Introduction
On 11 March 2011, Japan was hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake just off the Tohoku coastline at 2:46 p.m. The most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan shook apart homes and buildings, though damage was less than one might expect. Then, however, a devastating tsunami slammed into northeastern Japan, sweeping away almost 20,000 people and destroying everything in its path. This also critically damaged the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Plant, located 178 kilometers from the quake's epicenter.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan was among the first political leaders who took this accident seriously. The government emergency drill instructed the already established offsite center located five kilometers away from the nuclear plant to act as a control tower to respond to the crisis. However, limited communication equipment and lack of electricity due to the earthquake made this offsite center dysfunctional. As a result, the prime minister's office or the kantei began playing the role of a control tower.
As described in the Introductory article, a crisis management cycle can be divided into four phases: (1) prevention and mitigation, (2) preparedness, (3) response, and (4) recovery and learning. This study examines the role of the kantei in the crisis response phase in the first several days of the nuclear accident.
In times of crises, plans and structures often become irrelevant from the rehearsed emergency drill as was the case here. Intense cooperation and improvisation are then required in highly volatile conditions with non-negotiable time pressure (Boin et al., Reference Boin, 't Hart, Stern and Sundelius2005: 55). However, the Japanese bureaucrats were not trained for crisis situations and were very poor at improvisation. As Karl E. Weick describes, ‘ [t]he person in authority is not necessarily the most competent person to deal with a crisis . . . Those who administer without a technical background have less requisite expertise and miss more’ (Weick, Reference Weick1988: 312). This was exactly the case in the Japanese nuclear regulatory organization, which should have had planned responses to a variety of nuclear accidents. But as they were ill-prepared, the prime minister and his office took the lead.
Centralization of crisis operations, however, frequently causes problems. The top leader may produce policies which the staff ‘on the ground’ find insufficient, ineffective or even counter-productive (Schneider, Reference Schneider1993). A former deputy Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency pointed out that after the Three Mile Island accident, it became an international standard to decentralize crisis response authority in a nuclear accident and to let the staff on the ground make decisions, intervention from the top fueled, rather than dampened, the crisis (Taniguchi, Reference Taniguchi2011). As Arjen Boin et al. observe:
Top leaders and policy makers have learned that, particularly in highly dynamic and technically complex crises, they are usually better off relying upon and supporting local authorities and expert agencies and skillful operators rather than ‘taking charge’ themselves. (Boin et al., Reference Boin, 't Hart, Stern and Sundelius2005: 54)
It is widely acknowledged that crises are best handled at the level closest at which they occur. The higher authority needs to step in only when a crisis spills over the local boundary or when the local authority fails to deal with the crisis. This is technically known as ‘upscaling’. But the problem is that it is not clear when upscaling is needed and who decides when the moment has come (Boin et al., Reference Boin, 't Hart, Stern and Sundelius2005: 58). When the communication between the local and central authorities is not smooth, the top leaders often interpret the local authority's response as inadequate, and is motivated to take charge themselves. As a result, the gap between decision makers and the scene widens, which often ends up failing to improve the situation or making it more complicated.
This study's ultimate purpose is to analyze how the upscaling from the nuclear operators to the top authority in Tokyo affected the development of the actual situation at the reactors.
Fortunately, the author was invited to participate in the project organized by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation to evaluate the government response to the Fukushima nuclear accident. In this project, I attained insightful, first-hand testimonies by participating in a group interview with high governmental officials, including Naoto Kan, Yukio Edano, Banri Kaieda, Tetsuro Fukuyama, and Goshi Hosono. After examining six case studies, this study will evaluate the decision to upscale and subsequent actions by the kantei.
Initial reaction
The initial reaction by the Kan government was quick. Four minutes after the earthquake, Prime Minister Kan established a liaison office at the Situation Center of the Cabinet to gather information (Kantei, 2011a). At the same time, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary (CCS), Kinya Takino, and Deputy CCS for crisis management, Tetsuro Ito, called an emergency meeting with eight bureau-chief-level officials of the different government agencies who were in charge of natural disasters. This team assessed the severity of the situation, and confirmed the emergency procedure at 3:08 p.m. Six minutes later, Kan identified the situation as an ‘extremely unusual or devastating disaster’ under the Disaster Countermeasure Basic Act, and established a cabinet-level committee, the Emergency Disaster Response Headquarters with himself in charge (National Land Agency, 1977). At 3:27 p.m., Kan instructed Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa to mobilize the SDF for ‘maximum activities’ (Kantei, 2011b).
