The human element

The human element
By Hugh Gusterson | 1 September 2011
The discussions about the safety of nuclear reactors in the new post-Fukushima world have focused on technical questions: Is it possible to make reactors earthquake-proof? What is the best way to ensure that spent fuel remains safe? What is the optimal design for coolant systems? Can reactors be made "inherently safe"?
Sometimes these discussions make it sound as though the reactors operate all by themselves -- both when they run smoothly or during an accident. But that is to omit the human element. Nuclear reactors are operated by fallible human beings, and at least two meltdowns have been caused by poor human decisions: the 1961 meltdown of an experimental military reactor in Idaho, which killed three operators when one of them withdrew a control rod six times as far as he was supposed to (carrying out a high-tech murder-suicide over a love triangle, according to some accounts), and the Chernobyl accident, which was caused by an ill-conceived experiment conducted outside approved protocols.
So, if nuclear safety is a matter of human behavior as well as sound technical infrastructure, we should look to the social sciences in addition to engineering to improve reactor safety. After all, the machines don't run themselves. The social sciences have five lessons for us here:
The blind spot. In what we might call the frog-in-boiling-water syndrome, human cognition is such that, in the absence of a disaster, individuals often filter out accumulating indications of safety problems that look like obvious red flags in retrospect -- just as frogs do not jump out of a pot of water on a stove as long as the temperature goes up slowly. Diane Vaughan's award-winning book on the Challenger disaster demonstrates a clear pattern in earlier space shuttle launches of O-ring performance degrading in proportion to declining launch temperatures -- the problem that would ultimately kill Challenger's ill-fated crew. Some shuttle engineers had become concerned about this, but the organizational complex responsible for the space shuttle could not bring this problem into full cognitive focus as long as the missions were successful. Operational success created a blinding glow that made this safety issue hard to see.
The whistle-blower's dilemma. The space shuttle program provides another example of human fallibility, explored in William Langewische's account of the Columbia space shuttle accident: Large, technical organizations tend to be unfriendly to employees who harp on safety issues. The NASA engineers who warned senior management -- correctly, as it turned out -- that the Columbia shuttle was endangered by the foam it lost on takeoff were treated as pests. (The same is true of Roger Boisjoly, the Morton Thiokol engineer who was ostracized and punished for having warned correctly that the Challenger shuttle was likely to explode if launched at low temperature.) Large technical organizations prioritize meeting deadlines and fulfilling production targets, and their internal reward structures tend to reflect these priorities. This is especially true if the organizations operate in a market environment where revenue streams are at stake. In such organizations, bonuses tend not to go to those who cause the organization to miss targets and deadlines or spend extra money to prevent accidents that may seem hypothetical. It is not the safety engineers, after all, who become CEOs. Those with safety concerns report that they often censor themselves unless they are deeply convinced of the urgency of their cause. Indeed, there is -- sadly -- substantial literature on the various forms of mistreatment of engineers who do come forward with such concerns.
The politics of oversight. Regulatory apparatuses tend to degrade over time -- especially in political systems such as America's, which tend to facilitate the corporate capture of government functions. Thanks to the leverage afforded by campaign donations and the revolving door between public and private employment, industries have become extremely skillful at inserting their former employees, future employees, and other allies into the very regulatory agencies that oversee them. A brilliant piece of investigative journalism on the Securities and Exchange Commission in the latest issue of Rolling Stone shows how this can reduce a regulatory agency to an empty husk. Whether it's the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the Food and Drug Administration, the story is the same: Government agencies that started off as aggressive watchdogs have become absorbed over time by those over whom they have titular oversight. Americans recently saw the dire consequences of this trend in the banking meltdown of 2008.
Overwhelmed by speed and complexity. As Charles Perrow argues in his influential book Normal Accidents, which was inspired by the Three Mile Island accident, human operators function well in environments of routinized normality; but, when highly complex technical systems function in unpredicted ways -- especially if the jagged interactions between subsystems unfold very rapidly -- then the human capacity for cognitive processing is quickly overwhelmed. In other words, if a reactor is veering toward an accident caused by the failure of a single system in a way that operators have been trained to handle, then they are likely to retain control. But, if the accident-in-the-making involves unforeseen combinations of failures unfolding quickly and requires improvised responses rather than routinized ones, the outcome is far less hopeful.
The wild card. Finally, human nature being what it is, there are always the wild cards: people who kill romantic rivals via nuclear meltdown, freelance experimenters, terrorists, operators who should never have made it through personnel screening, operators who are drunk on the job, operators whose performance has declined through laziness, depression, boredom, or any host of reasons.
Many of these factors came together to produce the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. As Gregory Button demonstrates in his book, Disaster Culture, the US Minerals Management Service had slackened its oversight of offshore drilling as many former regulators went on to work for the oil industry; in the absence of a major blowout, incipient safety problems remained unseen; those who did warn against cutting corners were marginalized; and the accident unfolded with such speed and ferocity that those aboard the rig were quickly overwhelmed.
The bottom line: Nuclear safety is threatened by human as well as technical malfunctions, and the risk of disaster can only be attenuated through attention to the principles of social engineering as well as nuclear engineering. While human behavior can always overflow the bounds of our plans for its containment, there are measures that can at least lower the risk of a nuclear disaster caused by human factors: First, the nuclear industry needs to do more to both protect and reward whistle-blowers; and, second, the industry needs regulators with a genuine desire to exercise oversight -- rather than people hoping to increase their income by later going to work for the very companies that they were regulating. Unfortunately, this goes against the ethos of the contemporary United States, where the trend-lines are going in the wrong direction.

