#Fukushima Nuke Plant: Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency's Idea of Nuclear Emergency Response

Consensus through bureaucracy that killed, kills, and will kill.

I found a pictorial diagram of Japan's nuclear emergency response, from Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), which I post below.

Never mind what each bubble is about. The lower left-hand corner is the residents affected by the nuclear emergency. The rest are all governments - national, prefectural, city, town, village - and public research institutions, police, the SDF, fire. So NISA and the national government assumed that all these governments, agencies, nuclear research institutions would remain intact in case of nuclear emergency, and that they could continue merrily on setting up committees at every single level, with expert advice from NISA.

Clearly, it never occurred to them that a "nuclear emergency" can happen as the result of a big earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku and Kanto area along the Japan Tranch, one of the most active undersea faults in the world, and that their beloved bureaucratic organizations from the national government agencies on down to town and village level may be wiped out as the result of the earthquake and/or tsunami. Which is exactly what happened.

From what I can tell from my reading so far, NISA thought a "nuclear emergency" would arise from operational mistakes by the nuclear power plant operator.

The circle around the affected residents is small, but even smaller is a red oblong circle in the lower right-hand corner. That is the scene of the nuclear emergency. The arrow going to this red circle comes from the bubble right above, which is the plant operator, research institutions, police, SDF, fire, who are to prevent the accident from getting bigger under the direction from the big bubble in the center - a grand coalition of governments and agencies with committees and advisors.

For the government and NISA, what is more important to them is rather obvious from this diagram: their organization.

Is it any wonder that the Japanese government has been acting clueless ever since the accident?

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