At 7:03 p.m., following developments at the Fukushima nuclear plant, a ‘nuclear emergency’ was declared, and Kan established another cabinet-level committee, the Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters with the secretariat staffed by the Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency (NISA), an external bureau of the Ministry of Economy Trade Industry (METI) (Kantei, 2011c). Necessary institutions for crisis management were set up in a timely manner as outlined by the government manual for crisis management, which had been developed under the LDP government (Cabinet, 2003).
That evening, Kan held a meeting with the leaders of the opposition parties at the prime minister's office. In the days just before the earthquake hit Japan, Kan was about to be forced to resign or to call for a general election. In the 11 March morning edition of Asahi Shimbun, an article about Prime Minister Kan receiving funds of 1.04 million yen from a South Korean resident was carried. Asked at the upper house settlement committee, Kan admitted that he had received the fund, but stated that he did not know the benefactor was a foreign national (Kan, 2011a). As Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara had resigned from his cabinet post for the same reason a week earlier, the opposition parties demanded Kan's resignation in return for the passage of the budget bill. But the earthquake created a situation which made neither of the two options realistically possible. They agreed to stop the political fight, and promised to cooperate to enable the smooth passage of any legislation necessary for relief and recovery efforts. At the meeting, Kan told them that he would like to devote all efforts into countermeasures for the disaster.
In the days and weeks following to the earthquake, the Kan government faced four challenges simultaneously. First, it needed to save and rescue earthquake victims widely spread in the northeast of Japan, and to be engaged in reconstruction of the areas affected. Second, it had to control the large-scale damage to the nuclear power plant. Third, it was necessary to recover the distribution, transportation, and electric supply grids, and to deal with the fear of the spread of radioactivity. Fourth, it must recover Japan's economy damaged by the post-earthquake reduction of production, transportation, and consumption, as well as by the appreciation of the yen and the drop in stock prices. The kantei chose to focus on the nuclear accident nearly exclusively.
The DPJ government and the bureaucracy
Before getting into case studies of the nuclear accident responses, it is important to note the political environment surrounding the DPJ government and the bureaucracy. When the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government was established in September 2009, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama introduced a series of institutional changes. Hatoyama portrayed the Liberal Democratic Party administration as a bureaucracy-controlled government, and declared to establish a ‘true people-centered government’ (Hatoyama, Reference Hatoyama2009). Hatoyama promised voters that the DPJ government would establish a government led by political leaders, not by bureaucrats. In order to establish political leadership, Hatoyama announced ‘the Basic Policy’ to outline the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats (Cabinet, 2009a).
One of the principles of the basic policy was to establish political leadership within the ministries by establishing a ‘three-political-appointees’ meeting. This meeting would be held by the minister, the senior vice minister, and the parliamentary secretaries, and excluded the bureaucratic officials of the ministries in order to ‘plan and coordinate policies from a people's point of view’. Hatoyama also introduced a document titled ‘How the politico-bureaucratic relations should be’, to clearly define the roles of politicians and bureaucrats (Cabinet, 2009b). In this document, he virtually prohibited bureaucrats to make any policy decisions.
Another principle was political leadership on policy coordination. The Hatoyama government abolished the administrative vice-ministerial meeting, which had a history of 123 years. Kan was a leading critic of this meeting, and portrayed it as a symbol of the government's bureaucratic supremacy, as virtually all the administrative policy decisions needed to be approved by it before submission to the cabinet meeting. Hatoyama stated in the Basic Policy that his government would not ‘delegate governmental decisions to prior consultations solely by bureaucrats, such as vice ministers’. Hatoyama and his CCS would organize British-style cabinet committees to coordinate important policy matters by cabinet ministers.
As deputy prime minister of the Hatoyama government, Kan was a leading cabinet member who displayed an anti-bureaucratic stance. In October 2009, for example, Kan stated ‘[Bureaucrats] do not use their brains. They just had good grades [in their school days], but are very stupid (Oobaka)’ (Yomiuri Shimbun, 2009). His attitude, however, changed when he served as finance minister. At a Diet meeting in January 2010, Kan got in trouble when he could not answer correctly with his limited knowledge in Economics on the multiplier effect of the child allowance policy that the DPJ promoted. Since then, Kan has usually relied on bureaucratic support for policy issues (Hayashi and Tsumura, 2011: 202–5).