Gov't officials' role in manipulating nuclear symposiums confirmed

Gov't officials' role in manipulating nuclear symposiums confirmed
The symposium on a "pluthermal" project at the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant is held in Omaezaki, Shizuoka Prefecture, on Aug. 26, 2007. (Mainichi)
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Central government officials were involved in attempts to manipulate how public opinion on nuclear power is presented at government-sponsored symposiums, a third-party panel investigating the matter said Tuesday.
According to an interim report submitted by the panel to the industry ministry the same day, officials of the government's nuclear safety agency asked utility firms to encourage people related to the utilities to attend nuclear power symposiums several years ago and to voice opinions supportive of nuclear plants.
The three "pluthermal" nuclear project symposiums were held by Kyushu Electric Power Co. in October 2005 on its Genkai power plant, Shikoku Electric Power Co. in June 2006 on its Ikata plant and Chubu Electric Power Co. in August 2007 on its Hamaoka plant.
Pluthermal power generation uses plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel, which contains plutonium extracted from spent fuel, in existing reactors and is an important pillar of Japan's nuclear program.
"It's very regrettable that the government's involvement in the pluthermal symposiums linked to the Genkai, Ikata and Hamaoka nuclear power plants was confirmed," Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda said in a statement.
Panel head Takashi Oizumi, a lawyer who once headed the Osaka High Public Prosecutors Office, said at a press conference that government officials' involvement is also suspected in five more cases related to similar events held by Kyushu Electric and Tohoku Electric Power Co., and that the panel will investigate the matter further.
The panel consisting of four legal experts aims to compile its final report by the end of September.
Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency chief Hiroyuki Fukano offered an apology for the agency officials' involvement at a press conference, saying, "I apologize to the citizens and those concerned."
"Essentially, (the agency) should have a culture in which officials act rightly and fairly, but it was not the case," he said.
The report said a Shikoku Electric official in charge of the symposium in question produced a memo saying that a nuclear safety agency official told the utility employee that the key to the symposium's success was securing enough attendees and suppressing the views of people opposed to nuclear power projects.
The panel was set up earlier this month by the industry ministry, which has the agency under its wing, to investigate allegations that the agency asked utilities to dress up public symposiums on atomic energy to make local communities appear supportive of nuclear power plants.
The allegations emerged following the revelation of a scandal in which senior officials of Kyushu Electric Power Co. tried to manipulate public opinion on its Genkai nuclear plant in its favor in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear plant accident.
State-sponsored symposiums on nuclear power have been held across the country to enable local leaders to consider the operations of nuclear power plants in their jurisdictions.
(Mainichi Japan) August 31, 2011

Kurt Vonnegut explains the different shapes that stories can take.

