Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster (2015)

8

MARCH 21 THROUGH DECEMBER 2011: “THE SAFETY MEASURES … ARE INADEQUATE”

On the evening of March 21, Chuck Casto left the Kantei, the prime minister’s headquarters in Tokyo, feeling upbeat. The meeting had finally given the U.S. team what it had sought for days: access to “the middle layer”—the people within the government and TEPCO who knew what was going on and were willing to share information with the Americans.

Previous meetings with top-level officials of the utility and the government had not been fruitful. “You can’t sit and interrogate those people and say, give me exactly what’s going on, because they don’t know,” Casto explained. “You need that middle layer of people.”

That evening, senior cabinet ministers, utility officials, and their staff experts gathered with U.S. representatives from a variety of agencies to discuss the situation. “Once we did get access to the middle layer then we really got our feet on the ground,” Casto recalled of that evening. The first session went so well that the group agreed to meet the following night, and the evening conferences became fixtures, continuing for months.

The Japanese especially wanted U.S. help in devising a sustainable injection system to deliver water to the damaged reactors. The meeting provided an opportunity to exchange information on that and other subjects, something the Americans welcomed. “It felt good and successful,” said Casto.

Earlier in the day, there had been a discovery that was also on the minds of the Japanese. It had nothing to do with getting water into the reactors. A monitoring survey had detected radioactive materials in the ocean about one thousand feet (330 meters) south of a discharge canal for Units 1 through 4. The canal carried heated water from the condensers to the ocean for cooling. Normally the water flowing from the canal was not radioactive, but it now contained radioactive cobalt, cesium, and iodine, a troubling sign that the plant had sprung a new leak.

On March 21, 2011, radionuclides, including long-lived cesium, were detected in water about one thousand feet (330 meters) south of a discharge canal (circled) at Fukushima Daiichi. The discovery threatened what had been a productive fishing area. It also heralded what would become a mounting problem for TEPCO: what to do with huge volumes of contaminated water. Air Photo Service Co. Ltd., Japan

Some of the thousands of tons of water pumped and dumped into the reactors to cool their damaged systems had picked up radionuclides and was now heading out into the sea. Further, the presence of iodine-131 and tellurium-132 indicated the water was leaking out of at least one core. Most of the radiation releases earlier in the accident had been airborne and reached the ocean surface as fallout from the prevailing winds. The detection of contaminants, including long-lived cesium, flowing directly into the sea posed a worrisome new problem.

Before the disaster, the waters off Fukushima Prefecture had supported a thriving commercial fishing industry. The tsunami had wreaked havoc on its fleets, ports, and processing facilities. The prospect that seafood taken from these waters might now be contaminated and unsafe to eat threatened to deliver another blow to the devastated region.

Even as the struggle to gain the upper hand at Fukushima Daiichi remained touch-and-go, the broader ramifications of the accident were becoming apparent to officials in Tokyo, to local communities, and to the Japanese public at large. In response, the government created the Nuclear Sufferers Life Support Team, with a daunting mandate. It included not only securing housing for the evacuees, who eventually would number nearly 160,000, but also organizing decontamination efforts, supplying evacuation centers, securing medical services and supplies, conducting environmental monitoring, and providing information. This, of course, came on top of efforts to help victims of the nonnuclear disaster—the earthquake and tsunami—that had battered the northeastern region.

For many Japanese, the accident became personal with the discovery on March 19 of radioactive iodine-131 in raw milk from Fukushima Prefecture and on spinach harvested in Ibaraki Prefecture, southwest of the nuclear plant. The spinach also contained trace amounts of cesium-137. The farms where the contamination was discovered were as far as ninety miles from the reactors: distance no longer guaranteed safety. Fears that the nation’s food supply and its agricultural regions might be threatened added a new dimension to the accident and raised the stakes for the public and the government.

Although the levels of contamination exceeded safety limits, government officials hesitated to impose a ban. They instead sought to offer reassurance and suggest voluntary measures. Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, asserted at a press conference that someone who ate the spinach for one year would be exposed to the same amount of radiation as from a CAT scan—a comparison perhaps lost on the nonexpert.

Rather than issue an outright ban on milk sales, the Fukushima prefectural government requested that farmers halt shipments from dairy farms within eighteen miles of the reactors. The Ibaraki government similarly asked its farmers to halt spinach shipments. However, it soon became apparent that the central government had to act more assertively. On March 21, it finally banned shipments of milk from Fukushima and vegetables from Fukushima, Ibaraki, and two neighboring prefectures where these foods had been found to contain radioactive iodine and cesium above government limits.

“The levels are not high enough to have an effect on humans, so we ask that people remain calm,” Edano told reporters.

Edano’s announcement, meant to reassure, had just the opposite effect for numerous Japanese, who had been told to “stay calm” over and over since the crisis began. This latest development distilled the Fukushima Daiichi accident to a crucial question for many: will our food harm us? And that led to an even larger question: is our government capable of protecting us?

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“Feed and bleed” is nuclear shorthand for a process in which makeup water is added to a reactor vessel when the closed-loop cooling system is malfunctioning. The makeup water absorbs heat given off by the nuclear fuel and is allowed to boil away, or “bleed,” into the containment. Feed and bleed can also be used to cool spent fuel pools: in that case, the steam created would be released into the reactor building.

For days, the damaged reactors and spent fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi had been kept on life support by a massive “feed and bleed” operation. If the reactor cores and spent fuel pools were all intact, the level of radioactivity in the coolant bleeding off would have been relatively low. But instead this water was highly radioactive—a clue that it was coming into contact with fuel that had sustained serious damage.

On March 24, three contractors laying cable in the basement of the Unit 3 turbine building received doses of between seventeen and eighteen rems (170 to 180 millisieverts) while standing in water. There had been water in the turbine building basements since the tsunami, but no one expected it to be radioactive. Now it appeared that heavily contaminated water was coming in from somewhere. High levels of iodine-131 suggested the source was the reactor core. This was very unwelcome news; it meant that the Unit 3 containment had a breach.

Two of the men who came into contact with the contaminated water suffered radiation burns of their feet and were hospitalized. The government had already upped the allowable dose rate for emergency workers from ten to twenty-five rems a year out of concern that the entire workforce would quickly exceed the permitted dose. Now the question became: would it have to be increased again to maintain an adequate emergency workforce?

