Providing of Scientific Information in the Nuclear Accident

Settle on Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Accident

after 2011 Tohoku Earthquake

Miho Namba

, Mikihito Tanaka

and Miki Saijo

Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japam

Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan

Keywords: Risk Communication, Crisis Communication, Disaster Communication, Science Communication, Social

Media, Information Seeking.

Abstract: On March 11, 2011, the east coast of Japan was struck by a major earthquake. TRight after the earthquake

and tsunami, three nuclear reactors lost power, causing a core meltdown, and the release of radioactive

materials into the atmosphere. The disaster and following the nuclear power plant accident is unprecedented

in history. The crisis communication especially about scientific information was abundantly mixed. In this

article, I would like to review the communication between people and the government, providing mass

media and how people seeking the information. In crisis situation, people don’t know what they want to

know but they want to know something about their concern. In the crisis, people utilize the internet

especially social network sites. That is interactive media. And a new NPO, Science Media Center Japan

provide scientific information rapidly. The Q&A style information that was provided by SMCJ gained mass

acceptance.

1 INTRODUCTION

As the world watched, in the aftermath of the

devastating earthquake in 2011 in Japan, three

nuclear reactors lost power, causing a core

meltdown and the release of radioactive materials

into the atmosphere.

In this crisis, information distribution was

thrown into extreme confusion, even within the

nucleus of the government.

At the same time, the disaster was the first

widespread disaster since Japanese people had

started using social networking sites (SNS). People

uploaded as much information from twitter and

facebook than from online news by news paper

company. (Section 2.3).

In this paper, I would like to explore what people

wanted to know immediately after the accident and

the earthquake disaster.

The question that now arises is whether the old

media, such as newspapers, and the new media, such

as SNS, can address the public’s information needs?

Then, I devote some space to the discussion of what

kind of information content and style was easily

comprehensible for people a week immediately

following the severe nuclear accident at the

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Information from the Government

The East Japan earthquake on March 11

is the

largest earthquake in recorded history in Japan, and

it caused a nuclear accident.

In addition to rescuing a significant number of

the tsunami victims, government had to deals with

an uncontrollable Level 7 nuclear reactor that had

lost power, never before encountered in Japanese

history.

There was no nuclear power expert in the office

of the Prime Minister until March 13

. In the

meeting room set up for disaster-related events,

there were only two phone lines and no fax machine.

Even mobile phone reception was nonexistent. The

326

Namba M., Tanaka M. and Saijo M..

Providing of Scientiﬁc Information in the Nuclear Accident - Settle on Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Accident after 2011 Tohoku Earthquake.

DOI: 10.5220/0005150103260330

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing (KMIS-2014), pages 326-330

ISBN: 978-989-758-050-5

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

nucleus of the government collected information

from the TV in the room. (2012, Asahi) Despite of

no accurate information, the government announced

“No problem. It will be all right”.

And just after that it had revealed intractable

problem happened. It recurred. This is how the

Japanese government lost its country’s trust. (2012

Endo)

2.2 Information from Mass Media

At the crisis situation in which Japanese government

and Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc. (TEPCO: which

has Fukusima Daiichi nuclear power plant run) were

not be able to what had happened for nuclear

reactor, news report from mass media lagged and got

confused. (2012 Endo)

2.3 Information Seeking

From previous studies, it has been shown foreigners

evacuating from Japan and the affected area made

their decision mostly based on the demands from

their families and relatives, and from individual

judgment, not by their home country government

advisories (2013 Kawasaki). They had confidence

in the news from the Japanese mass media.

Questionnaire investigations immediately

following the Earthquake, and aimed at people

living in the Kanto region, which is comparatively

near the Fukushima nuclear plant, showed emphasis

on TV news by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation

(2011 Nomura Research Institution) (Figure:1)

Figure 1: Important Media for information of the

Earthquake. (N=3224).

Many people reported or wrote using social

networking services following the disaster. One

report had said there were 1200 tweets per minute in

Tokyo alone within the first hour (2012 Miura)

For certain, information from SNS added weight

to the online news by newspaper companies.( 2011

Nomura Research Institution)

On the other hand, the increased degree of

confidence in the information send out from

individuals was around the same as those decreased

degree of confidence in the information send out

from individuals. (2011 Nomura Research

Institution)

Seeking information on Internet is superior in

several terms. That is to say, in breaking reports,

diversity of contents, and interactivity. Sometimes

we can get off-the-record or background

information, but on the other hand, we have to be

aware of misinformation or false reports. We have

to be held responsible for the judgement capacity.

2.4 Science Media Centre of Japan

The Science Media Centre of Japan (SMCJ) was

established in 2010 as an independent, general

association. Its mission is supporting those who

report about science. It collects and sends out expert

comments on scientific topics that are of public

interest within hours of the news happening.