Upon assuming the prime ministership, Kan introduced his basic policy and announced that his cabinet would abandon the anti-bureaucratic stance of the Hatoyama government. He encouraged close information sharing between the political leaders and the bureaucrats so that they could ‘together run the government under true political leadership’ (Cabinet, 2010). Kan believed the Hatoyama government had failed to take advantage of the expertise of the bureaucrats in the decision making, when emphasizing political leadership. The Kan government began inviting the active involvement of the bureaucrats in policy making in order to run the government more effectively. However as the earthquake–tsunami–nuclear crisis unfolded, Kan, faced the incompetence of the bureaucrats, returned to his feelings of distrust toward them as in the Fukushima nuclear accident.
Dysfunctional institutions
According to the government manual, there were two important institutions to deal with nuclear accidents.Footnote 1 One was the Offsite Center, located five kilometers away from the Fukushima Daiichi Plant operated by TEPCO. This center was expected to serve as a frontline base for central and local government officials to gather information and lead evacuation efforts. TEPCO plant operators were also due to work from the center. The earthquake and tsunami prevented these officials from reaching the facility in a timely manner. With the electricity loss, most of its dedicated communication line went offline. In addition, the center did not have an air filtering system which would protect the building from radioactive materials floating in the air. Under these circumstances, the center was never able to play the control tower role.
The other important institution was the Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters at the kantei, headed by the prime minister. Its secretariat was served by NISA officials who were supposed to provide expert advice to political leaders. NISA Director General Nobuaki Terasaka was present at the kantei, and was supposed to plan how to deal with the accident. However, being a METI official with no science background who just happened to be in that position on the ministry's job rotation, he could not make any concrete suggestions or provide expert opinion. Kan describes Terasaka in the crisis situation, ‘I can immediately figure out whether a person who explains fully understand the contents or who explains without understanding what he is saying. I could not understand what Director Terasaka was trying to say’ (Kan, Reference Kan2012a: 62). Terasaka was a typical incompetent crisis manager, according to Weick's definition.
When the Nuclear Safety Commission's (NSC) Chairman and former Tokyo University Professor of Nuclear Engineering Haruki Madarame arrived at the kantei at 9 p.m., he was so surprised to find that the NISA had not provided any suggestions to the prime minister (Madarame, Reference Madarame2011). At the Diet hearing on 15 February 2012, Terasaka admitted that the NISA did not have any specialists who understood the real situation at the nuclear plants and who could not give appropriate suggestions. Terasaka was quickly replaced by his deputy Eiji Hiraoka during the first night of the crisis. (Hiraoka, however, was not a nuclear expert either, and was also replaced by another METI official in a couple of days.)
As the two key institutions, the offsite center and the secretariat for the headquarters, were not functioning, the government manual no longer was useful for crisis management. Kan's distrust of the bureaucracy grew. Kan, who majored in applied physics at college and claimed himself as an expert on nuclear issues, showed extremely strong interest and concern over the damaged nuclear power plant. He decided to involve himself in detailed policy making to deal with the crisis.
Case 1 – Delivering vehicle-mounted generators
The most serious and imminent problem was the outage of the plant's electric power system which would have operated the emergency cooling system. They had 13 emergency diesel generators and several batteries, but twelve of them were unusable due to the damage caused by the tsunami flood waters. As a result, the temperature and pressure inside each of the pressure vessels of the nuclear reactors rose sharply. The Fukushima Daiichi plant operators asked for batteries and emergency power vehicles to supply electricity for the cooling process. However, the TEPCO officials could not arrange the delivery of enough batteries and power vehicles, and they asked the prime minister's office for help.
At the kantei, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Tetsuro Fukuyama and Special Assistant to the Prime Minister Manabu Terada played a central role in arranging the delivery. Even Kan took up his own cellular phone and asked the plant operator directly about the size of needed batteries. Kan's personal assistant, who saw the prime minister taking notes about the batteries, felt horrified by the situation where the national leader himself had to handle such details in the crisis (Shimomura, Reference Shimomura2012).
Kan and the political leaders at the kantei arranged for the delivery to the plant of batteries and 40 power vehicles. The electricity, however, was not recovered, and no subsequent explanation was given to the kantei as to what happened and why power was not recovered. The political leaders at the kantei were now highly disappointed in the officials of METI and TEPCO for the inabilities. Chief Cabinet Secretary (CCS) Yukio Edano testifies, ‘At that point, our distrust of TEPCO officials was increasing’ (Edano, Reference Edano2011). Later, they learned that the vehicles’ voltage and connectors were not compatible with the plant's system. Kan says in his memoir, ‘We were shocked to learn that TEPCO officials who were professionals in electricity did not know beforehand whether the power vehicles were connectable or not’ (Kan, Reference Kan2012a: 66).