Japanese breakthrough will make wind power cheaper than nuclear

A surprising aerodynamic innovation in wind turbine design called the 'wind lens' could triple the output of a typical wind turbine, making it less costly than nuclear power.

Mon, Aug 29 2011 at 2:47 AM EST

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Snapshot from video

NOTE: Some major wind projects like the proposed TWE Carbon Valley project in Wyoming are already pricing in significantly lower than coal power -- $80 per MWh for wind versus $90 per MWh for coal -- and that is without government subsidies using today's wind turbine technology. 

 

The International Clean Energy Analysis (ICEA) gateway estimates that the U.S. possesses 2.2 million km2 of high wind potential (Class 3-7 winds) — about 850,000 square miles of land that could yield high levels of wind energy. This makes the U.S. something of a Saudi Arabia for wind energy, ranked third in the world for total wind energy potential.

 

Let's say we developed just 20 percent of those wind resources — 170,000 square miles (440,000 km2) or an area roughly 1/4 the size of Alaska — we could produce a whopping 8.7 billion megawatt hours of electricity each year (based on a theoretical conversion of six 1.5 MW turbines per km2 and an average output of 25 percent. (1.5 MW x 365 days x 24 hrs x 25% = 3,285 MWh's).

 

The United States uses about 26.6 billion MWh's, so at the above rate we could satisfy a full one-third of our total annual energy needs. (Of course, this assumes the concurrent deployment of a nationwide Smart Grid that could store and disburse the variable sources of wind power as needed using a variety of technologies — gas or coal peaking, utility scale storage via batteries or fly-wheels, etc).

 

Now what if a breakthrough came along that potentially tripled the energy output of those turbines? You see where I'm going. We could in theory supply the TOTAL annual energy needs of the U.S. simply by exploiting 20 percent of our available wind resources.

 

Well, such a breakthrough has been made, and it's called the "wind lens." 

 

 

Imagine: no more dirty coal power, no more mining deaths, no more nuclear disasters, no more polluted aquifers as a result of fracking. Our entire society powered by the quiet "woosh" of a wind turbine. Kyushu University's wind lens turbine is one example of the many innovations happening right now that could in the near future make this utopian vision a reality.

 

Yes, it's a heck of a lot of wind turbines (about 2,640,000) but the U.S. with its endless miles of prairie and agricultural land is one of the few nations that could actually deploy such a network of wind turbines without disrupting the current productivity of the land (Russia and China also come to mind). It would also be a win-win for states in the highest wind area — the Midwest — which has been hard hit by the recession. And think of the millions upon millions of jobs that would be created building a 21st century energy distribution system free of the shackles of ever-diminishing fossil fuel supplies. 

 

It's also important to point out that growth in wind power capacity is perfectly symbiotic with projected growth in electric vehicles. EV battery packs can soak up wind power produced during the night, helping to equalize the curve of daytime energy demand. So the controversial investment currently being entertained by President Obama to pipe oil down from the Canadian Tar Sands would — in my utopian vision — be a moot point.

 

It is indeed a lofty vision, but the technology we need is now in our reach. And think of the benefits of having our power production fed by a resource that is both free and unlimited. One downside often cited by advocates of coal and gas power is that wind turbines require a lot more maintenence than a typical coal or gas power plant. But in a lagging economy this might just be wind power's biggest upside — it will create lots and lots of permanent jobs, sparking a new cycle of economic growth in America.

 

Editor's note: Want more info? Karl breaks down the math in his next post.

Fourteen fault lines found near Japanese nuclear plants

Fourteen fault lines found near Japanese nuclear plants
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The Yomiuri Shimbun
Published: Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2011 - 1:00 am

TOKYO -- There are 14 potentially active fault lines in areas near the crisis-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and other nuclear-related facilities, the Japanese government has announced.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency announced the results of research undertaken by power utilities following the Great East Japan Earthquake.