The situation would soon worsen. On March 28, TEPCO discovered that an underground trench near Unit 2 had filled with radioactive water carrying a surface dose rate of one hundred rems (one thousand millisieverts) per hour, a level that could be lethal after several hours’ exposure. Radioactive water had been detected near the discharge canal a week earlier, but the water in the trench had far higher radioactivity levels and therefore posed a larger threat. (The rate actually may have been higher; one hundred rems per hour was the upper limit of the measuring equipment.) If the depth of the water increased by another three-plus feet (one meter), it would spill out of the trench and possibly flow into the ocean. Japanese authorities theorized that the water had come into contact with melted fuel inside Unit 2, escaped through a breach in the containment, and then made its way to the trench near the turbine buildings. Contaminated water was also found in trenches outside both Units 1 and 3, and on April 2 in a pit near the Unit 2 seawater pump, which was subsequently found to be leaking into the sea.

The fact that contaminated water was getting into places it shouldn’t have been able to reach should have been no surprise given the stresses that the reactors’ joints, seals, and pipes had undergone during the earthquake and tsunami as well as the later explosions—stresses exacerbated by repeated dousing with many tons of water. Until electricity was restored and cooling pumps made operable, however, the wholesale flooding of the reactor vessels and spent fuel pools had to continue. The fact that tons of highly radioactive water were being generated and were finding their way into the marine environment was an unavoidable consequence. Indeed, at this point, water was the only cure.

TEPCO was trying to capture the tainted water, but storage space was growing short. No one had ever contemplated dealing with this much water. TEPCO scrambled to find places to store and eventually treat the excess water even as workers continued to add more.

The growing volume of radioactive water would pose a Herculean challenge. The plant site would eventually become crowded with large gray storage tanks where trees once stood. Dealing with contaminated water on the plant grounds, as well as controlling groundwater flowing beneath the site toward the Pacific Ocean, would only grow more problematic as time went on.

Also pressing were the challenges of removing or reducing radiation scattered for miles across farmland and forests, in residential neighborhoods and schoolyards. The magnitude and inherent difficulty of that cleanup task were only now becoming apparent. The fallout from Fukushima—literally and figuratively—affected large regions. The evacuation zones now became decontamination zones, with varying levels of radiation, some minor, some unquestionably hazardous, dispersed randomly. “Hot spots” occasionally popped up in unexpected places. Even if it was removed from the ground, contamination could remain in trees and on hillsides to be carried eventually by rain showers or breezes to new locations. And radioactivity drawn in by the roots of trees and shrubs could be released to the atmosphere later during forest fires.

After days of failed attempts to stanch the leak in the Unit 2 pit—using sawdust, garbage bags filled with shredded newspaper, and polymer—the flow finally was halted on April 6 using a liquid-glass coagulating material. TEPCO reported that more than 137,000 gallons (520 cubic meters) of water had been discharged, carrying off iodine-131, cesium-134, and cesium-137. The leak convinced TEPCO that it had to alter its policy forbidding any discharge of contaminated wastewater. The highly contaminated water in the trenches and turbine buildings had to be drained, but there just was not enough room in the tanks on site to store it. The utility realized it would have to begin waste triage, discharging water with low levels of contamination to make space for more hazardous water. But, TEPCO noted, any discharge would require “an adequate explanation to convince the general public” it was necessary.

The release of 11,500 tons of water was announced by the utility and the government in media briefings on April 4. But Japanese authorities neglected to notify foreign governments, including neighboring China and South Korea, until two minutes after the discharge began, an oversight regarded by those governments as a diplomatic gaffe. (Among others concerned about the release was the U.S. Navy, whose vessels were deployed off the coast to help in disaster relief. Navy officials worried that the radiation might contaminate ocean water treated for shipboard use.)

April 6, 2011, was the opening of the school year in Japan, a day marked by formal ceremonies. In Fukushima Prefecture, the toll of the disaster was obvious; many school facilities awaited repairs, and playgrounds were filled with rubble and piles of contaminated dirt covered with sheeting. The number of incoming students had dwindled in many areas, although in some instances the children of evacuees living in temporary shelters were hastily folded into the class rosters. Familiar faces of teachers or administrators were missing, victims of the earthquake and tsunami or absent because they had lost their homes and been forced to relocate.

Local officials and faculty worked hard to encourage a sense of normalcy. Families wore their best clothing; banners and flowers filled the auditoriums; educators greeted students. Yet the ongoing disaster was not far from everyone’s minds; normalcy was a long way off.

On April 10, one day shy of the first-month anniversary of the disaster, the Japanese government recommended the evacuation of certain areas twelve to eighteen miles (twenty to thirty kilometers) from the plant where the expected first-year dose rates would be greater than two rems (twenty millisieverts); twelve days later, it formally expanded the mandatory evacuation zone to include some areas even farther away, such as Iitate. The government could no longer ignore monitoring data revealing the presence of pockets of high radiation, especially to the northwest of Fukushima Daiichi. (Since March 15, people living in this zone had been advised to stay inside their homes with doors and windows sealed. Food supplies were often scarce—delivery trucks were reluctant to enter the area—and living conditions bleak.) The dose threshold for evacuation was chosen by Japanese authorities as the lower limit of a range set by the International Commission on Radiological Protection, which recommends that during emergencies, public exposure to radiation should be restricted within a band of two to ten rem per year.

The latest advisory signaled to many that the previous evacuation warnings had not gone far enough. That triggered another exodus of residents and generated even more doubt about the reliability of information being provided and the competence of government officials. The same day, about two thousand antinuclear protesters took to the streets in Tokyo, marching to TEPCO headquarters and then to the headquarters of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which regulates nuclear power. (Within a few months, Friday night protests outside the prime minister’s office became a regular event, sometimes attracting tens of thousands of people.) A common complaint among the early marchers: they were not getting the full story about the accident from authorities.

On the opening day of the school year on April 6, 2011, a first-grader puts on her hat during an elementary school enrollment ceremony in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture. Despite the ongoing nuclear crisis, parents and school officials worked to create a sense of normalcy for children. AP

Public anger in Fukushima surged on April 19 when the government authorized schools in Fukushima Prefecture to reopen provided that students attending them would not receive annual radiation doses of more than two rem. The authorities must have thought they were on solid ground with the new dose limit. After all, the government had already decided it was safe for everyone, including children, to live in areas with radiation doses of up to two rem per year. But the announcement led to puzzlement and outrage.

The government argued that students would not actually be exposed to the maximum possible radiation levels because most of their time would be spent not in the schoolyards but inside the school buildings, where they would be shielded from radiation. Not only did the public reject that explanation, but larger questions arose. If there were schoolyards in the prefecture that were so heavily contaminated they might exceed the two rem per year standard, why weren’t the surrounding areas evacuated?