The delivery of batteries and power vehicles was upscaled by a request from TEPCO to the kantei and the prime minister. But their efforts did not contribute to improvement in the situation. This upscaling of crisis management ended up creating the political leaders’ distrust of officials from METI and TEPCO.
Case 2 – Venting the Unit 1 reactor
Because the delivered power vehicles and batteries could not be used to recover the electricity for the nuclear reactors, the temperature and pressure inside the pressure vessels of the nuclear reactors kept rising. In order to bring the reactor under control, pressure-release vents needed to be opened. There were six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant; Units 1, 2, and 3 were operating when the tsunami hit the plant. Of the three, Unit 1 reactor particularly had rapidly rising pressure and temperature. NSC Chairman Madarame suggested the venting operation of the pressure vessel to Kan. At the beginning, the TEPCO headquarters was hesitant because venting would release radioactive isotopes into the air, and would cast doubt regarding the safety of the nuclear power industry as a whole.
At around midnight, the Director of the Fukushima plant, Masao Yoshida, made the decision to open the vents. However, doing so manually in a blackout situation with high radiation levels at the reactor was very difficult. So, action was not taken immediately. At 3:05 a.m., METI Minister Banri Kaieda held a press conference with a TEPCO official to announce the venting of the Unit 1 vessel. Seven minutes later, CCS Edano held a press conference to announce that it was necessary to open the vents, and venting would release radioactivity into the air. But the plant operators could not open the valves for almost seven hours. Edano recalled later, ‘We kept telling TEPCO to do it quickly, asking how come it wasn't happening’ (Talmadge and Yamaguchi, Reference Talmadge and Yamaguchi2011). No clear answer was given, and distrust grew further. Finally at 6:50 a.m., METI Minister Kaieda used his legal authority to force TEPCO to open the vents.Footnote 2 ‘To allow TEPCO to vent the vessel and put water into it in order to cool down was my mission of the moment’, Kaieda testified (Kaieda, Reference Kaieda2011).
Prime Minister Kan was frustrated by TEPCO's communication with him. When he asked the reason for the delay in venting, the answer was ‘I don't know’. Kan testified, ‘The answer – I don't know – was troublesome. If we knew whether it was technical matter or other reasons, we could figure out [a further step]’ (Kan, Reference Kan2012b). This frustration led him to believe that it was necessary to visit the nuclear plant and establish direct communication with the plant operators.
Kan arrived at the Fukushima nuclear plant at 7:11 a.m. Kan asked TEPCO officials why the venting was not happening. When the TEPCO vice president tried to explain about the difficulty and danger inherent in a manual opening of the vents, Kan said ‘I did not come to hear such an excuse’. Plant Director Yoshida finally pledged to the prime minister to take action by even forming a ‘suicide corps’ (Fukushima Commission, 2012: 79). Relieved by this statement, Kan left the plant at 8:04 a.m. One hour later, TEPCO finally began the operation to open the vent succeeding at 10:17 a.m. At 2:30 p.m., vapor came out of Unit 1 and the pressure level dropped.
Although the plant operators would have eventually conducted the venting operation without pressure from the kantei, the political leaders chose to upscale the operation due to their frustration over the lack of communication. Their involvement, however, did not make any difference to the situation. On the other hand, Kan's visit to the nuclear plant was criticized by many LDP politicians.Footnote 3 A nuclear expert also criticized the visit at the Diet by referring to a US nuclear expert's comment about President Jimmy Carter's visit to the plant during the Three Mile Islands accident, ‘I was told that the president's visit was nothing but a big nuisance. It should have been a lesson for such a big accident [as the Fukushima accident]’ (Matsuura, Reference Matsuura2011). Still, the upscaling of crisis management continued after his visit.
Case 3 – Injecting seawater into the Unit 1 reactor
When Prime Minister Kan visited the nuclear plant on the morning of 12 March, NSC Chairman Madarame accompanied him in a helicopter. On the way to the plant, Madarame tried to explain the seriousness of the accident and deliver his concerns. But Kan shut him up, and told him, ‘Just answer my questions’. One of the questions Kan asked was the possibility of an explosion. Madarame's expert opinion was ‘No’. He explained that there was no oxygen within the reactor's vessel to cause an explosion.
