• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• 제12권2호
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• pp.19-34
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• 2013

Previous research assessed media reporting on nuclear accidents and risks, whilst studies about the Fukushima accident focused on the impact of the Internet on coverage of the incident. However, little research has addressed news framing or comparisons of the perceptions of journalists in relation to reporting nuclear accidents. The aim of this study is to apply framing analysis to news content in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today about the Fukushima accident. It explores the question of how journalists view reporting on complex events. Content analysis of these three newspapers shows that conflict, responsibility, and economic consequences were the most frequently used frames. According to the journalists interviewed, the biggest problem was the inability to assess information due to contrary positions held by experts. It is argued that the Fukushima accident was framed as a conflict of experts and officials' opinions, utility and government officials' responsibility, and economic consequences for the United States. Adherence to professional norms of objectivity and impartiality was signified as the best approaches to risk reporting.

• STI Policy Review
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• 제4권1호
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• pp.119-134
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• 2013

The Fukushima nuclear incident of 2011 served as an external shock that prompted Japan to reform its nuclear energy sector. The collusive relationship between the regulators within the Japanese government and the regulated power industry, as well as the lack of institutional independence of the regulatory agency, had derailed Japanese efforts to reform the sector for decades. The Fukushima crisis exposed these deeply-entrenched flaws in the system, causing public distrust and anger toward the government and the nuclear power sector. This paper discusses the institutional reform measures the Japanese government introduced in the wake of the Fukushima crisis to recover public confidence and revamp the sector to prevent future disasters. The paper also discusses the challenges the Japanese government faces on its road to a successful implementation of nuclear sector reforms.

• 한국수산과학회지
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• 제49권2호
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• pp.234-240
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• 2016

We examined the diffusion of contaminants released from the southern coast around Fukushima, Japan, during the passage of typhoons using a three-dimensional numerical model (POM) to track diffusing radioactivity (RA) released from the nuclear power plant at Fukushima following the accident caused by the giant tsunami event in March 2011. Radioactive contaminants released during the passage of typhoons may have significantly affected not only Japanese but also Korean coastal waters. The model domain covered most of the northwestern Pacific including marginal seas such as the East/Japan Sea and the Yellow Sea. Several numerical experiments were conducted case studies focusing on the westward diffusion from the southern coast of Japan of contaminants derived from the source site (Fukushima) according to various attributes of the typhoons, such as intensity, track, etc. The model produced the following results 1) significant amounts of contaminants were transported in a westward direction by easterly winds favorable for generating a coastal air stream along the southern Japanese coast, 2) the contaminants reached as far as Osaka Bay with the passage of typhoons, forced by a 5-day positive sinusoidal form with a (right-) northward track east of Fukushima, and 3) the range of contamination was significant, extending to the interior of the East/Japan Sea around the Tsugaru Strait. The model suggests that contaminants and/or radioactivity released from Fukushima with the passage of typhoons can affect Korean waters including the northeastern East/Japan Sea around the Tsugaru Strait, especially when the typhoon tracks are favorable for generating a westward coastal air stream along the southern Japanese coast.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제47권1호
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• pp.11-25
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• 2015

The accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011, caused by an earthquake and a subsequent tsunami, resulted in a failure of the power systems that are needed to cool the reactors at the plant. The accident progression in the absence of heat removal systems caused Units 1-3 to undergo fuel melting. Containment pressurization and hydrogen explosions ultimately resulted in the escape of radioactivity from reactor containments into the atmosphere and ocean. Problems in containment venting operation, leakage from primary containment boundary to the reactor building, improper functioning of standby gas treatment system (SGTS), unmitigated hydrogen accumulation in the reactor building were identified as some of the reasons those added-up in the severity of the accident. The Fukushima accident not only initiated worldwide demand for installation of adequate control and mitigation measures to minimize the potential source term to the environment but also advocated assessment of the existing mitigation systems performance behavior under a wide range of postulated accident scenarios. The uncertainty in estimating the released fraction of the radionuclides due to the Fukushima accident also underlined the need for comprehensive understanding of fission product behavior as a function of the thermal hydraulic conditions and the type of gaseous, aqueous, and solid materials available for interaction, e.g., gas components, decontamination paint, aerosols, and water pools. In the light of the Fukushima accident, additional experimental needs identified for hydrogen and fission product issues need to be investigated in an integrated and optimized way. Additionally, as more and more passive safety systems, such as passive autocatalytic recombiners and filtered containment venting systems are being retrofitted in current reactors and also planned for future reactors, identified hydrogen and fission product issues will need to be coupled with the operation of passive safety systems in phenomena oriented and coupled effects experiments. In the present paper, potential hydrogen and fission product issues raised by the Fukushima accident are discussed. The discussion focuses on hydrogen and fission product behavior inside nuclear power plant containments under severe accident conditions. The relevant experimental investigations conducted in the technical scale containment THAI (thermal hydraulics, hydrogen, aerosols, and iodine) test facility (9.2 m high, 3.2 m in diameter, and $60m^3$ volume) are discussed in the light of the Fukushima accident.