Another issue was why the government would allow children to bear the same radiation dose as adults. In doing so, the authorities were ignoring that children are particularly vulnerable to the harmful effects of radiation. The implications, once they sank in, set off a tempest of national protest.

A damning response came from Toshiso Kosako, a respected researcher who was serving as special advisor on radiation safety to the cabinet. On April 29, Kosako tearfully resigned at a news conference and delivered an angry statement criticizing the government for its “whack-a-mole” attitude in setting radiation safety standards. “I cannot possibly accept such a [dose] level to be applied to babies, infants and primary school students, not only from my scholarly viewpoint but also from my humanistic beliefs,” Kosako wrote.

In late May, the government announced it would revert to the usual standard of one hundred millirems (one millisievert) per year. And Tokyo promised to help pay for removal of contaminated topsoil from school grounds.

In many communities, residents eager to move on with life had already launched cleanup campaigns of their own, not willing to wait for the government. Scraping away just three inches of soil could reduce radiation levels by as much as 90 percent, so volunteers dressed in hazmat suits and paper face masks used earthmoving equipment and hand shovels to strip contamination from playgrounds and other public places. They handed over to their communities thousands of pounds of radioactive dirt, covered with plastic sheeting or stuffed into garbage bags.

Clearly, water was not the only by-product of the accident that would pose disposal problems. By one official estimate, as much as 695 square miles (1,800 square kilometers) in Fukushima Prefecture—more than double the area of New York City—was contaminated with enough radiation to yield an exposure level of five hundred millirems (five millisieverts) or more per year. And the people living on or near the contaminated soil were determined that it had to be removed. They wanted to get on with their lives. As to where it would ultimately go, that was yet to be decided.

On April 17, 2011, TEPCO announced a recovery plan that it called a “roadmap towards restoration.” “By bringing the reactors and spent fuel pools to a stable cooling condition and mitigating the release of radioactive materials, we will make every effort to enable evacuees to return to their homes and for all citizens to be able to secure a sound life,” the utility promised.

The roadmap set ambitious targets. The first, to be achieved within three months, was to reduce on-site radiation doses. The second, to be accomplished three to six months after the first target was met, involved bringing the release of radiation “under control” and “significantly” lowering it. Immediate actions were divided into three areas: cooling, mitigation, and monitoring and decontamination. The ultimate goal: cold shutdown, meaning that the temperature inside the reactors would be maintained below the boiling point, reducing the threat of pressure buildup and steam releases and providing a safety margin against future equipment problems.

Getting the reactors to a more stable state was an urgent goal. Fukushima Daiichi was still only one mechanical failure or natural catastrophe away from a second crisis. The jury-rigged feed-and-bleed cooling systems were far from robust, and safety margins were razor thin.

The recovery document served a dual purpose: it provided a technical blueprint and it conveyed to the nation that TEPCO finally had a game plan—and a timetable. Perhaps now the end was in sight.

From the perspective of the NRC’s Chuck Casto, the symbolism of the plan was as important as its engineering details. “If you’re in a shelter somewhere, you want to see a timeline,” he said. “And from a technical point of view, it funneled everybody; [it said] this is our path. It served so many purposes to get that roadmap.”

TEPCO sought the NRC’s input on the recovery plan as it was being drafted, Casto said: “They listened to us on it, [we] provided advice.” In his mind, the unveiling of the recovery plan was a watershed moment ranking right behind the meeting with the midlevel government and utility managers on March 21. Now, it seemed, things were moving ahead.

The timetable called for the installation of closed-loop cooling systems similar to those existing in the reactors before the accident. (TEPCO initially hoped to repair the original systems, but finally acknowledged they had suffered too much damage.) However, closed-loop systems would not eliminate the need to effectively and rapidly treat the contaminated water accumulating at the plant.

TEPCO hired Kurion, a tiny California company that employs a technology similar to the one used to treat wastewater from the Three Mile Island accident. The process uses zeolites, microporous adsorbent minerals, to bind and filter the cesium-137 in the water. TEPCO also engaged the French conglomerate Areva to develop a second phase of the treatment process, in which the residue from the Kurion system would be mixed with reagents, polymers, and sand to create a radioactive sludge-like mixture. (Some experts questioned whether the utility was merely trading one waste problem for another: large quantities of radioactive water for large quantities of radioactive glop.) Both the Kurion and Areva systems were operating by mid-June. A third system, developed by Toshiba and named SARRY, was put into operation in mid-August. The radioactive concentrates produced by these processes were stored on-site in growing rows of containers.

Although TEPCO called its plan a roadmap, it was a map that carried the utility and its government overseers through largely uncharted territory. The few precedents that existed—notably the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl—offered limited guideposts, none suggesting that the final resolution would come quickly, simply, or cheaply. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl each had involved only one reactor, so a multiplier effect was immediately tacked onto projections about Fukushima Daiichi.

The cleanup at Three Mile Island Unit 2 took fourteen years and cost about $1 billion in 1993 dollars. (Final dismantling of the damaged Pennsylvania reactor awaits the decommissioning of the still-operating Unit 1 reactor, set for some time after 2018.) And at Three Mile Island, there was no need for off-site cleanup because very little radiation spread beyond the plant property.

At Chernobyl, radiation contaminated a huge area. Although some cleanup occurred, the Soviet government exercised an option unavailable to land-starved Japan: it simply moved people out of harm’s way. Ultimately about 350,000 people were resettled, and an area within a radius of about nineteen miles (thirty kilometers) around the plant remains an “exclusion zone.”

Just as the Fukushima accident was unrivaled in its engineering challenges, so too was it unprecedented in its economic consequences. That TEPCO faced a huge financial toll went without saying. Two weeks after the accident, TEPCO sought a $25 billion loan from Japanese banks to help cover the cost of repairs. By mid-April, the utility was huddling with the government in an effort to devise a compensation plan for victims. The price tag ballooned. The government was estimating that the accident would cost the national economy as much as $317 billion (25 trillion yen).

On April 15, TEPCO announced it would pay “temporary compensation” of 1 million yen per household (about $12,700) to those forced to evacuate because of the reactor accident. If the evacuees needed the money anytime soon, however, they were due for disappointment. TEPCO required them to fill out three forms, one of which contained fifty-six pages and was accompanied by a 156-page instruction booklet. The evacuees, many of whom had been living in crowded shelters, were required to submit receipts for their living expenses. They were expected to provide medical records and proof of lost wages. Amid public outcries, TEPCO eventually dispatched employees to help evacuees fill out the forms, a process that required about two hours per applicant.