At 3:36 p.m. on the same day, however, a massive explosion totally destroyed the concrete building surrounding the 1 reactor. When Kan saw the explosion on the television news at the kantei, he asked Madarame ‘Isn't that an explosion? You told me there would be no explosion’. Madarame had no reply, but was holding his head with both hands. At this moment, Kan lost all trust in Madarame. The prime minister began using his cellular phone to ask opinions from outside experts. Later, it was found that a hydrogen leak from the reactor was mixed with oxygen within the building causing the explosion. Madarame testified that he did not expect any hydrogen leakage from the reactor (Madarame, Reference Madarame2011).
Although the outer structure was blown out, the steel reactor was believed to have sustained no substantial damage. Even before the explosion, there had been some effort to put water into the heating vessel to cool it, and 80,000 liters of fresh water reserved for extinguishing the fire had been injected into the Unit 1. Soon after the fresh water was used up at 2:53 p.m., Plant Director Yoshida instructed the operators to inject seawater. At 7:03 p.m., the plant operators restarted seawater injection.
Meanwhile, at the kantei, the political leaders discussed the demerits of seawater injections. Kan asked the possibility of causing recriticality, a dangerous situation that occurs when a nuclear reactor goes critical after measures have been taken to shut the system down. Madarame answered that the possibility was not zero. Then, he tried to explain to the prime minister that even a critical state would not cause a serious problem. But having lost confidence in Madarame, Kan did not listen to his further explanation, and instructed other nuclear experts to examine the possibility of recriticality.
After this discussion, the TEPCO representative at the kantei, Ichiro Takeguro, called the Fukushima Daiichi Plant, and instructed Director Yoshida to stop the seawater injection. Yoshida, however, ignored this instruction, and continued the injection as he thought there was no other effective way to cool down the reactor. Another meeting was held at the kantei. This time, knowing he had lost the trust of the prime minister, Madarame asked his deputy, Yutaka Kukida, to explain to Kan that the possibility of recriticality was extremely low, and that continued seawater injection was needed to cool the reactor down. Kan was persuaded, and reordered the seawater injection.
The political leaders tried to upscale the issue of water injection, but the plant operator had totally ignored the arguments of the political leaders to stop seawater injection. Therefore, the kantei did not influence the actual operation. The instruction from the kantei, on the other hand, could have deteriorated the reactor situation. Without knowing that Director Yoshida had continued the seawater injection, there were media reports that Prime Minister Kan had interrupted the seawater injection for 55 minutes, and that this caused deterioration to the reactor's situation. At the 23 May Diet meeting, LDP President Teiichi Tanigaki accused Kan regarding this instruction. Kan's answer was he did not stop the injection and did not even know that the seawater injection already started. This exchange between the two party leaders became a hot topic. But soon, Director Yoshida came out to confess that he had ignored the instructions that he received from the TEPCO representative at the kantei, and the turmoil ceased. Later Yoshida was asked about his decision on a television interview, and said, ‘In short, it was a life-threatening moment. I felt that we might die if we stopped the seawater injection’ (Yoshida, Reference Yoshida2011). Upscaling this decision was not an option for the staff on the ground.
Case 4 – Injecting water into Unit 3 reactor
The situation of the Unit 3 reactor was relatively stable as its cooling system continued to inject water for the first 21 hours. But this system stopped at 11:36 a.m. on 12 March. As the water level of the reactor lowered, another cooling system, which did not need AC electric power, automatically kicked in. By that night, this system could no longer inject water because the pressure of the reactor vessel had risen. A plant operator stopped the second cooling system, and tried to use an outside diesel pump equipped for fire extinguishing. But this attempt failed.
As the Unit 3 reactor's pressure and temperature rose, Director Yoshida gave instruction to vent the reactor at 3:55 a.m. on 13 March. By 7 a.m., the hoses were connected to inject the seawater upon the successful ventilation. Around this time, Economic Minister Kaieda and nuclear experts at the kantei discussed fresh water injection before seawater. A TEPCO representative requested Director Yoshida to use fresh water before seawater. As the venting operation would take time, Yoshida agreed to reset hoses to inject fresh water into Unit 3 reactor. The venting started at 9:08 a.m. As the venting succeeded in lowering the reactor pressure, fresh water was injected at 9:25 a.m. But the fresh water in the tank only lasted until 12:20 p.m. The switching of hoses for fresh water injection did not make any significant difference.
The plant operators then had to reconnect hoses for seawater injection. This took 52 minutes, contributing to further deterioration of the pressure vessel. In addition, changing hoses held the risk of an accident and extra radioactive exposure to the plant operators. This time the decision on water injection was upscaled to the kantei, and its instruction worsened the situation, and caused unnecessary risks.
