Nuclear Policy: USA

The Nuclear Energy Institute provides lots of handy statistics regarding the nuclear situation in the United States. There are facts and figures on more subcategories of nuclear power information than you could ever want to know, but I will touch on a few key facts.

In 2010, the US generated over four billion milliwatt hours, about 800 million of which were due to nuclear energy. This means that the nuclear fuel share percentage for the US was about 19.6%.

Over the past 20 years in the US, plants have increased their output of nuclear power while maintaining similar levels of safety. The graphic from this link tells the story:

Accordingly, US suppliers face very strict safety regulations to start nuclear energy production from a new plant (click for larger image).

Storytelling

This post from the Daily Yomiuri Shimbun details the harrowing stories of several survivors of the Great East Japan Earthquake. The amalgamation of several short anecdotes detail the survival of Yuko Ono, a 39-year-old mother;  Junnosuke Oikawa, a 56-year-old firefighter; a 62-year-old fisherman, Yoshinori Yamazaki; 86-year-old wheelchair-bound Norie Kanno; and 41-year-old Norikichi Ichikawa.

Mother Yuko Ono was driving her son and a classmate home when the earthquake hit. However, her quick thinking saved them all: she backed her van into a narrow side street so that when the waters hit, the van floated straight upwards and did not tip over. While her son and his friend have Ono-san to thank for their lives, they may find it traumatic to drive in a car again. However, they should work to regain some sense of normalcy by taking short rides in the car before working up to longer trips. It is important not to avoid triggers altogether so that they do not grow up with severe mental handicaps if put in certain situations.

Firefighter Junnosuke Oikawa survived by pulling two wooden planks under his chest and using them as a makeshift surfboard. He actually used to play in a similar way as a child. Oikawa-san can deal with the possible trauma he would face if confronted with surfing again by reflecting on the positive experiences he had as a child playing those games where no danger was involved.

Norikichi Ichikawa survived by allowing his body to float up to the ceiling of a submerged room and breathing in air when gaps became available. However, Ichikawa-san faces particularly traumatizing side effects as his mother, whose hand he was clutching for the majority of the tsunami, did not make it. Ichikawa-san can rely on the support of his surviving family, friends, and community to work together to move forward and build a stronger future. Ichikawa-san said, "I will live the rest of my life thinking of my mother, whose life was extinguished without mercy." Ichikawa-san can actually draw on this touching sentiment in order to deal with his trauma--he can work to have a very fulfilling life in honor of his mother.

Fisherman Yoshinori Yamazaki was submerged several times but each time found the surface again by swimming towards sunlight. Since Yamazaki-san is a fisherman he will probably return to the sea to continue his trade, and consequently he may face traumatic flashbacks when dealing with his boat. However, like Ichikawa-san Yamazaki-san should also rely on the support of those around him and make sure he finds outlets to express his feelings if he finds it necessary.

Wheelchair-bound Norie Kanno was one of the lucky ones to survive from her nursing home. Her chair floated up to the top of the room where she was unable to breathe for several minutes before the waters began to recede just in time. Kanno-san afterwards expressed "I'd like to live a healthy life for my friends." It is feelings exactly like these that will help all of these survivors find positives in their daily lives going forward and work to deal with their traumatic experiences.

From Eco to Setsuden

While it is hard for me to chronicle the shift from eco to setsuden since I was not in Japan when eco was the main focus, I will instead reflect on the setsuden practices I have seen (and not seen). The major thing that jumps out in everyday life in Japan is the escalators that are on or not on. My home station (Nishikawaguchi, Keihin-Tohoku line) recently started running it's up escalator in the mornings, which surprised me -- if it wasn't necessary before, why is it needed now? Walking around the Tokyo Dome today I was confronted with a pair of escalators -- the up one was running while the down was not. I took a picture, then realized it was kind of silly since you can't tell that one of the escalators was actually moving. But, you can see the explanatory sign they have posted -- I can't read the Japanese but I could see the Kanji for setsuden.