The growing weekly protests outside the prime minister’s office in Tokyo served as a barometer of Japan’s shifting attitudes toward its nuclear-dependent energy policy. But it wasn’t until June 28, 2011, that the depth of that discontent could actually be gauged. The event: TEPCO’s annual meeting. Well in advance, there were abundant indications that this was not going to be the normal, respectful assembly of contented shareholders in a company that the year before had posted annual revenues of nearly $54 billion.

In May, TEPCO had announced a record loss of almost $15 billion, the largest by a nonfinancial institution in Japan’s history. (The loss did not include compensation claims.) President Shimizu announced he intended to resign. The utility said it would sell off more than $7 billion in assets to help cover the looming costs of compensation. On the heels of these announcements, the government made clear that it wanted more reforms. “This is just the start,” said chief cabinet secretary Edano. “There must be more scrutiny and more effort.”

As antinuclear protesters gathered at a nearby park, about 9,300 shareholders—the largest crowd in TEPCO’s history—packed a hotel meeting room and spilled out into other rooms and hallways. Riot police helped maintain security. During the meeting, apologies from executives were drowned by shouts and jeers. The second investor to speak called on the executives to “jump into a nuclear reactor and die.”

About 44 percent of TEPCO’s shareholders were individual investors; financial institutions held about 30 percent of the stock and overseas investors about 17 percent. Many of the individual shareholders were elderly, including pensioners, who had seen the value of their stock plummet 90 percent since the accident.

Regardless, the renomination of all sixteen current members of the board was approved. Fifteen of them were lifetime TEPCO employees; the sixteenth—a former vice governor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which was a large TEPCO shareholder—had been on the utility’s payroll as a “crisis management” consultant for two years. The grueling six-hour meeting ended after a motion to shut down TEPCO’s nuclear plants and halt new construction was defeated. The media reported that exiting shareholders looked exhausted and complained that their views had not been heard.

The only fresh face in the TEPCO boardroom was Toshio Nishizawa, named to replace Shimizu as president. He was hardly a newcomer, however, having spent his career at TEPCO, most recently as managing director. (Nishizawa in turn would be replaced eleven months later after a struggle over control of the company.) If TEPCO’s shareholders weren’t ready for a corporate overhaul, the national government was.

While the NRC team in Tokyo was doing its part to help the Japanese better understand what happened at Fukushima Daiichi—and how to move toward recovery—the staff at White Flint had been handed a mandate by Chairman Gregory Jaczko and the other four NRC commissioners.

A worried White House, members of Congress, and the American public were pressing the NRC for answers to two fundamental questions: Can an accident like Fukushima Daiichi happen here? And if so, what needs to be done to prevent it? The answers recited so often in the past—that nuclear power was inherently safe and that the existing regulations provided ample public protection—might not wash this time. After all, that’s exactly what the Japanese had claimed.

The hastily formed NRC Near-Term Task Force (NTTF), consisting of six senior experts, began its review on March 30, 2011. One of the first and most obvious issues it would have to take on was whether U.S. plants were adequately prepared to deal with the kind of prolonged station blackout that Fukushima had experienced. Under the rule in existence since 1988, all American plants had to show they could cope with a simultaneous loss of off-site and on-site AC power for a certain period. At the majority of plants, the required coping time was just four hours; at one it was sixteen hours; for the remainder, it was eight.

The NRC countenanced several different approaches for coping with a blackout. One was to rely on batteries for DC power to control plant cooling systems that did not require AC power to function. Because these systems eventually would stop working even with DC power, the NRC restricted reliance on batteries for coping to no more than four hours. To prove they could cope for longer periods, plants would have to add AC power sources beyond the two emergency diesel generators they were already required to have. They could do this by purchasing additional generators or by connecting to power supplies from gas turbines, hydroelectric dams, or even adjacent reactors. (The latter option was possible because the NRC permitted licensees to assume that a station blackout would affect only one reactor at a site. Consequently, licensees could assume that equipment from a “nonaffected” reactor would be available to assist the “affected” reactor.)

Each plant determined the coping time it would need based on specific factors such as the duration of off-site power outages experienced in the past. But the NRC did not require that coping time analyses postulate extreme events that could cause prolonged outages. Nor did it require that coping strategies evaluate the possibility that alternate AC sources—like those at a reactor next door—might also become unavailable. And finally, it did not envision the possibility that flooding or fire could disable a reactor’s own electrical systems, so that even if power sources were available they might not be usable.

The station blackout rule was casual about these matters in part because a blackout was considered a beyond-design-basis accident. Therefore, the requirements addressing it did not need to be as stringent.

The lax provisions of the station blackout rule were consistent with the NRC’s logic: more robust protection simply wasn’t needed because this kind of event was so improbable. Still, after the ten-day-long blackout at Fukushima Daiichi, these coping times appeared ridiculously low, and the agency found itself having to justify why immediate action wasn’t needed to extend them.

At an NRC briefing on station blackouts on April 28, Commissioner Kristine L. Svinicki asked the staff a question that might have reflected some of what she and her colleagues were hearing, especially about the four-hour limit on batteries. “Just to a layperson, when they come to you and say, ‘Is it really only four hours that nuclear power plants have to cope with some sort of event of a long duration?’ … if you were talking to a family member, what would you say to that?”

The reply of NRC staff member George Wilson had a familiar logic: “[H]ow I’ve answered is that we’ve only had one station blackout in the United States. Our diesels are very reliable, and they restored that power within fifty-five minutes. I also explain that we have redundant power supplies. So you have to have something to take out multiple sources of power. And once I explain that … usually they stop, or I run overboard.”

It seemed the NRC’s only fallback was to say yet again, in effect, “It can’t happen here.” The task force had its work cut out for it.

By July 12, the NTTF turned over its first findings, a dozen multipart recommendations for the NRC commissioners to consider—hyperspeed for an agency known for taking years to debate even modest rule changes, let alone employ them. The task force dedicated its report “to the people of Japan and especially to those who have responded heroically to the nuclear accident at Fukushima,” and expressed its “strong desire and our goal to take the necessary steps to assure that the result of our labors will help prevent the need for a repetition of theirs.”

In directing the task force, the commission had been mindful of criticism the NRC received from the industry after the Three Mile Island accident: that the resulting recommendations were too broad and should have concerned only issues specific to events at Three Mile Island. (Others who had the opposite opinion—namely, that the corrective actions ordered after Three Mile Island were too narrowly focused—apparently were not given much weight.) This time around, the commission gave its task force a very specific scope of inquiry: “areas that had a nexus to the Fukushima Daiichi accident.”