The 14 faults discovered to be potentially active were previously considered unlikely to cause earthquakes.

According to the research, a magnitude-7.6 earthquake could occur on the potentially active Hatakawa fault line in Fukushima Prefecture, the largest magnitude earthquake estimated.

The agency said the intensity of any quakes from the fault lines would not exceed the level the facilities were designed to withstand. It also said there were no problems with the facilities' quake resistance.

Five of the 14 fault lines are near Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear power plants.

The other nine are near Japan Atomic Power Co.'s Tokai No. 2 power plant and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency's Tokai reprocessing plant in Ibaraki Prefecture.

Special report Kazakhstan’s nuclear legacy offers lessons for Fukushima

Special report Kazakhstan’s nuclear legacy offers lessons for Fukushima

Matilda Lee

30th August, 2011



The Semipalatinsk region suffered under four decades of Soviet nuclear testing. Now, the country wants to become an international research hub for the effects of radiation on future generations. Matilda Lee reports from Kazakhstan

Ground zero is an hour and a half drive away from the Kazakh National Nuclear Centre (NNC) along a dusty road in the seemingly endless steppe. The Ecologist is in the Semipalatinsk (renamed Semey in 1991) region of eastern Kazakhstan to observe one of the world's nuclear hotspots: the epicenter of the Soviet Union's previous - and highly controversial - nuclear testing programme.

The natural beauty of the reeds and rushes blowing in the breeze and the sun reflecting off the water belies the truth of this spot: the ‘lake' is actually a crater created from the explosions and the ground beneath is highly radioactive, and indeed, dangerous.

Our military escort carries a Geiger counter, first measuring 0.09 micro Sieverts per hour along the drive, then shooting up to 3.6 micro Sieverts per hour.

My mind vacillates between extreme fear and confidence in what I have been told: being at the epicentre for 10 minutes will give you a dose of radiation the same as that of taking a transatlantic flight. Facemasks and feet covers offer protection from inhaling or gathering the radioactive dust. We hastily make our way back. The experience is not one to be repeated, but will always be remembered.

Others weren't so lucky.

Matysh Iskakove, 78, remembers seeing a huge ball ‘the size of a yurt' towering in the sky. There was a big flash, then silence. The smell of singed hair, she said, never disappeared. ‘It came back every time it rained'. After witnessing a third atmospheric nuclear explosion, Matysh lost her sight forever. ‘I was curious. I wasn't alone. Many were left disabled'. It was 1953.

The Semey state institution for the care of the elderly and invalid is home to a generation blighted by radiation, the victims of four decades of nuclear tests, one of the worst experiments man has ever conducted on fellow man.

During the Ecologist's visit, she and 7 other residents sit in a semi circle in a sparsely decorated room and give first hand accounts of a bygone era. The Polygon - Russian for ‘testing place' - an area 8,500 square kilometers in the steppe to the west and south of Semipalatinsk, was the home of the Soviet Union's nuclear research and experiments. In surreal government documents, the area was described as ‘uninhabited'.

One and a half million people were affected from the 456 tests which ran from 1949 to 1989. They were given little warning and hardly any information on the real dangers of radiation. Many children would be awed by the sight of the famous ‘mushroom clouds' explosions, and 116 were performed at an average of 4 per week in an area the size of Sussex.

Along with residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Chernobyl, those in Semipalatinsk have the ignominious distinction of being one of four world hot spots poisoned by excessive ionizing radiation.

Kazakh doctors under Soviet rule were forbidden to pinpoint radiation as a cause of disease. Many were told the illnesses they suffered were ‘their fault'. Matysh is one of the few who received compensation.

Nina Kolennikova, 83, a nurse, walked outside barefoot during a nuclear test explosion in 1954. She felt a warm wave of air and saw the smoke in the sky. People around her, she says, were, crying ‘blood tears'. Since then she has suffered from pain in the legs and a weak immune system from a low white blood cell count. ‘No one ever asked how we felt, we were told to be quiet and get back to work,' she says.