Originally it had been funded as a three year

research and development project by Japan's

Research Institute of Science and Technology for

Society (RISTEX). But RISTEX gave flexibility,

allowing the SMCJ to work as an independent, non-

profit organization as similar as the United

Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

At the time of the accident, the SMCJ office in

Tokyo had been struck by the earthquake. On March

, many scientists living around Tokyo also fell

victim to the earthquake, making it difficult to

contact them. The SMCJ staff started to check the

information which was written by scientists or

experts about the nuclear power plant, radioactive

material, and similar topics on twitter. The SMCJ

then collected information into a Q&A style report

on the SMCJ’s web site, and released it as a Science

Alert for their twitter followers.

The number of unique visitors on the SMCJ

Figure 2: Page Views from March 11

to 31

ProvidingofScientificInformationintheNuclearAccident-SettleonFukushimaDaiichiNuclearPlantAccidentafter

2011TohokuEarthquake

327

website recorded in the month following the march

11 Japan earthquake showed a rapid rise (*1) The

number is 1362140 from March 11

to 31

, and

almost of them are for the Q&A.(Figure : 2)

The SMCJ was presented with an award by the

National Institute of Science and Technology Policy

(NISTEP) for its activities to mediate between

experts and people who were affected by the crisis.

3 METHOD

The analyses for this study are based on two sets of

data collected from (1) the SMCJ website, and (2)

the website operated by a joint project including

DRS, DPRI, Kyoto University, DCRC, and Tohoku

University in Japan (2).

We compared those two data qualitatively.

Data (1) Science Alerts articles from “ the collection

of Q&A about nuclear power”

Data (2) each Science Alert articles

Data (3) Trends Words from “TR(*2) Analysis of

Online Japanese News Information on the 2011

Great Tohoku Earthquake Disaster through Yahoo!

Japan”. TR inform us hot topic of the news at the

time.

Firstly, we analyzed Science Alerts which were

released at the time. The most-read article was “ the

collection of Q&A about nuclear power”. There are

the other Science Alerts on SMCJ website, but the

page views of “Q&A” stands out the most. The

collection was made by SMCJ staff. ( Section 2.4 ).

We studied how it was made, and then we

examined the contents in detail.

Secondly, we analyzed the data (3) for TW

(trends words) between 12:00 March 13th to 19th ,

and from March 21st to 28th. The words were

derived from Yahoo News Topics written in

Japanese as of then.

4 FINDINGS

In regards to Data1, the source of information was

gathered on the web, particularly from Twitter.

SMCJ staff had always followed reliable scientists,

and gathered information from tweets written by

physicists and engineers. At the same time the staff

checked what kind of information was needed, or in

other words, what kind of questions were being

asked more on Twitter.

A summary of that information was then

presented in a Q&A style. There are 32 Q&As in the

collection, and each Q&A can be classified into one

of four categories in terms of contents. That is, a)

ask for advice about individual action, b) ask for

general knowledge, c) ask for present circumstances,

or d) authentification about hearsay information.

(Table 1)

Looking at the topics of each Q&A; radial ray,

iodine, exposure, water spray, and evacuation are

visible.

From Data (1) analysis, the largest category is d)

authentification about hearsay information, and the

second largest is b) ask for general knowledge. By

March 15

, category a) and c) were growing.

(Figure 3)

SMCJ staff made their collection taking into

consideration the question tweets on the time line.

The Q&A style was derived naturally.

Table 1: The Number of Q&A by category.

Category Number

a 3

b 10

c 5

d 14

Figure 3: The Number of Q&A by category from day to

day.

Table 2: Topic of Science Alerts from 13

to 19

relief goods, theft,

ower outage,

hypocenter , health information, disaster

medical care, radiation, decontamination,

iodine, mental health-care,

direction of the wind,

radiation, exposure, evacuation, going out,

Geiger counter, reactor, cooling, seawater,

fresh water, boracic acid, hydrogen

explosion, meltdown

16th radiation, monitoring, people with

disabilities, elderly people, vulnerable

groups

exposure, power outage, reactor, radiation,

in air, Chernobyl, vegetable, water

radiation, contamination

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From Data (2), we derived the key word of each

Science Alerts (*3). The key words inform us the

topics of the articles.

From Data (3), comparing table 3 with table 4

TWs of table 3 are about the accident of the nuclear

power plant, while TWs from Table 4 are more

specific and more related to people’s health

problem.