Even so, given the many similarities between the U.S. and Japanese nuclear operations, that left plenty of areas ripe for scrutiny—and, many believed, for overdue and fundamental changes. High on that list, the task force noted, was the need for U.S. nuclear facilities to better prepare for station blackouts. The blackout rule should address the possibility that a major natural disaster could disrupt both on-site and off-site AC power for extended periods, and knock out multiple reactors simultaneously. In other words, exactly what happened at Fukushima.

The task force recommended requiring U.S. plants be able to cool fuel for at least eighty hours during a station blackout without needing any assistance, equipment, or materials from off the site. For the first eight hours, the plant’s permanently installed safety systems should be able to do the job with as little operator action as possible. This would give the operators time to set up emergency equipment, such as diesel-powered pumps and portable generators, that could be used for the next seventy-two hours, until the off-site cavalry arrived. From that point on, the plant should be prepared to cool the fuel indefinitely without power from off-site or from the on-site primary diesel generators.

The task force also emphasized that the equipment needed for that first eight-hour period should be protected to some degree from flooding beyond the design basis. It proposed storing the equipment fifteen to twenty feet above the design-basis flood level or in watertight enclosures. (The task force was more concerned about flooding than about earthquakes because it believed that nuclear plant structures could withstand beyond-design-basis earthquakes better than beyond-design-basis floods. It cited evidence that structures could survive ground shaking twice as powerful as they were designed for. In contrast, it argued that flooding was a “cliff edge” phenomenon: a plant site could be flooded even if the water level only slightly exceeded the design basis. As Charlie Miller, head of the task force, observed, it doesn’t take a tsunami to create a crisis at a reactor: “[R]egardless of the way that the water gets in there it’s going to cause the same effect if your equipment is not protected.”)

The task force believed that these requirements should be codified in a new rule. But, recognizing that creating new blackout rules could take a long time, it urged the NRC to take interim measures by issuing orders to plant licensees. This could be accomplished by upgrading protection of the plants’ so-called B.5.b equipment to ensure it would escape damage in a natural disaster.

Another issue the task force flagged was the need for reliable means to vent gases from Mark I and Mark II BWR containments should that be needed in a station blackout or other severe accident. Although the Fukushima Daiichi reactors had been equipped with hardened vents capable of withstanding high gas pressure during an accident, the vents had proven extremely difficult to operate in an extended blackout. Noting that U.S. plants would likely experience similar problems under similar conditions, the task force recommended that the NRC order plants to upgrade their vent systems.

Most of the task force’s other recommendations were in a similar vein, addressing specific shortcomings in protection against beyond-design-basis earthquakes and floods, requirements for emergency plans and communications, and spent fuel pool safety. But the task force also saw a need to address the bigger picture, despite its mandate to focus only on issues with a “nexus” to Fukushima.

Priority number one, according to the task force, was to clarify the commission’s “patchwork of regulatory requirements,” developed “piece-by-piece over the decades,” for dealing with beyond-design-basis accidents. The task force pointed out that these requirements did not amount to a set of coherent guidelines. Some issues were given higher priority than others by operators and regulators; as a result, some measures to address them were mandatory while others were only voluntary. The task force recommended development of an “enhanced regulatory framework intended to establish a coherent and transparent basis for treatment of Fukushima insights.” Although the report did not say it explicitly, the implication was that the current regulatory framework was incoherent and opaque.

Despite these criticisms, the task force asserted that the “continued operation and continued licensing activities [for new reactors] do not pose an imminent risk to public health and safety.” If the task force had concluded otherwise, it would have set off a firestorm. Still, the mixed messages weakened the overall impact of the report as a driver for change. Elsewhere, however, the Fukushima accident prompted some soul-searching and surprising declarations.

On May 6, Prime Minister Naoto Kan asked the owner of the Hamaoka nuclear plant, located about 125 miles (two hundred kilometers) southwest of Tokyo, to shut down two reactors and to refrain from restarting a third. Hamaoka sits atop a major geologic fault and seismologists believed there was a high likelihood of a magnitude 8.0 earthquake in the area in the next thirty years. Hamaoka had long been considered the most dangerous plant site in Japan because of its location. Although the plant’s owner, Chubu Electric, initially refused Kan’s request, it agreed a few days later.

The government’s action was seen by some as a harbinger of things to come. Would the Kan government make similar requests of other plants? Would reactors currently shut down for routine inspections be allowed to restart?

In early July, the Kan government dropped the other shoe. To reassure the public, Japan’s reactors would be subjected to a two-stage safety check known as stress tests. The first stage would be conducted at the nearly three dozen reactors currently out of service for maintenance or other safety issues to determine their ability to withstand large earthquakes and tsunamis. The results of that stage would be used to determine whether plants could restart. The second stage would be a more comprehensive review, and its results would determine whether plants should continue to operate. (Despite their name, the stress tests were merely paper studies. No actual stressing of facilities was involved.) Utility officials were required to submit the first-stage test results to Tokyo by the end of October. Only after government approval could the reactors be returned to service. Any plans for a quick restart during the summer of 2011 were now on hold.

Kan wasn’t finished. A few days later, before a national television audience, he called on his country to phase out its reliance on nuclear power.

In his view, the safety myth surrounding nuclear power was exactly that: a myth. “Japan should aim for a society that does not depend on nuclear energy,” Kan declared. “When we think of the magnitude of the risks involved with nuclear power, the safety measures we previously conceived are inadequate.” To all outward appearances, he had become a nuclear apostate.

Kan was echoing sentiments taking root across Japan. Nearly three quarters of the public supported an energy policy that would eliminate nuclear power altogether, according to one survey. In an editorial, the Japan Times noted that nuclear power “worked for a while, until, of course, it no longer worked. Now is the time to begin the arduous process of moving towards safer, renewable and efficient energy resources.”

One newspaper described Kan’s phaseout announcement as “a complete turnaround of the government’s basic energy plan.” And indeed it was. Back in 2010, the cabinet had approved a Strategic Energy Plan that called for building fourteen new reactors by 2030, which would mean that half the nation’s electricity would come from nuclear power. Only China was planning a more aggressive construction program.

