Magnitude Nine

One year ago a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurred off the east coast of the Japanese island of Honshu, displacing the 1300 km long island 2.4 meters east in the process.  The immediate damage to the infrastructure of Japan was intensified when the subsequent tsunami flooded the Japanese coast.  The earthquake and tsunami caused over 15,800 deaths, and left the nation severely challenged to provide even basic necessities to the Japanese people.  A year later the wreckage of towns near the coast remains.  As engineers we must consider the extent to which our systems compounded the disaster; the failure of power and transportation systems, for example, left the nation less able to respond in a time of dire need.  But most notable in this respect is the failure of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station.

I have previously written about the core competencies that an engineer should have for the 21st century.  Within Michigan Engineering we are continuing to refine our understanding of these competencies, but among them is Social & Environmental Responsibility, defined as “an understanding of human, social and environmental impacts, and the ethical tools to make sustainable and responsible decisions.” The crisis created at Fukushima on March 11, 2011 makes the importance of this social and environmental thinking manifestly plain.

We expect it may take 40 years to fully clean up and dismantle the six nuclear reactors at the site. One hundred thousand people remain displaced from the towns closest to the plant, and some still uncertain area around the plant may remain off-limits for normal habitation for decades or more.  Produce from the area, whether contaminated or not, is treated with suspicion all over Japan and the livelihood of many is gone.  This is unacceptable.

Fukushima Dai-ichi (DigitalGlobe www.digitalglobe.com)

This engineering failure will have long-term social implications.  Since the disaster all but 2 of Japan’s 54 nuclear plants have been shutdown for “stress tests;” these plants represent 30% of Japan’s electrical generation capacity.  Without doubt some of these plants will operate again, but a county that had previously been convinced that nuclear power was vital for electric power production is discovering, in a sudden and brutal way, that they can in fact survive without it. Combined with renewed distrust for the utility companies and the government, this will lead to significant rethinking of priorities and strategies for energy generation in Japan.  Japanese society is learning that they can operate without their nuclear plants.   Long a staunch supporter of the Kyoto protocols on reducing carbon emission, Japan could increase reliance on fossil fuels; this could lead to increased tensions as more nations contend for access to dwindling sources of such fuel.  Or Japan may drive new ideas in energy conservation or in renewable energy; but Japan is land poor, and renewables require repurposing of large open spaces to energy production.  Will Japanese cities become even denser to make space for wind and solar energy production in the country?  Will Japan's already strained ability to produce food suffer?

Whatever the outcome, our many failures at Fukushima: our failure to make the engineered systems more robust; our failure to realistically assess the potential earthquake magnitude and tsunami height; our failure to provide a better system to control the process of decay heat production and removal in the plant; our failure to develop better emergency response; all these failures by engineers will have an unintended impact on the structure of Japanese society.

The disaster at Fukushima Dai-ichi reminds us, more than can any lecture or recap of a code of ethics, that as engineers we are responsible to society and to the environment.  Even the very wise cannot see all ends; we must remember that our actions may impact many lives – for good and for ill – in ways that we might not intend or foresee