Since independence in 1991, Kazakhstan has worked to distance itself from its nuclear legacy. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the closing of the Semipalatinsk test site, and President Nursultan Nazerbayev rid the country of its arsenal of 1,410 nuclear warheads in 1995.



There is no way of erasing Semipalatinsk's devastating history, but researchers there are trying to carve out its future as an international hub for radiation research, so that the world may know whether, and how, radiation impacts on generations to come.

Future imperfect?

Perhaps the most sinister aspect of nuclear radiation is that, especially for the residents of Semey, the extent to which it can be traced to specific illnesses is still inconclusive.

Dr. Marat Sandybayev, Director of the Semey Oncology Center, where over 4,000 cancer patients receive treatment, says he believes the link between radiation and genetic diseases is usually discovered in the third generation. ‘Small doses of radionuclides went into the soil and the air blew them, so it can be found in various places and since the half life of some of them is 1,000 years, yes, we will continue to see effects,' he says.

Already, the thyroid cancer rate in the east and north of Kazakhstan is twice as high as in the rest of the country, and other cancers such as breast, have higher rates. With a $100 million government grant to build a radiation treatment centre he hopes increased screening will lead to greater survival rates and awareness of the oncological diseases it can cause.

The statistics on the rate of children with abnormalities is unclear. Akmaral Musakhanova, head of clinical research at the Medical University says in some areas the rate is double the national average, but it is impossible to link cases of Down's Syndrome and hydroencephalus, or ‘water on the brain', back to radiation.

The questions linger, but the results of a new study should be revealing. Dr. Kazbek Abasalikov, director of the Scientific Research Institute for Radiation Medicine and Ecology, created in 1992 out of the ashes of the classified Soviet institute that secretly observed the population, is behind groundbreaking studies on the effects of radiation.

They have developed a State Scientific Automated Medical Register to study those exposed to ionizing radiation and the hereditary effects on a DNA level. A detailed database is tracking 800 families that suffered directly from radiation - where they were born, where they were at the moment of radiation to what they are now doing. The study now includes a 3rd generation, the grandchildren of survivors, who are being closely monitored.

Dr. Abasalikov says the problem of the effect of minor dosages of radiation is increasing, as sources of radiation increase. ‘Oil and gas will not last forever, at some point we will need nuclear, but each nuclear power plant means a minor dosage of radiation and if an accident happens, there will be big fallout. We will have all the data. ‘

‘In every organism, there is a disposition to disease. There are two opinions: one that minor radiation is harmful and a cause of disease. The other is the minor radiation is not harmful. The truth is somewhere in-between,' he says.

They are studying DNA to search for a threshold dose to cause cancer. He says they aim to have results in a few years.

‘Kazakhstan is in an unfortunate and unique situation in that the population was affected throughout many years. There have been generations born since the tests stopped. The reason why researchers come here is that they know radiation diseases will be topical problem in the 21st and 22nd centuries. There is an information vacuum in Western nations, they don't know which institutes work on this.'

They are advising researchers from Japan over Fukushima. ‘Fukushima shoes how treacherous radiation can be,' he says.

Nuclear decisions

Not everyone agrees that there is a link between diseases such as cancer in the Semey region, and nuclear radiation.

In the National Nuclear Centre, Director of the Institute of Radiation Safety and Ecology, Sergey Lukashenko, warns Kazakhs may suffer from a ‘psychology of victimhood'. He claims there is no link between the region's cancer rates and radiation and defiantly boasts about spending unlimited time at Ground Zero and swimming numerous times in Chagan, the ‘Atomic Lake'.

He wants the Polygon testing area to be reopened and says a team of radio ecologists have performed extension research, claiming to have identified and demarcated the various levels of contamination throughout the 8,500 square kilometer area.

In a study submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an area of 3,000 square kilometres in the northern area is ready for ‘normal use'. In 2010, the IAEA assembled an international team to review the report and found that the report is ‘scientifically sound and fundamentally correct'.

According to Dr. Lukashenko the area still contaminated can be remediated by removing the top 5 centimetres of soil removal.