The nuclear push was designed to give Japan greater energy security—the rationale for initially embracing the atom decades before. A larger fleet of reactors would provide a cushion against supply or pricing problems with imported fuels, such as oil. However, nuclear power would not deliver energy independence, because the Japanese imported almost all of the uranium needed to fuel the nation’s plants. To provide a secure domestic supply of nuclear fuel, Japan was intent on developing fast breeder reactors and the reprocessing plants needed to provide them with plutonium fuel. In practice, however, these facilities were proving technically challenging and extremely expensive.¹

In his address, Kan conceded that the phaseout of nuclear power would not happen overnight. And—aside from endorsing more renewable energy sources—he failed to outline how Japan might meet its huge energy needs once the nuclear plants were shut down.

Kan’s motives immediately came into question. His popularity was at a record low, the result of what was regarded as his ineffectual leadership during the accident. Was this a politician’s last hurrah—an attempt to burnish a tarnished legacy? Or was it the response of a leader who had experienced firsthand the dangers inherent to nuclear power and now wanted to steer a new course? Opinions were deeply divided.

Kan had promised to step down once the accident recovery was under way. As a lame duck, he lacked the political capital to institute a nuclear phaseout, regardless of his motives, and a spokesman subsequently clarified that Kan was merely announcing his personal views. Two weeks later, however, the government agreed to his proposal and backed his plans for reducing Japan’s reliance on nuclear power.

In late August 2011, Kan resigned, his fifteen months in office marked by the worst crisis Japan had faced since the end of World War II. The task of steering the nation to a new energy policy would fall to his successor, Yoshihiko Noda, a fellow member of the Democratic Party of Japan. In a speech to the Diet in mid-September, Noda outlined his energy plan. Despite public opposition, he promised to restart idled reactors by the following summer, saying it was “impossible” to sustain Japan’s economy without them. As for a rapid phaseout of nuclear power, that also appeared unlikely. “It’s still too early to say if we can get to that stage,” Noda told the Wall Street Journal.

Gregory Jaczko may have hoped that quickly assessing the lessons of Fukushima and devising an appropriate response would be a straightforward task, but that view apparently was not shared by his fellow commissioners. Jaczko had hinted he might face some opposition, especially concerning the ninety-day deadline he had set for the commission to establish its priorities. During a speech at the National Press Club in Washington in mid-July, he was asked whether he had his colleagues’ support for his aggressive timetable and agenda. “Well, we’ll see,” he replied.

Turns out he didn’t. The next day, when the five NRC commissioners sat down with the task force to have their first public discussion of the report, two of them promptly expressed doubt about the need for fundamental changes in regulation. Commissioner Svinicki asked whether some of the task force’s recommendations, notably those calling for increasing safety margins as a hedge against uncertainty, represented a “repudiation” of the NRC’s increasing reliance on “risk-informed regulation.”

Commissioner William C. Ostendorff also took exception to the need for a major overhaul. “I personally do not believe that our existing regulatory framework is broken,” he said. And, he added, any policy changes needed to be done in consultation with “our stakeholders.”

The largest and most influential of those stakeholders, of course, is the nuclear industry. And that industry has always believed that the best defense is a good offense. Its leaders were hurriedly organizing their Fukushima response, hoping to head off new rules. From the industry’s point of view, voluntary actions it devised on its own were preferable to mandatory ones handed down by the NRC, and it soon put forward its own ideas. (This tactic was nothing new. The NRC’s embrace of industry-proposed measures over many years was responsible, in part, for the patchwork of regulations criticized by the task force and others.)

The industry’s answer to Fukushima was a plan it called FLEX, shorthand for “diverse and flexible mitigation capacity.” FLEX envisioned a rapid-deployment force of portable equipment such as backup pumps, generators, batteries, and chargers that would be prestaged at or near nuclear facilities. The goal was to provide redundant equipment to keep reactor fuel cool for a certain period in the event of a prolonged station blackout. The industry patterned FLEX after a response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the NRC’s B.5.b order requiring emergency backup equipment in the event of a fire or explosion caused by an airplane crashing into a nuclear facility.

Although the B.5.b equipment has been touted as an added layer of safety in the event of a crisis, post-Fukushima inspections by the NRC showed that at many sites the backup equipment would be unlikely to function at all during a severe event, especially one involving a natural disaster such as a flood or an earthquake. This should not have been a surprise, as the NRC had not required that the equipment be safety-grade, or “hardened,” to withstand either design-basis or beyond-design-basis events. (In other words, the B.5.b equipment could legitimately have come straight off the shelf from Home Depot. Safety-grade components, on the other hand, must meet stringent quality standards and be rigorously tested to confirm proper performance.)

Now, however, the FLEX program was being promoted by some as “B.5.b on steroids.” A better description might be “B.5.b on fertility drugs.” Instead of hardening the B.5.b equipment to safety-grade standards or beyond, the FLEX approach would simply add more unhardened items. Utilities would place multiple units of equipment at diverse locations on- or off-site in the hope that no matter what the catastrophe, something somewhere would survive to cool the reactor core and spent fuel pools.

Even though the FLEX approach would require the purchase of more equipment, it would save the industry money because nuclear safety-grade standards are costly and difficult to meet. As Charles Pardee of Exelon Generation Company summed it up in a December 2011 public meeting, “it’s cheaper to buy three [pumps] than one and a heckuva big building [to put it in].”

While the NRC quibbled over how to deal with the task force’s recommendations, the summer of 2011 was producing moments that kept nuclear safety on Americans’ radar. A flood and an earthquake—smaller than the natural disasters that had struck Japan—threatened two nuclear plants. These were the kinds of events that nuclear operators viewed as so unlikely that they could be written off. Until they happen.

The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generation Station, north of Omaha, Nebraska, during heavy flooding on the Missouri River in June 2011. A year earlier, the NRC had cited the plant and its owner, the Omaha Public Power District, for an inadequate flood protection plan. As a result, new flood barriers were installed and the plant survived the 2011 flood undamaged. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

In mid-June, the Missouri River, swollen by record snowmelt and heavy spring rains, sent floodwaters surging across much of the upper Midwest. The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station, about thirty miles north of Omaha, Nebraska, went from sitting alongside the Missouri to sitting in it. The NRC had issued Fort Calhoun its operating license in 1973 based on representations by the plant’s owner, Omaha Public Power District, that the plant could withstand flooding up to 1,014 feet above mean sea level. Years later, however, NRC inspectors discovered that flooding above 1,008 feet could disable vital equipment in several structures.