Table 3: TW from 13

to 19

2011/03/1

9 12:00

water

spray

pool Japan rice Niigata

2011/03/1

8 12:00

Niigata Japan hospital support dialysis

2011/03/1

7 12:00

prefecture tsunami affected support prefecture

2011/03/1

6 12:00

tsunami Sievert handling exposur

exposure

2011/03/1

5 12:00

pool pressure handling tsunami reactor

2011/03/1

4 12:00

handling think exposure pressure seawater

2011/03/1

3 12:00

handling explosion tsunami think responsible

Table 4: TW from 21

to 28

2011/03/

28 12:00

becquerel

spinach

iodine

harvest

turbine

2011/03/

27 12:00

becquerel

shipment

sectional

chief

spinach

iodine

2011/03/

26 12:00

becquerel

shipment

spinach

iodine

vegitable

2011/03/

25 12:00

becquerel

shipment

iodine

spinach

water

spray

2011/03/

24 12:00

shipment

becquerel

water

spray

iodine

spinach

2011/03/

23 12:00

water

spray

becquerel

shipment

iodine

spinach

2011/03/

22 12:00

water

spray

shipment

iodine

pool

becquerel

2011/03/

21 12:00

water

spray

pool

iodine

becquerel

tank

5 DISCUSSION AND

IMPLICATION

The SMCJ staff made the collection taking into

consideration question tweets on a time line. The

Q&A style had been derived naturally. There were

other styles of Science Alert on the SMCJ website,

but the page view number of the “Q&A” stood out

(25.9% of all 504822 PV from September 10, 2010

to October 10, 2012) (Table 5)

Table 5: Page Views of the SMCJ Web Sites.

Q&A 25.9%

About internal exposure by radiation 18.5%

Top page of SMC 8.48%

About the effect of low dose exposure

for human body

3.97%

Here I would like to point out that people who

were seeking information on the crisis by internet.

For example, people who did not know what to do in

wake of the nuclear power plant accident wanted to

know what they should know. That is when people

seek information, but they don’t know what they

want to know. Questions influence people to get

wiser. Q&A style might perform a crucial role for

getting big viewer numbers.

Comparing Data(3) with Data(2), news reports

from news paper companies are delay. News relating

health problem was starting to reveal from March 21

at last. On the other hand Science Alerts presented

information which is relevant to personal health

information from the very beginning.

Related to growing category a) and c) on the

March 15, following the March 12 explosion at the

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant Unit 1 on, the

Japanese government repeated equivocal accounts.

On March 14, Unit 3, exploded, followed by Unit 4

exploded on March 15. Embassies of foreign

countries started making statements about

evacuation.

People really want to know the circumstances

(category c) and need advice (Category b) (2013

Endo).

Although the Japan Earthquake saw a significant

use of SNS by TV and newspaper companies, it is

considered “mass media”, and so it is not easy to

answer the public demands in a moment.

6 FUTURE RESEARCH

From what has been discussed above, we would like

to state the following three points.

One, for mass media, rapid information services

regarding science and technology are difficult.

There needs to be some intermediate function for

giving people information they need.

Second, for the public, it might be difficult to

recognize what they should know and what they

want to know. Finally, interactive information

service like SNS are useful in crisis situations, but it

is more useful when there are mediators who collect

ProvidingofScientificInformationintheNuclearAccident-SettleonFukushimaDaiichiNuclearPlantAccidentafter

2011TohokuEarthquake

329

information from experts and connect it to people’s

demands.

In the future, we would like to narrow down on

what should be informed rapidly in nuclear plant

accidents, by interviewing the experts and people

who seek information through the Internet. Also,

what kind of style is better to serve information in a

crisis situation.

We have 50 more nuclear power plants in a tiny

country. We do not expect another nuclear accident,

but we have to prepare for a severe accident as long

as we use nuclear power.

We hope you find the information in this template

useful in the preparation of your submission.

7 AUTHOR NOTES

(*1) The unique visitor of SMCJ website was 3344

in February, and 1.36 million from 13 March to 31

(*2) TR system automatically extracts meaningful

keywords sets from digital text datasets related to

disasters. The method consists of the following two

steps; 1) to identify keywords among documents

about possibly significant disaster social phenomena

and 2) to apply trend of the keywords in stock chart

model and to provide daily summary as well as

weekly.

(*3) The process for extracting the key words is

different from TR. TR Analysis of Online Japanese

News Information is for dealing big data. On the

other hand, the number of Science Alerts is few,

small data. We cannot use TR system for analysis of

science alert. So we chose the key word from each

articles of Science Alerts to know what is the topic

of the articles.

REFERENCES

Asahi Shinbun

Purometeusu no wana (Prometheus trap)- the five

days after the accident of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear

Power Plant in the Ofice of Prime Minister, The Asahi

Shimbun Company, Tokyo,

Endo, K., 2012. How Media report the big earthquake and

the nuclear accident, Tokyo Denki University Press.

Tokyo, p123-125

Kawasaki, A., 2013. Advisories by foreign governments

and the behaviour of foreigners residing in japan after

the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, 2013 Institute

of Social Safety Science (10), p281-291

Nomura Research Institution, 2013. News Release

“

Trend

Survey for Media Contact in the big Earthquake”,

Nomura Research Institution. Tokyo.

Miura, A., 2012. Social Psycology of online

Communication on 3.11 Disasters in Japan, The

Institute of Electronics information and

communication Engineers

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