Case 5 – Withdrawal from the Fukushima Daiichi plant
At 11:04 a.m. on 14 March, the Unit 3 building exploded. This explosion damaged the electric circuit of the Unit 2 reactor, and its ventilation valve shut down. At 1:18 p.m., the plant operators recognized the lowering water level within Unit 2, and reported to the government that they would need to inject water into the reactor. Around 4 p.m. at the kantei, looking at a series of reports from the nuclear plants on the temperature, pressure, and water-levels within the reactor, the political leaders were strongly concerned that the nuclear fuel was exposed to air and would melt down. At 7:54 p.m., the plant operators tried injecting water into the reactor. But the inside pressure was so high that they could not inject much water. Director Yoshida made a speech in front of the plant workers to inform them that the situation was very critical, and that anyone who wished should evacuate. Around this time, TEPCO officials discussed the possible total evacuation from the Fukushima Daiichi Plant to the Fukushima Daini Plant over a television conference. TEPCO President Masataka Shimizu at the conference stated, ‘Please recognize that the final evacuation has not yet been decided. I am trying to confirm this with some authority’ (Asahi Shimbun, 2012). Shimizu repeatedly tried to make phone calls to METI Minister Kaieda.
At 8:40 p.m., TEPCO held a press conference, and told reporters that the water level of Unit 2 had lowered to a critical level. The plant operators tried to open the ventilation valve, but the pressure level kept rising. After midnight on 15 March, Shimizu finally got a call through to Kaieda to ask for permission to evacuate workers from the plant. Kaieda flatly rejected this request, as he interpreted it as a total evacuation without leaving anybody who would battle with the nuclear accident (Kaieda, Reference Kaieda2011). After the phone call, Kaieda asked a METI official what would happen if TEPCO deserted the Fukushima Daiichi Plant. The answer was that not only Unita 1 to 4, but also Units 5 and 6 would explode.
After being refused by Kaieda, Shimizu then called CCS Edano to discuss the possibility of pulling the workers out. Shimizu told Edano, ‘Something has to be done. The on-site situation cannot be maintained much longer.’ Edano also rejected the request because he also took Shimizu's request as asking permission for a total withdrawal (Edano, Reference Edano2011).
Although TEPCO officials discussed the possible total withdrawal at the television conference, the company has denied that the company had any plans to desert the nuclear plant. The TEPCO investigation panel's report said that what Shimizu meant in the conversations with Kaieda and Edano was ‘Because the situation at the plant is difficult, we want to consider temporarily evacuating workers who are not directly involved in the work when that need arises, and that we never thought about nor mentioned total withdrawal’ (TEPCO, 2011: 36).
While Shimizu did not explicitly mention total withdrawal, he never clearly stated that the workers needed to battle the crisis would remain. According to the central government panel's interim report, Shimizu took it as a natural precondition and did not specifically mention that the needed workers would remain on-site (Government Panel, 2011).Footnote 4 At the Diet hearing on 17 May 2012, Kaieda denied that Shimizu meant partial withdrawal by saying, ‘Even the plant director could make a decision on partial withdrawal. The president expressly made a phone call to me. I thought it had to be a very difficult decision.’
Around 3:20 a.m., Kaieda and Edano woke Prime Minister Kan and told him about Shimizu's request. Kan's response was ‘That cannot be allowed’ (Fukuyama, Reference Fukuyama2011). Assistant to the prime minister Goshi Hosono called Plant Director Yoshida to ask about the on-site situation. Yoshida's answer was, ‘We can go on for a while. But we need more weapons. I wish we had a high pressure pump.’Footnote 5 Shortly, Kan summoned Shimizu to the prime minister's office, and Shimizu arrived at 4:17 a.m. Kan told Shimizu, ‘Evacuation is not just possible.’ Shimizu replied, ‘I understand’ (Kan, Reference Kan2011b). Kaieda was surprised by Shimizu's immediate acceptance of Kan's demand (Kaieda, Reference Kaieda2012).
Then, Kan explained that the government and TEPCO should establish a joint headquarters to deal with the accident at the TEPCO Tokyo Office, and Shimizu accepted this request. At 5:26 a.m., Kan announced the establishment of the joint headquarters.
Nine minutes later, Kan arrived at the TEPCO office, and made a ten-minute-long speech. Kan in a loud voice appealed, ‘Evacuation was not just possible. Evacuation would destroy TEPCO.’ According to TEPCO Vice President Sakae Muto, the prime minister's speech struck him as incongruous as TEPCO officials claimed that they were just thinking about partial withdrawal (Muto, Reference Muto2012).
