Fukushima and the Privatization of Risk

M. Nadesan

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349465491, 9781137343116
• eBook ISBN: 9781137343123
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

Majia Holmer Nadesan analyzes the Fukushima nuclear disaster and its radiological aftermath for the citizens of Japan and elsewhere in the context of historical and contemporary understandings of radiation-caused health and reproductive effects.

1

Introduction to Fukushima and the Privatization of Risk

Abstract: The public health risks from the Fukushima nuclear disaster will take decades to unfold and will be difficult to measure because of uncertainty about the extent of atmospheric and oceanic emissions and because of the challenges of mapping fallout patterns and bio-accumulation. The effect of uncertainty is that risk is privatized, or shifted away from Japanese industry and government, to impacted individuals in Japan and elsewhere.

Keywords: Privatization of risk, Fukushima nuclear disaster, fallout, dose-effects models

Holmer Nadesan, Majia. Fukushima and the Privatization of Risk. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. DOI: 10.1057/9781137343123.

Fukushima and the Privatization of Risk is a narrative of the Fukushima nuclear disaster that was caused by the great Honshu Quake of 11 March 2011. Three General Electric design reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant approximately 170 miles northeast of Tokyo were acknowledged by the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Corporation (TEPCO), to have had explosions and lose fuel containment in the days after the earthquake. The number of reactors involved, the scale of the explosions, and the reports of spent fuel pool fires raised international alarm about the potential for radiation contamination of northern Japan, the Pacific Ocean, and the western U.S. and Canada (including Hawaii and Alaska), which are directly downwind of Japan, by way of the jet stream. Yet, the crisis communications about the events at the plant by the Japanese government were reassuring in tone, for Japanese citizens, tending to de-emphasize risks posed by the events at the plant. The same tone was adopted by U.S. officials when asked about the potential for fallout to reach U.S. shores via the jet stream.

In the summer of 2012, the National Diet of Japan issued The Official Report of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, chaired by Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo. The report sharply chastised the management of the disaster by the Japanese government and TEPCO in the days immediately following the earthquake. The Diet report concludes that managing panic was prioritized over data-driven evacuation of citizens. The Diet report does not speculate on the potential effects of the disaster. However, concerns have been raised about the long-term effects on citizens in Fukushima, particularly for children especially given their vulnerabilities to ionizing radiation. Yet, cancers and other diseases caused by radiation typically take years, if not decades, to manifest. Therefore, the true risks for Fukushima residents and others exposed to Fukushima fallout will only be realized in the future, retrospectively, through epidemiological studies. These studies will be challenged by layers of uncertainty that complicate our understanding of the disaster. How much radiation was released into the air and ocean from March 2011 until today? How much radiation will bio-accumulate in human beings and what health effects can we expect? In a sense, the very uncertainty surrounding the scale of the disaster and the scope of its effects result in the privatization of risk.

The privatization of risk is a global social trend occurring in myriad ways as risk is shifted from organized entities – such as government and corporations – to private citizens. Risk is privatized when organized institutions renegotiate social and economic contracts so that risk is shifted to individuals, who are made responsible for assuming costs. The U.S. sociologist Jacob Hacker was one of the first to describe how economic risk was being displaced from government and corporations to individuals and their families with the reduction of education, health, and welfare benefits.¹ The transfer of risk Hacker observed is a trend that can be found globally. Naomi Klein described a convergence of natural disaster and privatization of risk in The Shock Doctrine.² She has found the privatization of risk occurring in the response and aftermath of varied disasters ranging across the 2004 Asian Tsunami, 2005 Hurricane Katrina, and the Greek financial crisis of 2012. Across financial and environmental crises, the resulting privatization of risk promoted personal autonomy and action over social interventions, particularly when powerful opposing interests were involved.³

Another way of looking at the privatization of risk is to examine externalities. Externalities are indirect effects of production or consumption that affect individuals who are not the originators of the activity.⁴ Industrial pollutants producing health risks for citizens illustrate externalities. Health externalities are largely absorbed by citizens through personal health spending and social and occupational impacts. Measurement of externalities can be challenging and tends to be retroactive in character. As explained by Kodama Tatsuhiko, Head of the Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo, when it comes to environmental produced disease, and especially radiation caused cancer, “epidemiological evidence is extremely hard [to establish], and in most cases, proof is impossible until all episodes finish running their course.”⁵ Tatsuhiko’s point is that firm data on the relationship between disease and environmental causes are generally available only retrospectively. Thus, the affected present population typically absorbs the majority of the economic and social impacts. In this sense, externalities privatize risk.