The key to Fort Calhoun’s flood safety plan was old-fashioned sandbags piled atop floodgates. NRC inspectors had previously determined that the floodgates could not support a five- or six-foot-high stack of sandbags. The utility’s own risk assessment concluded that “severe core damage results if either intake or auxiliary building sandbagging fails.” The possibility of flood-water penetrating the plant walls was an additional threat.

Omaha Public Power District argued that the chance of a flood exceeding 1,007 feet above mean sea level was so small that the sandbagging response was adequate as it stood. Nevertheless, the NRC cited the plant in 2010, forcing the plant to install new flood barriers. But in June 2011, the operator of an earthmover accidentally broke through a newly installed flood berm, allowing the rising Missouri to pour into the plant site. Water reached building entrances. “It was a jarring sight … a boat tied to the nuclear plant,” said the local congressman who toured the Fort Calhoun plant, traversing catwalks to gain access. Although water levels rose around the plant entrances to a depth of two feet, and operators relied on backup generators, the plant was not damaged because of the newly upgraded flood barriers.

And then came the earthquake that surprised just about everybody. At 1:51 p.m. on August 23, 2011, a magnitude 5.8 quake rattled central Virginia, its epicenter about thirty-eight miles northwest of Richmond. The largest previous earthquake in this zone was reported in 1875 and was estimated at a magnitude of 4.8. One of magnitude 4.5 had produced minor damage in 2003.

The North Anna Power Station sat approximately twelve miles from the epicenter. Ground motion exceeded what the plant was designed to withstand—making this a beyond-design-basis accident. Although North Anna suffered no serious structural damage, it did temporarily lose its connection to the off-site power grid, just as occurred at Fukushima Daiichi. Four backup diesel generators automatically started and provided power for nearly four hours (although one sprang a coolant leak and a replacement had to be located). Power wasn’t fully restored for nearly nine hours.

In both near misses, the plant owners and the NRC pointed to the lack of damage as proof that the safety margins built into U.S. reactors and regulations were adequate. That kind of logic, critics have long said, is akin to arguing that if a drunk driver makes it home safely, the public doesn’t need to worry about drunk driving. At both Fort Calhoun and North Anna, the owners had taken extra steps in advance that would head off serious damage from floods or earthquakes. In the case of North Anna, the owner, Dominion, voluntarily upgraded seismic protection at its two units in the 1990s when it learned that earthquakes posed a greater threat than previously known. That made Dominion the exception among nuclear utilities. Even though North Anna had survived intact, there was no assurance that the next plant experiencing a rude surprise would be as lucky.

After the quake in Virginia, an expert offered a takeaway lesson. “[W]hat I would say in terms of lessons learned from Fukushima and now yesterday’s quake [at North Anna] is that setting reactor design … hazard limits just above recorded human experience is turning out to be really shortsighted,” said Allison Macfarlane, a geologist and environmental policy professor at George Mason University. “With something like a nuclear reactor,” she told a reporter, “I would like a large safety margin.”

Macfarlane’s opinions would soon carry additional clout. In mid-2012, she would take over as chairman of the NRC. The threats posed by earthquakes, she promised, would move up on the NRC’s priority list.

As the NRC Near-Term Task Force moved ahead with its assessment of the lessons from Fukushima, the agency itself was wrestling with growing internal dissension. Even before Fukushima, Jaczko had told friends and acquaintances that he felt isolated on the commission, believing himself to be the lone voice for tougher oversight. (Commission votes were often 4-1.) But there were also complaints about Jaczko’s management style. He was considered brusque toward staff members and his fellow commissioners, and some said he was prone to intimidating those who disagreed with him.

As chairman, a position he assumed in 2009, Jaczko had authority over commission activities related to budget and administrative matters. However, any new policy decisions and safety regulations require a majority vote, and it was clear as the months went by that the other commissioners disagreed with the chairman about the extent and the urgency of regulatory reform.

In mid-December 2011, the infighting at the NRC became public at a hearing before the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where serious allegations levied against Jaczko were aired. Two months earlier, Jaczko’s fellow commissioners—two Democrats and two Republicans—had written to White House Chief of Staff William Daley accusing Jaczko of causing “serious damage” to the agency. The letter expressed “grave concerns” about his leadership and management style. They contended that Jaczko had improperly invoked emergency powers during the Fukushima accident without consulting his colleagues, and said he had set an agenda and timetable for the NTTF review that went beyond what the majority believed necessary. The letter also claimed that he “intimidated and bullied” staff. The NRC’s inspector general investigated these allegations and ultimately exonerated Jaczko of overstepping his legal authority, but found instances in which his behavior was “not supportive of an open and collaborative work environment.”

The inspector general’s findings were unflattering but hardly federal offenses. By the time the report was issued in June 2012, however, the political damage had been done. Jaczko had announced his resignation from the commission a month earlier. Allison Macfarlane, pledging to run the NRC in a “cooperative and collegial manner,” was named by the Obama administration as his replacement.

In Japan during the summer of 2011, the magnitude of the recovery task grew ever larger, more daunting—and more costly. Although few details of the conditions at Fukushima Daiichi were made public, news was pouring out about the extent of contamination to the surrounding area and how long it would take to get back to normal.

The government was saying that up to 1,500 square miles (four thousand square kilometers) had been contaminated to the extent that it may require cleanup. (Radioactive substances from Fukushima Daiichi ultimately would be detected in all of Japan’s prefectures, including Okinawa, about one thousand miles from the plant.) On August 26, the minister in charge of the crisis response announced that over the next two years the government would cut radiation in the affected area by half.

The goal, said the minister, Goshi Hosono, was to bring radiation levels below two rems (twenty millisieverts) per year, which had been the threshold for evacuation but was still twenty times higher than the previous standard for public exposure. “[W]ith enough government funding and effort, it can be done,” he pledged. Hosono also promised that the government would bear the costs of the cleanup, which some experts thought could be as high as $130 billion.

The passage of time—and natural decay of radioactivity—would do most of the work; humans would speed nature along by removing soil, plants, and trees. In areas where children might be exposed, the goal was to reduce radiation by 60 percent.

For the tens of thousands of people still living in temporary shelters and for families who had spent the summer with their children cooped up indoors to minimize exposure, Hosono’s announcement signaled progress. But the good news came mixed with the bad. “Some places may have to be kept off-limits to residents for a long period of time even after cleanup operations are undertaken,” Hosono said at a media briefing. Comparisons to the permanent exclusion zone around Chernobyl were unavoidable.

Radiation data gathered by the Ministry of Education and Science showed pockets of extremely high readings across the contaminated zone. In the town of Okuma, two miles southwest of Fukushima Daiichi, some areas recorded radiation levels in excess of fifty rems (five hundred millisieverts) per year.

