"Evan Osnos" - JAPAN: THE NUCLEAR VILLAGE
October 10, 2011 Dispatches by Evan Osnos.
How close was the Fukushima meltdown to becoming a far larger disaster? Closer than most people know. And, yet, the details of the aftermath may surprise you. In the magazine this week, I reconstruct what happened and why—and examine just how close Japan came to the worst-case scenario. (“The Fallout” is available to subscribers. Here are the options, print and digital.)
Travelling back and forth to Fukushima this year, I encountered humbling examples of perseverance and sacrifice. I also came to understand how a nuclear accident creeps up on a place that never imagined it was vulnerable. Before this, I had never thought much about nuclear power. I will have a hard time forgetting about it now. The lessons of Fukushima are not what I thought when I started, and I’ll be writing more about that here this week.
Over the course of week, I’ll also be pointing to some sources for further information on things raised in the piece. Today, a not-comprehensive list of recommendations on where to learn more about Japan’s curious history with nuclear power:
- Tetsuo Arima, of Waseda University, has documented Shoriki’s coöperation with the C.I.A. in the development of nuclear power. See, in Japanese, “Nuclear Power, Shoriki, and the C.I.A.,” Shinchosha, 2008.
- John Dower, “Embracing Defeat,” the magisterial account of Japan in the aftermath of the Second World War.
- Peter Kuznick, of American University, has written in the Bulletin of American scientists about Eisenhower and the Atoms for Peace plan.
- Morris Low, Shigeru Nakayama, and Hitoshi Yoshioka explain the domestic politics surrounding Japanese science in “Science, Technology and Society in Contemporary Japan.”
- Thomas Hughes, the dean of American historians of science, has done as much as anyone to examine how technologies develop and create their own political weather. “Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture” is a good place to start.
- Ōishi Matashichi was a fisherman aboard the Lucky Dragon No. 5. He described his experience with nuclear fallout in “The Day the Sun Rose in the West. Bikini, the Lucky Dragon and I.” An excerpt, translated by Richard H. Minear, appears at Japan Focus.
- Craig D. Nelson, of Ohio State, has produced a free, concise history of domestic and international politics surrounding nuclear power in “‘The Energy of a Bright Tomorrow’: The Rise of Nuclear Power in Japan.”
- Charles Perrow, emeritus at Yale, laid out the intellectual architecture for how big accidents happen in “Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies.”
- William Tsustui, of Southern Methodist University, offers the most surprisingly incisive source on the period: “Godzilla On My Mind,” the political history of a giant reptile.
Photograph by Kyoko Hamada.