This book examines the privatization of risk using both of these approaches. It examines how the economic and social costs of the Fukushima disaster are being shifted from TEPCO and the Japanese government to the impacted citizens of Japan and elsewhere. Those costs include loss of property value and, most importantly, risks to personal health. The Fukushima nuclear crisis has been labeled a “man-made disaster”, yet the externalities of this event are likely going to be absorbed most by citizens in terms of personal impacts. This book focuses on the health and personal impacts of the privatization of risk in the wake of this disaster at the Daiichi plant. Citizens are not without rights and those of Japan and elsewhere do have legal rights to compensation. However, efforts to attach financial value to probabilities of health impacts are complex and ultimately tentative.

It is also difficult to predict and quantify health impacts from this disaster for at least four important reasons: (1) the scale of emissions, though very great, is itself uncertain; (2) the extent of fallout and deposition patterns remain unclear; (3) the plant’s status of “cold shutdown” does not preclude more significant releases of radiation; (4) the scientific literature on dose effects of ionizing radiation is contested and there exists considerable debate about the dominant models used to predict the probabilities of disease from exposure types and levels. Debates about the number of illnesses and fatalities from the Chernobyl accident, the Three Mile Island accident, and Cold War atmospheric testing continue even today. Uncertainty about emissions, fallout patterns, exposure levels, dose effects, and the lack of adequate control groups challenged efforts to monetize these past disasters and will challenge efforts now and in the future to quantify the effects of Fukushima.

It is difficult to predict and measure the health externalities of the disaster when so much uncertainty exists about the scale of the radiation emissions. Exact figures representing the scale and characteristics of emissions are not clear. The Summary Report of Regional Specialized Metrological Center (RSMC) Beijing on Fukushima Nuclear Accident Emergency Response submitted by RSMC Beijing in November 2011 claims that the radiation emitted from the plant in the first five days was “equal to that of the Chernobyl nuclear explosion,” which burned for approximately ten days.⁶ Kodama Tatsuhiko reported in July 2011 to a sub-committee of the Diet that radiation levels equivalent to 29.6 Hiroshima a-bombs were released, based on the analysis of the heat produced by the blasts.⁷

One element found in Fukushima fallout presenting particularly significant health risks is plutonium. Plutonium is produced as a by-product of the fissioning of uranium in nuclear reactors. How many uranium-based spent fuel rods were damaged by explosions and fire? Reactor 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi was running mixed-plutonium and uranium oxide (MOX) fuel at the time of the earthquake. It is unclear how many spent MOX rods were in unit 3 spent fuel storage pool and/or the common spent fuel pool. Although plutonium is an element, it is not found in nature and essentially all plutonium on earth was created through human activities.⁸ It is highly radiotoxic. A single alpha emission from ingested plutonium can sever DNA. How much plutonium and uranium were released atmospherically in that reactor explosion? No full account has been provided, although plutonium from Japan’s nuclear meltdowns has been detected as far away as Lithuania.⁹

Another radioactive element produced in vast quantity by the fissioning of uranium is cesium. Vast amounts of cesium were emitted from the Fukushima Daiichi explosions atmospherically in March 2011 and into the ocean nearly continuously because of ongoing leakages of radioactive water in the reactor units, which are located next to the Pacific. A stable isotope of cesium occurs naturally, but the radioactive forms, such as Cesium-137 and Cesium-134, emit beta particles (high speed electrons), and gamma rays (high frequency electromagnetic radiation), as they decay. Cesium is an analog of potassium so it is ingested by plants and animals, particularly when they are deficient in potassium. Radioactive isotopes of cesium therefore are highly likely to bio-accumulate and bio-magnify in plant and animal life.¹⁰

How much cesium and plutonium were released into the air and the sea by the Fukushima disaster? TEPCO’s figures for atmospheric emissions are limited to the first months of the disaster and have been revised multiple times. Furthermore, TEPCO’s figures are not consistent with some independent assessments¹¹ and have been challenged by former government officials within Japan.¹² Fallout maps of contamination ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction to Fukushima and the Privatization of Risk
• 2  Why Nuclear Power
• 3  Fukushima Disaster
• 4  Radiation Effects
• 5  Conclusion
• Index