[SystemSafety] Wednesday's NOVA episode on Fukushima

Mon Jul 27 20:52:31 CEST 2015

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If you're in the US, you'll know about the PBS series NOVA. If you're in Europe you won't. It
seems to be a rare exception of a public-interest TV documentary series that hasn't made it onto
European screens yet.

Wednesday's NOVA episode is about the events during the Fukushima Daichi disaster. I reviewed it
for WGBH. I could look at the video but didn't have time - I just looked at the transcript.

It focuses on what happened and how people coped in real time. It seems to be excellent. They have
some first-rate commentators including Dave Lochbaum and Prime Minister at the time Naoto Kan, who
trained as a nuclear engineer, so knew quite well what he was trying to cope with and where he was
being fooled. They show some heros at the plants (the main hero at Daichi, the plant manager
Yoshida who took courageous and correct decisions about cooling, died of cancer, unrelated to the
accident, in 2013).

They focus on what happened and how people reacted, so a thick-description-type recounting. The do
not address such issues as whether it could have been anticipated (as Chick anticipated it) or
what could have been done in advance to mitigate the hazards (or even recognise the hazards).

Take a look at it if you can!

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Faculty of Technology, University of Bielefeld, 33594 Bielefeld, Germany
Je suis Charlie
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de