Communication breakdown. Science Council of Japan President Takashi Onishi wants to provide advice.
Credit: Dennis Normile
TOKYO—Public confidence in Japan's scientists and engineers took a major hit from the 11 March earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent Fukushima nuclear power
plant disaster. How to regain it was a major theme of a recent symposium held here to explore the role of scientists in the accident, and their
responsibilities both before and after.
"Many questions have been raised about the performance of scientists: What could we have done? What could have been done differently?" Hiroyuki
Yoshikawa, an engineer and former president of the University of Tokyo, said at the 26 November symposium, which was sponsored by the Science Council
of Japan, the nation's leading science and engineering society, and other groups.
The Fukushima accident exposed troubling issues, speakers noted. Despite the resources poured into analyzing crustal movements and having expert
committees determine earthquake risk, for instance, researchers never considered the possibility of a magnitude-9 earthquake followed by a massive
tsunami. The failure of multiple safety features on nuclear power plants has raised questions about the nation's engineering prowess. Government
flip-flopping on acceptable levels of radiation exposure confused the public, and health professionals provided little guidance. Facing a dearth of
reliable information on radiation levels, citizens armed themselves with dosimeters, pooled data, and together produced radiological contamination maps
far more detailed than anything the government or official scientific sources ever provided.
Such developments suggest scientists and engineers "need to reposition ourselves in relation to the governmental administration and the general public
[so that] the scientific community can play a useful role in providing scientific advice," said Science Council President Takashi Onishi, an urban
planner at the University of Tokyo.
Several speakers blasted their own fields. "There must have been complacency" about safety among nuclear experts, said Satoru Tanaka, a nuclear
engineer at the University of Tokyo and president of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan. He noted that nuclear regulators did not incorporate the
latest thinking on nuclear safety and warnings from Japanese seismologists and tsunami experts into evaluations of existing plants. During the crisis,
Tanaka said, his society was "not able to fulfill our stated mission" of being the most reliable source of information on nuclear power. The society is
studying how to rebuild its credibility while trying to help the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. wrestle with the thorny issues of disposing of
damaged fuel and demolishing the four damaged reactors.
Japan faces hard choices in recovering from the triple disaster, other speakers said. Disposing of the "tens of millions of cubic meters of
contaminated soil [would] surpass the total capacity of all disposal sites in Japan," noted Kyoto University civil engineer Minoru Yoneda. Stripping
soil and vegetation could increase flooding and landslides. Finding the right balance between decontamination and risk is a gray area. "The question of
how much [low dose radiation] is tolerable is open," said radiation health expert Tomoko Kusama, president of Oita University of Nursing and Health
Sciences.
Resolving such issues will require reliable scientific advice, but many speakers argued that paths for scientific input into public policy in Japan are
underdeveloped. During the crisis, "scientists acted separately and disparately, so accurate information was not being given to policy makers," said
Yoshikawa, who called on scientists to develop "a coherent voice."
In the end, although participants appeared to share a general sense that the scientific community needs to regain public trust and take a more active
role in proffering advice, they put forward no concrete proposals for reform. Onishi promised a report on how the community and the council should
respond by the first anniversary of the 11 March disaster.
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