Structural Ignorance of Expertise in Nuclear Safety Controversies: Case Analysis of Post-Fukushima Japan

Abstract

This study sheds new light on nuclear risk governance from a sociological perspective by analyzing cases of post-Fukushima controversies on nuclear safety and nuclear emergency preparedness in Japan. By critically analyzing how the three risk-related concepts and methodologies, namely, probabilistic risk assessment, safety goals, and the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information, have been interpreted, implemented, and/or abandoned before and after the Fukushima accident, this study identifies three common features that characterize Japan’s nuclear risk governance: avoiding critical conflicts, proclivity toward automated decision making, and strategic overlooking of “uncomfortable knowledge.” These features all involve ignorance of the dynamic nature of safety where addressing uncertainties, heterogeneous knowledge, and incommensurable values can be key for continuously reviewing the existing edifice of safety. By elucidating why such ignorance persists in Japan despite the post-accidental drastic reform, the authors both articulate the deep-rooted structure that underlies it and reflects the societal and historical context, and eventually conceptualize this ignorance as “structural ignorance” of expertise in nuclear safety controversies and policy processes. The results also provide direction for further research to solve this structural problem.

Keywords:

• Structural ignorance
• Fukushima nuclear accident
• risk governance, uncertainty

Acknowledgments

We offer our heartfelt thanks to the interviewees of our qualitative field work in France, Sweden, Canada, and Japan. Discussions during the Workshop of the Nuclear and Social Science Nexus: Challenges and Opportunities for Speaking Across the Disciplinary Divide Workshop, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency, in Paris, France, on December 2019, have been insightful for revising and extending this study. We also sincerely thank the three anonymous reviewers for critically reading the manuscript and suggesting substantial improvements. This work was supported partly by the JSPS KAKENHI grant number JP19K15271 and 17K18139. It was also supported partly by the Social Scientific Research Support Program on Local Community and Nuclear Power, Tokai village, Ibaraki, Japan, grant number TokaiRF201601.

Notes

^a The draft performance objectives in Japan proposed by the NSC consist of two indices: Core Damage Frequency (CDF) should be less than 10⁻⁴/year; and Containment Failure Frequency (CFF) should be less than 10⁻⁵/year.

^b This section is based on part of one of the author’s book chapters and has been extensively revised for this study (Juraku 2021).

^c The Ministerial Council system is an ad hoc and high-class policy coordination scheme preferred by the Abe administration to emphasize political initiative and serve as a response to past criticism of the strong and conservative Japanese bureaucracy.

^d This is based on interviews conducted in November 2016, January and March 2017, and October 2018 with prefectural and municipal government officials. The content is anonymized owing to requests made by the interviewees.