Japanese reaction to the Fukushima nuclear disaster
The Japanese reaction occurred after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. A nuclear emergency was declared by the government of Japan on 11 March. Later Prime Minister Naoto Kan issued instructions that people within a zone around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant must leave, and urged that those living between 20 km and 30 km from the site to stay indoors. The latter groups were also urged to evacuate on 25 March.
Japanese authorities admitted that lax standards and poor oversight contributed to the nuclear disaster. The government came under fire for their handling of the emergency, including the slow release of data on areas which were likely to be exposed to the radioactive plume from the reactor, as well as the severity of the disaster. The accident is the second biggest nuclear accident after the Chernobyl disaster, but is more complicated as three reactors suffered at least partial meltdowns.
Once a proponent of building more reactors, Prime Minister Naoto Kan took an increasingly anti-nuclear stance in the months following the Fukushima disaster. In May, he ordered the aging Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant be closed over earthquake and tsunami fears, and said he would freeze plans to build new reactors. In July 2011, Mr. Kan said that "Japan should reduce and eventually eliminate its dependence on nuclear energy ... saying that the Fukushima accident had demonstrated the dangers of the technology". In August 2011, the Japanese Government passed a bill to subsidize electricity from renewable energy sources. An energy white paper, approved by the Japanese Cabinet in October 2011, says "public confidence in safety of nuclear power was greatly damaged" by the Fukushima disaster, and calls for a reduction in the nation's reliance on nuclear power.
Initial government assessment and public understanding.
Prime Minister Kan visited the plant for a briefing on 12 March. He had been quoted in the press calling for calm and minimizing exaggerated reports of danger. Kan met with Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) on 15 March and lamented the lack of information. According to press accounts, he asked, "What the hell is going on?" Secretary of Government Yukio Edano stated around 18 March, "We could have moved a little quicker in assessing the situation."
The nature and the scale of the meltdown were not communicated to the public in the early weeks. Japanese newspapers commented the first useful analysis of the accident was not given by the government or TEPCO, but by Masashi Gotō, a retired (1989-2009) Toshiba nuclear engineer whose predecessor designed the containment buildings of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in the 1960s, who had a series of press briefings at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan starting from March 14, 2011.
Requests for help.
The Japanese government asked the United States to provide cooling equipment to the plant. As of 15 March, the U.S. had provided of "special equipment", a fire truck, to help monitor and assess the situation at the plant.
The French nuclear accident response organization Groupe INTRA shipped some of its radiation-hardened mobile robot equipment to Japan to help with the nuclear accident. At least 130 tonnes of equipment has been shipped to Japan.
Japan requested that Russia send the Landysh, a floating water decontamination facility originally built with Japanese funding and intended for decommissioning nuclear submarines.
Former chiefs of key nuclear safety commissions and government agencies have apologized for overlooking important nuclear safety concerns.
The Japanese government has admitted it failed to keep records of key meetings during the Fukushima nuclear crisis. Such detailed notes are considered a key component of disaster management.
Evacuations.
After the declaration of a nuclear emergency by the Government at 19:03 on 11 March, the Fukushima prefecture ordered the evacuation of an estimated 1,864 people within a distance of 2 km from the plant. This was extended to and 5,800 people at 21:23 by a directive to the local governor from the Prime Minister, together with instructions for residents within of the plant to stay indoors. The evacuation was expanded to a radius at 5:44 on 12 March, and then to at 18:25, shortly before ordering use of seawater for emergency cooling.
"The Guardian" reported at 17:35 JST on 12 March that NHK advised residents of the Fukushima area "to stay inside, close doors and windows and turn off air conditioning. They were also advised to cover their mouths with masks, towels or handkerchiefs" as well as not to drink tap water. Air traffic has been restricted in a radius around the plant, according to a NOTAM. The BBC has reported as of 22:49 JST (13:49 GMT) "A team from the National Institute of Radiological Sciences has been dispatched to Fukushima as a precaution, reports NHK. It was reportedly made up of doctors, nurses and other individuals with expertise in dealing with radiation exposure, and had been taken by helicopter to a base 5 km from the nuclear plant."
Over 50,000 people were evacuated during 12 March. The figure increased to 170,000–200,000 people on 13 March, after officials voiced the possibility of a meltdown.
On the morning of 15 March, the evacuation area was again extended. Prime Minister Naoto Kan issued instructions that any remaining people within a zone around the plant must leave, and urged that those living between 20 km and 30 km from the site should stay indoors. A 30 km no-fly zone has been introduced around the plant.
On 16 March, the U.S. Embassy advised Americans in Japan to leave areas within "approximately 50 miles" () from the plant. Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said before the United States Congress, believing the Japanese government was not telling the full story, "We would recommend an evacuation to a much larger radius than has currently been provided by Japan." Spain advised to leave an area of 120 km, Germany advised to leave even the metropolitan area of Tokyo, and South Korea advised to leave farther than 80 km and plans to evacuate by all possible means. Travel to Japan was very low, but additional flights were chartered to evacuate foreigners. Official evacuation of Japan was started by several nations. The US military expected to voluntarily evacuate over 7000 family dependents from Japan, and moved ships under repair away from Japanese ports.