• 한국방사성폐기물학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국방사성폐기물학회 2018년도 춘계학술논문요약집
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• pp.351-352
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• 2018

• 한국안전학회지
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• 제31권1호
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• pp.139-147
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• 2016

Nuclear energy is considerably cheap and clean compared to other fossil fuels. Yet, there are rising safety concerns of nuclear power plants including the possibility of radiation releasing nuclear accidents. In light of the Fukushima nuclear crisis in 2011, Japan has been re-evaluating their existing energy policies and increasing the share of alternative energy. This paper first tracks the major historical changes of energy policy in Japan by time period. Next, energy security, reignited concerns and alternative energy are covered to examine Japan's energy security situation and its transition after the Fukushima disaster. Lastly, a short survey based on thematic analysis was conducted in South Korea and Japan to understand the public awareness of nuclear. This paper postulates that the case of Fukushima will contribute to establish and operate a safe-future nuclear program in South Korea, given that the country is not only geographically neighbouring Japan but also the world's fourth largest producer of nuclear energy.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제50권8호
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• pp.1199-1209
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• 2018

After the Fukushima-Daiichi accident in 2011, the multi-unit risk, i.e., the risk due to several nuclear power plants (NPPs) in a site has become an important issue in several countries such as Korea, Canada, and China. However, the multi-unit risk has been discussed for a long time in the nuclear community before the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear accident occurred. The regulatory authorities around the world and the international organizations had proposed requirements or guidelines to reduce the multi-unit risk. The concerns regarding the multi-unit risk can be summarized in the following three questions: How much the accident of an NPP in a site affects the safety of other NPPs in the same site? What is the total risk of a site with many NPPs? Will the risk of the simultaneous accidents at several NPPs in a site such as the Fukushima Daiichi accident be low enough? The multi-unit risk assessment (MURA) in an integrated framework is a practical approach to obtain the answers for the above questions. Even though there were few studies to assess the multi-unit risk before the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear accident, there are still several issues to be resolved to perform the complete MURA. This article aims to provide an overview of the multi-unit risk issues and its assessment. We discuss the several critical issues in the current MURA to get useful insights regarding the multi-unit risk with the current state art of probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) technologies. Also, the qualitative answers for the above questions are addressed.

• 공학교육연구
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• 제15권1호
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• pp.35-44
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• 2012

This paper analyzes characteristics and discourses related with the risk communication of Fukushima nuclear disaster. I try to pick up and analyze the three strategies of Korean government's and expert system's risk communication, and then understand the relationship between them and the role of expert system in the risk communication and the politics of expertise.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제52권11호
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• pp.2511-2521
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• 2020

The Fukushima accident is characterized by the fact that three reactors at the same site experienced reactor vessel failure and the accident resulted in significant radiological release to the environment, which was about 1/10 of the Chernobyl releases. The safe removal of fuel debris in the reactor vessel and Primary Containment Vessel (PCV) and treatment of huge amount of contaminated water are the major issues for the decommissioning in coming decades. Discussions on the new researches efforts being carried out in the area of investigation of the end state of fuel debris and Boling Water reactor (BWR) specific core melt progression, development of technologies for the mitigation of radiological releases to comply with the strengthened safety requirement set after the Fukushima accident are discussed.

• 한국수자원학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국수자원학회 2005년도 학술발표회(1)
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• pp.571-571
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• 2005