Nuclear Lessons Learned from Fukushima

The Springfield Nuclear Power Plant

This morning, I attended an event, "Lessons from Japan, Global Implications of Nuclear Disaster" hosted by the National Journal. I'm not going to do a full summary of the event - most of everything that was spoken wasn't new - it was a restating of positions. This is a problem in Washington: an external event - even one as big as the Tohoku disaster - does not change positions. Instead, it just causes people to restate their previous stances, and say "now more than ever" (with hat tip to Ezra Klein for that idea). At this event we saw such statements from Rep. Markey, as well as panelist from the Nuclear Energy Institute and the Center for American Progress.

The most pertinent presenter was Greg Jaczko, the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulator Commission. The lesson he claimed the U.S. should learn is that accidents do happen - all of the preparation in the world cannot prevent every accident. In a nuclear disaster, its never just one thing that goes wrong, instead it is an unanticipated series of events that cascade into a severe disaster. That is what happened at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. To take account of that, there needs to be a constant re-evaluation of risk - including looking at the unknown and unpredictable as well as mainstream predictions. I am heartened to see the nuclear regulator taking this. As was discussed at the conference on energy and environmental risks I attended last week at Maxwell AFB, this is the difference between prediction and foresight. Planners need to look beyond a single, linear prediction, and instead realize that planning is about preparing for that which is not obvious.

Finally, a brief criticism of the event - if they were really looking for lessons from Japan, it seems that at least one of the presenters should have been from Japan. As it was, the overwhelming response to the event, from almost every participant, was that we don't yet know the final lessons. So - it seems that a pertinent speaker would have been someone from Japan who worked closely on the response. They could have then discussed how this experience should shape American nuclear policy. Instead, we had a series of American policymakers and commentators who seemed to be saying the same things they've always said.