Of 90 bedridden patients moved from a hospital in the town of Futaba-machi, a sample of three patients were tested and shown to have been exposed to radiation. The patients had been waiting outdoors for rescuers before being moved by helicopter at the time an explosion happened. On 25 March, residents in the 30 kilometer circle were urged to leave their houses as well.
On 30 March the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) discovered 20 MBq/m2 of Iodine-131 samples taken from 18 to 26 March in Iitate, Fukushima, 40 km northwest of the Fukushima I reactor. The IAEA recommended expanding the evacuation area, based on its criteria of 10 MBq/m2. Japanese Secretary Yukio Edano stated the government would wait to see if the high radiation continued. On 31 March the IAEA announced a new value of 7 MBq/m2, in samples taken from 19 to 29 March in Iitate. The material decays at 8% to 9% each day.
On 11 April, with ongoing concerns about the stability of the reactors, Japan considered extending the evacuation zone around the Fukushima I. Then, on 21 April 2011, the Japanese government declared a 20-km zone around Daiichi as a "no-go" zone, and threatened anyone who entered or remained in the zone with arrest or detention and fines. The order affected 80,000 residents. Shortly thereafter, on 22 April, the Japanese government officially announced that the evacuation zone would be extended from the 20 km "circular" zone to an irregular zone extending northwest of the Fukushima site. Then, on 16 May, the Japanese government began evacuating people from outside the official exclusion zones, including the village of Iitate, where high levels of radiation had been repeatedly measured.
Evacuees from the radiation zone have reported that some evacuation shelters, including ones run by the city of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, have refused to allow them entrance to their facilities, claiming that the evacuees could be carrying radioactive contamination with them. The shelters have required the evacuees to present certificates obtained by the government of Fukushima prefecture stating that the evacuees are "radiation free".
As of September 2011, more than 100,000 Fukushima Prefecture residents are still subject to a range of evacuation measures, forcing them to live outside their home cities and towns. Some locations near the crippled nuclear power plant are estimated to be contaminated with accumulated radiation doses of more than 500 millisieverts a year, diminishing residents' hopes of returning home anytime soon. Even areas away from the nuclear plant are still suffering from a sharp decline in tourism and sluggish financial conditions.
As of 23 February 2012, 62,674 Fukushima residents had evacuated from the prefecture.
In 2012, ex-prime minister Naoto Kan was interviewed about the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and has said that at one point Japan faced a situation where there was a chance that people might not be able to live in the capital zone including Tokyo and would have to evacuate. He says he is haunted by the specter of an even bigger nuclear crisis forcing tens of millions of people to flee Tokyo and threatening the nation's existence. "If things had reached that level, not only would the public have had to face hardships but Japan's very existence would have been in peril". That convinced Kan to "declare the need for Japan to end its reliance on atomic power and promote renewable sources of energy such as solar that have long taken a back seat in the resource-poor country's energy mix". Government Officials revealed in interviews that they were grappling the possibility of a "demonic chain reaction": If Fukushima collapsed and released enough radiation, it was "possible that other nearby nuclear power plants would have to be abandoned and could also collapse, thereby necessitating the evacuation of one of the world’s largest cities".
Evacuation drills.
In Japan, during each fiscal year, a prefecture that has nuclear power stations in its territory is legally bound to hold nuclear accident disaster drills, demonstrating how to evacuate the population out of the 10-kilometer evacuation zone according to the governmental anti-disaster guidelines. The Fukishima Daiichi accidents proved this 10-kilometer zone to be an underestimation of the evacuation zones that would actually be needed to protect the population of the prefecture from escaping radiation in a proper way. On 5 September 2011, three prefectures—Aomori, Fukushima and Ibaraki—were unable to hold the drills before March 2012. Six prefectures, including Hokkaido and Fukui, had not taken a decision to hold a drill and were awaiting new governmental guidelines on how far to evacuate. Four other prefectures, including Ehime and Saga, planned to hold drills by establishing temporary guidelines and by expanding evacuation zones on their own. The Nuclear Safety Commission aimed to review the evacuation zones and other policies by the end of October.
Revising the nuclear disaster response: widening evacuation zones.
On 20 October 2011, the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan published its views on the evacuation zones around nuclear plants in case of accidents. Instead of the 10-kilometer evacuation-zone previously thought to be sufficient to protect inhabitants, a circle of 30 kilometer was proposed as Urgent Protective Action Planning Zones, or UPZ. This definition was in line with the emergency response requirements proposed by the International Atomic Energy Agency. This draft plan included the designation of areas within 5 kilometers of plants as precautionary action zones, where residents would immediately evacuate in the event of an accident. Residents within a radius of about 50 kilometers would be prepared to take immediately action to prevent internal exposure to their thyroid glands by taking iodine tablets. Further studies were planned with experts and municipalities. Implementation of this plan would mean a major review of all anti-nuclear disaster programs by local governments, and it would increase the number of municipalities involved up to around 130, about three times more than the present figure.
Long-term effects.
Experts on the ground in Japan agree that mental health challenges are the most significant issue. Stress, such as that caused by relocation and uncertainty and concern about unseen toxicants, often manifests in physical ailments, such as heart disease. So even if radiation risks are low, people are still concerned and worried. Behavioral changes can follow, including poor dietary choices, lack of