Okay, in the picture the kanji for setsuden are actually cut out >.< but my camera wasn't working so I had to use my phone! Gomen ne. But, situations like this are a microcosm of the larger setsuden shift happening in Japan. "Non-necessary" electrical equipment like down escalators and extraneous lights are being cut out. It seems to be enough, as the informational signs in the train routinely display percentages that are well under the 80% mark -- today I actually saw 56% at one point in my commute.

We discussed in class whether people are only tolerating these small inconveniences because they view them as temporary. I had thought that to be the case, but the other day I was talking to a Japanese friend who was discussing matter-of-factly that "this summer we have to save energy, but next summer we'll have to save even more." She wasn't claiming to be an expert on the subject; she was just relaying her perspective on the situation that these measures were in place to stay. I find that viewpoint interesting: on the one hand it's better for long-term environmental health if people stress electricity conservation, but on the other hand it is perhaps impractical for businesses and consumers to continue to employ these measures when an "eco friendly" alternative does not really exist. (It is one thing for businesses to practice electricity conservation if there is an alternative that will allow them to maintain similar economic output, but another thing entirely to expect businesses to continue to practice inconvenient tasks if it hurts their bottom line.) As an economics major , I am very interested to watch and see where Japan moves in the future.

Disaster Preparation

I found several things from our disaster preparation discussion very interesting, but towards the end of the discussion one thing in particular stood out to me. When we were discussing the different types of drills we do in our home institutions, lockdown or "code red" drills came up. We had these drills in my own high school, where we had to act as if an intruder was on the premises and all hide on one side of the classroom, while the teacher locked the door and put a colored piece of paper in the door window (green for the all clear, red for we need help). These drills became standard in my high school after the Virgina Tech shootings on April 16th, 2007 -- perhaps because of North Carolina's relative proximity to Virginia. However, I was surprised to learn that several of my American classmates did not have similar drills in their schools. Even in my town which is very safe and has a low crime rate, a few schools have had to go into lockdown in the past due to a bank robbery or something similar around their premises. It seems to me that, especially after 9/11 and the increase in students bringing/using guns in school, these drills would be practiced at least yearly in most schools.

Most universities have adopted some sort of emergency notification system over text message, which is tested at least twice a year at my university. This is a step in the right direction, but American schools' relative lack of preparedness could be taken as a sign of the notion "this wouldn't happen here, only in another area." We have discussed how that mindset partially contributed to the immense of human loss in Japan after people were unprepared, unaware what to do, or assumed they had enough time to escape the tsunami or that the waters wouldn't get very high. To me, it seems that people in general need to reevaluate their priorities and make sure they are prepared for any type of disaster situation that were to arise.

Nihonjinron

After reading this blog assignment the term "flyjin" immediately came to mind. Even though it's not related to the Japanese identity specifically, I am not Japanese and therefore am more comfortable writing about changes to the foreigner's identity in Japan rather than making haphazard judgements of and comments on the Japanese identity. These changes in the foreigner's identity actually give us some insight into the Japanese identity, which I will discuss later.

A quick Google search brought up a surprising fact -- there is now a flyjin.com! From what I can discern, the first post was on March 21, 2011, and the blog is related to all things flyjin. (The term itself is a pun on the Japanese word for foreigner, "gaijin", and highlights how many foreigners fled from Japan after the disaster.) The term was apparently coined by Twitter users (who else), and this blog features ranging from factual information about the nuclear radiation levels to personal accounts from foreigners who left and why.