At around 6:10 a.m., there was a big explosive sound from inside Unit 2. Twenty minutes later, TEPCO president gave the order to evacuate all non-essential recovery workers. Approximately 650 plant workers took temporary refuge in a safe place, while around 70 people continued with recovery work.
Even after the investigation by the Diet, it was not clear whether the TEPCO president asked for total withdrawal from the plant or not when he called Kaieda and Edano. But the TEPCO officials discussed the possibility of total withdrawal at the conference. Kan successfully upscaled the decision, and made a significant difference by forcing the plant operators to continue recovery work.
Case 6 – Water injection to the Unit 4 spent fuel pool
After the joint headquarters was established on the second floor of the TEPCO headquarters early in the morning of 15 March, Kan and the TEPCO executives discussed the current status of the accident. TEPCO President Shimizu explained the simulation of a radiation spread, and explained that the current evacuation plan of residents within a 20 kilometer radius of the nuclear plants would suffice. When the prime minister pointed out the large amount of spent fuel, Shimizu immediately changed his opinion and said ‘Maybe we need 30 kilometers.’ At 11 a.m., the government announced that the evacuation plan was extended from 20 to 30 kilometers. A government official who was present at the meeting was surprised by how easily the TEPCO officials changed their opinion, and by how unconfident its officials were about their analysis and decision.Footnote 6
The new joint headquarters was headed by the prime minister with two deputies, METI Minister Kaieda and TEPCO President Shimizu. As Kan had to go back to the prime minister's office, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister Hosono stayed at the headquarters on behalf of Kan. One of the immediate needs to deal with was water injection to the spent fuel pools of Units 3 and 4. Especially, the Unit 4 reactor was undergoing a major refurbishing at the time of the earthquake, and its 1,535 fuel rods were all in the pool for safekeeping. As the rising pool temperature of the two units was evaporating the water quickly, water injection was needed.
The water injection operation required the interagency coordination of the Self Defense Forces (SDF), the Police Agency, and the Fire and Disaster Management Agency. As the METI minister did not have authority over these agencies, Special Assistant Hosono began playing a pivotal role on behalf of the prime minister to orchestrate the operation.
On 16 March, white fumes were rising from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. As Unit 3 building was considered as the most likely source, Hosono instructed the SDF to prepare helicopters to pour water on Unit 3. The mission, however, was cancelled as the radiation level soared as high as 50mSv per hour. Defense Minister Kitazawa instructed a Ground SDF official to ask for volunteers for the mission, and received the response, ‘All of our helicopter operators are over 35 years old, and already have kids. It would be okay for them to be sterile due to radiation exposure.’ Kitazawa told the author that he was moved by their high moral (Kitazawa, Reference Kitazawa2011).Footnote 7
On 17 March, the monitoring helicopter detected an even higher radiation level of 87.7mSv per hour. Despite the radiation level, Ground SDF's Chief of Staff Yoshifumi Hibako firmly decided to conduct the helicopter missions. The SDP helicopters poured a total of 30 tons of water in four attempts. Although it was not certain how much the SDF operation contributed to the cooling of the fuel pool, it demonstrated to the international community that the Japanese government was willing to take risks to deal with the nuclear accident.
By 18 March, in order to smooth interagency coordination for water injection, Hosono asked for an official instruction from the prime minister to set up a system where the SDF would command the operation, and the Fire Agency and the Policy Agency would serve under the SDF. After the SDF helicopter mission, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police's water cannon and the fire trucks of the Fire Agency and the SDF tried to spray water into the fuel pools. However, as the fuel pools were located 30 meters above the ground, it was very difficult to pour a large amount of water constantly into them.
Based on a suggestion from a local construction company in Mie prefecture, Hosono decided to use concrete pump trucks with a long articulated arm. Water injection by one of the nine concrete pump trucks sent to the site began on 22 March. Over the first four days, 130 to 150 tons of sea water each day were poured into the spent fuel pool of Unit 4 to lower the pool temperature. While some of the 1,535 fuel rods in the pool were damaged, the majority of them were intact based on measured radiation levels. The orchestrated efforts led by Hosono at the joint headquarters successfully stabilized the situation.
