Published on Jun.10 ,2014 : The Denki shinbun(The Electric Daily News)
Shojiro Matsuura
Chairman of JANSI

Pioneers and challengers of nuclear development must have deeply recognized the necessity of paying special attention to ensuring safety for nuclear use. This is because they knew better than anyone else that the system they were developing had the capacity to generate enormous and high-density energy. They also knew that nuclear fission reaction which is the source of energy generation essentially would generate high-energy radiation and radioactive material of great variety. The outcome of all civilizations is accompanied by pros and cons. Nuclear energy encompasses both of them at a high density and in a vast amount.

Therefore, it has been recognized from the very beginning that the use of nuclear energy involves risks to which special attention should be paid. For military or civil use, risk management has become the most important international challenge since the latter half of the twentieth century. Nuclear energy has not been totally banned internationally even though we have experienced some major accidents in which these risks became real. This is because there is concern about enormous civil energy demand foreseen and resource and environmental risks associated with the massive use of fossil energy. At the same time, nuclear energy is expected to provide high power supply potential and make improvement in its safety.

As a lesson learned from the Fukushima Daiichi accident, nuclear experts particularly reflected upon the lack of risk awareness in Japanese nuclear industry. Risk awareness and responses to the risk often involve three requirements: risk assessment, risk communication, and risk management. To develop these requirements into practical activities, they require different theoretical frameworks and engineering expertise to operate. There are also considerable differences in organizational characteristics suitable to such activities. For this, even though the deep connection between risk assessment and risk communication had been recognized, the actual activities have been carried out separately.

While keeping in mind risks specific to nuclear power, we have deepened our awareness that it is important to coordinate these three requirements closely at each level, from individual entities to administrative organizations, to perform the highest effectiveness as a whole (risk governance).

By chance, I recently had an opportunity to listen to an expert’s lecture on the building and functioning of risk governance. I was most deeply impressed by the line, “human beings generally have the characteristic of seeing only what they want to see. This can be a major factor that would hinder risk governance.”

We should realize that these human weaknesses and deficiencies are not only relevant to the sensory functions of seeing and hearing, but also to the thought function of thinking. We see what we want to see, but we do not see what we do not want to see. We think over only what we want to think, but we are emotionally detached from what we do not want to think. Everyone must have experienced this. This weakness cannot be overcome through ordinary efforts.

We must overcome this weakness from getting involved in the development, verification, and inspection of safety systems important for risk reduction. It is obvious that operators who have the primary responsibility to ensure safety should make the utmost effort. Still, we must give greater importance to the perspective of outsider, e.g. the use of the standards of relevant academic and industrial associations.

Overcoming this weakness is not only required of operators, but also regulators who oversee operators’ activities to ensure safety. Regulators and operators have different standpoints. If these perspectives work in a complementary manner, they are expected to make great contribution in improving the effectiveness of risk governance. Troublingly, however, we might see “something similar but totally different in nature” if our willingness to see is too strong. This could also be a factor that would hinder governance.

end