I have mixed feelings about the term flyjin. In the days immediately following the earthquake it was not clear how serious the Fukushima situation was going to become, so to me it makes sense that people left -- the age old adage "better safe than sorry" holds true. I think the issue lies in the foreigners who left cities like Osaka or Tokyo even though they were under virtually no threat from radiation, and in the fact that most people have not yet returned to Japan. Yesterday, however, I was walking around Harajuku and my friend and I actually discussed how we were starting to see more foreigners in touristy areas such as that one. So, that is a promising observation but I hope it continues to improve. I also have a serious problem with all of the American universities who canceled their study abroad programs or forced their students to come home - it shows a lack of trust in the Japanese system and the Japanese universities' abilities to make decisions regarding their programs, and it caused most students to miss out on a whole semester of credit. But, I do understand the liability issue, and once one big university announced their plans to withdraw their students, the dominoes started to fall.

As I mentioned, I think the fact that the term "flyjin" even emerged reveals something inherent in Japanese identity: a strong sense of pride in their country. The word "flyjin" is only catchy because it highlights that foreigners fled Japan, underscoring the opposite: the majority of Japanese citizens stayed. This may have been the case in most countries, where national citizens stay put after a disaster due to a sense of loyalty, but I have found this sentiment particularly strong in Japan. All of the ads saying "ganbarou nihon" and "ganbarou tohoku" highlight that the citizens of Japan and Tohoku are all in this together, working to rebuild and overcome. Hopefully in the coming months more and more foreigners will return to join in that effort.

Global Media Coverage

My hometown newspaper, The News & Observer, recently published this article detailing some of Japan's attmpts to deal with the looming energy crisis. It was written by Mari Yamaguchi, a member of the Associated Press, and was published on June 6th in English in the United States. The N&O is published in North Carolina.

The article talks about the efforts being made in Tokyo to conserve electricity: some government employees are now working from 7:30am to around 4:15pm (as compared to 8:30am-5:15pm).  Interesting to me was the discussion of daylight savings time: how Japan has historically been against it but some people have been making a push to adopt DST so that the day would get an "extra hour" of daylight, thus reducing the amount of time the lights need to be on at night. By shifting the work day an hour forward, the workers are essentially adopting DST without the actual clock changing.


I am interested to see how electricity conservation is going to happen as it continues to get hotter. The elevator going up from Yotsuya station to the street is almost always running now, whereas it was off for the first few weeks I was here, and then was turned on only during rush hour. It seems to me that electricity conservation is not at the forefront of everyone's minds -- for example, I have noticed lots of students taking the elevator up just one or two floors, and there is really no reason that anyone would need to take an elevator down at all. However, the article I read is enlightening because it shows that city workers are making an effort to conserve electricity, so perhaps if more people read articles like this one they will do the same.

3.11: Shock

Waking up to the news of 3.11 was a shock to all of us in America, and the earthquake's tremors have resonated into areas that will have impacts in society long after northern Japan has been rebuilt.  The nuclear reactors were labeled as "earthquake and tsunami proof," and I'm sure most people accepted that as fact. However, the ensuing nuclear crisis has all but destroyed people's faith in nuclear energy as a safe and viable means of providing electricity in an earthquake-prone nation--so much so that reactors in other parts of Japan have been temporarily shut down. While most of Japan may have been prepared for what to do in case of an earthquake or even a tsunami, many people may not have even considered what could happen in the case of an electricity shortage.

The trains shutting down, people having to walk 10 hours to get home, the shelves of convenient stores completely bare -- these are scenes straight out of a horror film about a natural disaster. Indeed, the Japanese media has been full of such images for decades -- films like Godzilla, TV series like Ultraman -- Tokyo is decimated time and time again only to appear new again in the next film or episode. An article in a Japanese version of "Newsweek" talks about these "Tokyo Disaster Fantasies" and how they have "obsessively imagined Japan's destruction, mirroring the country's real-world vulnerability." Indeed, Japan is so used to these images of destruction and reconstruction that some people feel they can not help but be stoic in the face of the current crisis. But, few may have imagined the wide-scale energy shortage what will descent on Tokyo as the mercury in the thermometer continues to climb... it will be interesting to see how energy consumers respond, and how Tokyo prepares itself for an electricity shortage going forward.