of Public Affairs.

  Most of the Fukushima responses drafted for the chairman also contained what was marked as “additional, technical non-public information,” which tended to paint a somewhat different picture of the situation. For example:

  Q: “What happens when/if a plant ‘melts down’?”

  A: Public answer: “In short, nuclear power plants in the United States are designed to be safe. To prevent the release of radioactive material, there are multiple barriers between the radioactive material and the environment, including the fuel cladding, the heavy steel reactor vessel itself, and the containment building, usually a heavily reinforced structure of concrete and steel several feet thick.” Nonpublic addendum: “The melted core may melt through the bottom of the vessel and flow onto the concrete containment floor. The core may melt through the containment liner and release radioactive material to the environment.”

  Q: “Will this incident affect new reactor licensing?”

  A: Public answer: “It is not appropriate to hypothesize on such a future scenario at this point.” Nonpublic addendum: “This event could potentially call into question the NRC’s seismic requirements, which could require the staff to re-evaluate the staff’s approval of the AP1000 and ESBWR [new reactor] design and certifications.”

  As to the question about the risk to U.S. residents from fallout, the public answer—the one that downplayed dangers because of distance—also included a non-public detail that didn’t sound quite so optimistic. “NRC is working with DHS [the Department of Homeland Security], EPA and other federal partners to ensure monitoring equipment for confirmatory readings is properly positioned, based on meteorological and other relevant information.”

  It’s unclear for whom the “non-public” information was intended, but the public responses were utilized repeatedly in coming days. When Jaczko testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 17, he offered a nearly verbatim reassurance on risks to the United States: “Given the thousands of miles between Japan and the United States, Hawaii, Alaska, the U.S. territories, and the West Coast, we are not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity.”

  By Sunday evening, March 13, the media onslaught over Fukushima was only building. “This is a marathon, not a 50-yard dash,” wrote Eliot Brenner of the Office of Public Affairs to his staff about the flood of inquiries. Brenner reminded his troops not to stray from the information contained in press releases or official blog posts. “While we know more than what these say, we’re sticking to this story for now.”

  By Monday, March 14, U.S. reporters were beginning to home in on a logical local angle to the events in Japan: the vulnerability of U.S. reactors to earthquakes. Their instincts were good.

  Six years before, the NRC had begun a review of new data from the U.S. Geological Survey about seismic activity in portions of the country once deemed at low risk of damaging earthquakes, namely the eastern and central United States. Just as in Japan, advances in seismology now were raising questions about earlier risk assessments—assessments used to site, design, and construct America’s reactors. The study, conducted in partnership with the nuclear industry, was
known by the shorthand name of Generic Issue 199, or GI-199.

  “Recent data and models indicate that estimates of the potential for earthquake hazards for some nuclear power plants in the Central and Eastern United States may be larger than previous estimates,” the NRC said in a 2010 document describing the study. And that “could reduce available safety margins” at operating reactors.

  Reactors are designed to shut down automatically when a certain level of ground motion is detected, just as the reactors did at Fukushima. (Those levels are set individually for each plant, based on historical earthquake data, which in the United States—unlike Japan—dates back only a century or two.) Other systems needed to maintain the reactor in a safe state, such as coolant pumps, have to be able to work after a so-called safe shutdown earthquake. But what if that ground motion is much stronger than designers had estimated? Would all the required systems still work? Or could vital equipment fail and core cooling be lost? “Updated estimates of seismic hazard values at some of the sites could potentially exceed the design basis” for the plants, the NRC study found.

  The GI-199 findings didn’t gain much media attention until the magnitude

  9.0 quake hit northeastern Japan. For journalists, the findings represented a Fukushima follow-up that readers and viewers in the United States could identify with. Some at the NRC weren’t happy with the newfound media interest. “Frankly, it is not a good story for us,” wrote Annie Kammerer, a senior seismologist and earthquake engineer at the NRC, shortly after midnight on March 15.