As much as the government—and many dispossessed residents—were pushing to repopulate the communities now standing empty, it was obvious that no amount of scraping or scrubbing or isotope decay was going to make certain areas safe. Decontamination efforts simply were not that effective; typically they could reduce the dose rate only by about one-third. Ironically, some locations within the twelve-mile (twenty-kilometer) evacuation zone had radiation levels above those now measured at Fukushima Daiichi itself. In certain places at the plant, radiation levels were dropping, thanks to the massive cleanup effort. The reactors, however, remained unstable and highly radioactive.

The details about contamination and the risk it continued to pose spilled out from government reports and media accounts as summer turned into fall. In August, low levels of cesium were detected in a rice sample taken ninety miles from Fukushima Daiichi. A sample of beef from Fukushima Prefecture was found to contain high levels of cesium. In Tokyo markets, food shoppers saw radiation levels marked alongside the prices of their favorite fruits and vegetables. And those eager to prey on public fears, especially among families with young children, peddled their own products, including a $6,500 bathtub that was touted as being able to soak away radiation.

It was becoming increasingly obvious that TEPCO was on the brink of financial collapse and would soon need help from the Japanese government—and taxpayers. Compensation claims alone could exceed the company’s assets, predicted The Economist, which went on to say: “Only the government can save TEPCO from bankruptcy.” The unanswered question, it said, was whether the government would impose wholesale reforms within the company in exchange for a bailout.

TEPCO was not winning any allies among the Japanese public. In early October, the utility announced a 15 percent rate hike for customers. Although the first compensation checks to evacuees began arriving at about the same time, TEPCO seemed unwilling to fully acknowledge the damage it had caused. In fact, in one instance, the utility denied “owning” the radiation causing the contamination.

The proprietors of the prestigious Sunfield Nihonmatsu Golf Club, located about thirty miles from Fukushima Daiichi, sued TEPCO, seeking damages to clean up the closed course. The utility countered with a novel defense: the radioactive substances that fell on the course “belong to the landowners and not TEPCO.” “We are flabbergasted at TEPCO’s argument,” said a lawyer for the club. The utility also argued that radiation levels on the golf course were below allowable levels set for schoolyards, and thus were not a hazard. A lower court agreed with TEPCO. On appeal, TEPCO’s denial of ownership of the radiation was rejected, but the claim for compensation was turned down on the grounds that if the radiation levels were safe for schoolchildren, they were safe for golfers.

On November 4, TEPCO got a lifeline from the government in the form of an $11.5 billion bailout. It came with strings attached. The company agreed to cut 7,400 jobs and $31 billion (2.5 trillion yen) in costs. The government asserted it would expect more, including a “thorough reorganization,” Edano told reporters.

Edano, the former chief cabinet secretary, was now minister of Economy, Trade and Industry in the cabinet of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. (Edano stepped in as minister after the abrupt departure of the original appointee, Yoshio Hachiro, who, one week into office, joked to reporters that communities near Fukushima Daiichi were “dead towns.” He resigned.)

While Japanese officials had access to TEPCO’s bleak financial picture, the government still remained largely in the dark about what actually had happened at Fukushima Daiichi. On that, TEPCO was stonewalling. Nearly nine months after the disaster, the company finally began revealing that the accident was far worse than it had previously acknowledged.

Clearly, Fukushima Daiichi had come close to a truly major catastrophe. Using computer simulations, TEPCO estimated that the fuel rods in Unit 1 had completely melted through the reactor vessel and eaten through 6.5 feet of the 8.5-foot-thick concrete floor of the containment structure. At Unit 2, more than half the fuel had melted, and at Unit 3, almost two-thirds had melted. The fuel in all three was now sitting in the bottoms of the containment structures. Ongoing pumping operations were keeping the fuel below 100°C (212°F), a threshold at which it no longer posed the threat of boiling dry. But this was not a reliable system; another earthquake could send it careening out of control again.

A few days after revealing its accident findings, the utility released its own assessment of its performance during the disaster. The key conclusion: TEPCO had made no significant errors. It was a self-serving review written by executives and a handpicked committee. TEPCO stressed its view that the tsunami, not the earthquake, was the direct cause of the disaster and said its operators had made no mistakes in dealing with the crisis. The utility also retracted an earlier statement that an explosion had breached the Unit 2 containment on March 15. This statement had contributed to confusion about the source of the large release that day that caused radiation to spike at the plant and contaminated the large area to the northwest. (The report did note that many details were still unknown.)

Other examiners took a more jaundiced view of TEPCO’s role. In coming months, the accident would be scrutinized by multiple investigating committees, none of which would hold TEPCO blameless. The period ahead for the utility would be rocky.

Although the reactors seemingly had been pulled back from the brink, there were constant reminders of the precarious condition of the plant. Areas of high radiation precluded repairs or even inspections, meaning the status of equipment inside stayed a mystery. Mountains of debris, some of it badly contaminated, remained piled up around the facility. The jury-rigged cooling systems were vulnerable to shocks ranging from another earthquake to freezing winter temperatures that could cause ruptures of piping exposed to the elements.

On December 16, 2011, nine months and one week after the disaster struck, Prime Minister Noda went on national television to announce that the situation at Fukushima Daiichi was “under control.” The plant had achieved cold shutdown and the reactors were stable, he said.

Some experts called the assertion premature, motivated more by political exigencies than engineering certainties. “The plant is like a black box, and we don’t know what is really happening,” an official of a neighboring town told the New York Times. “I feel no relief.” Nor, apparently, did a huge crowd of protesters who took to the streets the next day in Tokyo, banging drums, waving signs, and chanting “No Nukes.”

As 2011 came to a close, about 180 police officers and firefighters made one final trip along the rugged coastline of Fukushima Prefecture, searching for bodies of people missing from the earthquake and tsunami.

Although the reactor accident itself was not directly responsible for any immediate deaths, the chaos and releases of radioactivity of the first weeks had hindered rescue efforts. Might some of the tsunami victims have been saved if rescuers had gained access sooner? It was a question often asked, especially in communities near the reactors.

Now, as the dreadful year was ending, emergency workers looked among the rocks and along the breakwaters. Some wore protective clothing, for their search took them inside the evacuation zone around Fukushima Daiichi. Japan’s official death toll from the tsunami was 15,870 people, with nearly 2,800 missing. More than two hundred of the missing were from Fukushima Prefecture. No more bodies were found.