The establishment of the joint headquarters for the accident improved the communication among the plant operators, the TEPCO executive and the government officials. The special assistant who acted on behalf of the prime minister could make critical decisions at the headquarters. As a result, the crises were handled at a level closer to which they occurred. Instead of upscaling crisis management to the kantei, the top political leaders came down closer to the ground and successfully managed the crises through intense cooperation and improvisation in highly volatile conditions with non-negotiable time pressure.
Conclusion
Crisis should better be handled at the closest possible level to the site. The top political leaders should step in only when the local authority cannot handle the situation. But the problem is, it is often difficult to judge when it is necessary to do so. The first case of the delivery of power vehicles was a clear example of a situation where the TEPCO officials did not have access to available vehicles of the local and national governments. It was necessary for top government officials to step in and arrange the delivery. Still, it was doubtful if the prime minister himself needed to make phone calls, instead of dealing with more important issues such as leading rescue plans for tsunami victims. Unfortunately, however, the delivered power vehicles were not compatible with the electric system of the nuclear plant. The efforts at the kantei in this case did not make any improvement in the crisis situation.
On the other hand, the next three cases could have been handled by the plant operators alone, and did not require upscaling of policy making to the top political level. With his distrust of the officials of TEPCO and the bureaucracy, Kan personally made himself involved in the nuclear crisis, and began micromanaging the responses. The political intervention in these three cases, however, did not improve the situation. The intervention of water injection to Unit 3 in the fourth case study even contributed to excess deterioration of the situation.
The best political decision within the first week of the accident arguably was to stop TEPCO's possible withdrawal in the fifth case. The TEPCO officials at the television conference discussed total withdrawal, and the president was contacted to ask the political authority for permission. The decision was upscaled from the corporate level to the top political level. Prime Minister Kan strongly insisted that TEPCO should not abandon the nuclear plant. In the interview with the Fukushima Commission, Kan told us that it was the most difficult political decision for him to request the nuclear operators to stay and deal with the accident by risking their lives (Kan, Reference Kan2012c).
The establishment of the joint headquarters on 15 March was another important political decision. Before this office was established, the information on the nuclear accident was first reported to TEPCO Tokyo Office. After the information was delivered to the TEPCO representative at the kantei who passed it to the political leaders (See Figure 1). This caused exasperation over miscommunication. METI Minister Kaieda described at the Diet Investigation Committee hearing, ‘It was as if they were playing a broken telephone game’, referring to the children's game that shows how information can change the more times it is passed on.
Figure 1. Nuclear Crisis Management Organization.
After the joint headquarters was established, the communication channel was significantly simplified as shown in Figure 2. Instead of the dysfunctional off-site center, the headquarters began playing the role of control tower. DPJ political leaders, including METI Minister Kaieda and Special Assistant Hosono, could acquire first-hand information from the plant on a television circuit at the TEPCO Tokyo Office. Much of the decision making authority was delegated to Hosono and Kaieda, who could attain the most updated information, being closer to where the crises were occurring. Without upscaling the policy making to the higher level, these political leaders at the headquarters could give detailed instructions by knowing the needs at the nuclear plant. The decision making for recovery work was made significantly smoother so as to deliver very complicate tasks, such as orchestrating water injection to the spent fuel pools of Units 3 and 4 as described in the sixth case study.
Figure 2. Nuclear Crisis Management Organization after March 15.
These cases of the Fukushima plant crisis prove that nuclear accidents should be handled at the level closest to the nuclear plant as universal wisdom suggests. The top political authority should not step in unless the local authority fails to handle the accident. If the political leaders want to be involved in policy making when the local authority does not necessarily require their involvement, they should move down to the level closer to the accident, instead of upscaling decision making to the higher authority.
On 19 October 2012, the newly established Nuclear Regulation Authority announced a new plan of disaster countermeasures. Instead of using the off-site center as designated in the old government manual, the plan would require the headquarters of the electric power companies with existing communication infrastructures with their nuclear power plants to serve as a control center. The political leaders would be sent to the center to be able to make decisions closer to the plant, taking advantage of the lessons that we learned from the Fukushima nuclear accident.
About the author
Tomohito Shinoda is Professor of International Relations at the International University of Japan, located in Niigata, Japan. He received his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. He participated in the working group of the Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident. His research covers Japan's politics and foreign policy, international relations in East Asia and US–Japan relations. His publication includes Contemporary Japanese Politics: Institutional Changes and Power Shift (Columbia University Press, 2013); Koizumi Diplomacy: Japan's Kantei Approach in Foreign and Defense Affairs (University of Washington Press, 2007); and Leading Japan: The Role of the Prime Minister (Praeger, 2000).