Uranium fuel bank

Back in Astana, the country's capital since 1997, replete with futuristic skyscrapers designed by Norman Foster, the profits from gas and oil exploitation on the Caspian Sea are easy to view. Kazakhstan also holds over 20 per cent of the world's natural uranium reserves and production has doubled since 2009 to 18,000 tonnes.

Roman Vassilenko, Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman, says ‘God had it that Kazakhstan suffered both the horrible consequence and the rewards of nuclear' and aims to cement Kazakhstan's role in ‘peaceful' nuclear by housing the IAEA's international uranium fuel bank, to allow countries to access enriched nuclear fuel without possessing enrichment technology. The fuel bank has been proposed as a way to curb nuclear weapons proliferation.

The country's own nuclear power generation has been on hold for the past 20 years, with the only nuclear power plant on the Caspian having been closed. As for new nuclear build, Mazhit Turmagambetov, vice minister of Environmental Protection says as an engineer he is not opposed to it but, ‘taking into consideration the events in Japan, we question whether we would have the safety measures sufficient.'

Kazakhstan is the 9th largest country in the world, larger than Western Europe, with a population of only 19 million. The flat, windy steppes would be an ideal landscape for wind power, yet there are very few incentives to develop the industry.

Vadim Ni, director of the Law & Environment Eurasia Partnership, says that in September the Kazakh Senate is set to pass an Emissions Trading Scheme legislation which, ‘should create incentives for renewable energy.' Yet he is afraid the system won't work. ‘There is no incentive for small projects in Kazakhstan. Everything here is in big numbers.'

Vice Minister Turmagambetov believes ‘it is too early to say‘whether the former nuclear site could return to use for the people. A government commission including various ministries, NGOs and other stakeholders will put together a comprehensive report before a final decision on the future of the Polygon is made.

However, he said, there is no timeline for the report or the decisions. ‘The public here has a very negative attitude to returning the land to use. There is a lot of radio phobia. So many people have died,' he says.

Further information:

Scientific Research Institute for Radiation Medicine and Ecology

Website: www.rirme.kz

Why the Fukushima disaster is worse than Chernobyl

this is a very well written article.

Why the Fukushima disaster is worse than Chernobyl

Japan has been slow to admit the scale of the meltdown. But now the truth is coming out. David McNeill reports from Soma City

Monday, 29 August 2011
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Some scientists say Fukushima is worse than the 1986 Chernobyl accident, with which it shares a maximum level-7 rating on the sliding scale of nuclear disasters.
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Yoshio Ichida is recalling the worst day of his 53 years: 11 March, when the sea swallowed up his home and killed his friends. The Fukushima fisherman was in the bath when the huge quake hit and barely made it to the open sea in his boat in the 40 minutes before the 15-metre tsunami that followed. When he got back to port, his neighbourhood and nearly everything else was gone. "Nobody can remember anything like this," he says.

Now living in a refugee centre in the ruined coastal city of Soma, Mr Ichida has mourned the 100 local fishermen killed in the disaster and is trying to rebuild his life with his colleagues. Every morning, they arrive at the ruined fisheries co-operative building in Soma port and prepare for work. Then they stare out at the irradiated sea, and wait. "Some day we know we'll be allowed to fish again. We all want to believe that."

This nation has recovered from worse natural – and manmade – catastrophes. But it is the triple meltdown and its aftermath at the Fukushima nuclear power plant 40km down the coast from Soma that has elevated Japan into unknown, and unknowable, terrain. Across the northeast, millions of people are living with its consequences and searching for a consensus on a safe radiation level that does not exist. Experts give bewilderingly different assessments of its dangers.
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Some scientists say Fukushima is worse than the 1986 Chernobyl accident, with which it shares a maximum level-7 rating on the sliding scale of nuclear disasters. One of the most prominent of them is Dr Helen Caldicott, an Australian physician and long time anti-nuclear activist who warns of "horrors to come" in Fukushima.

Chris Busby, a professor at the University of Ulster known for his alarmist views, generated controversy during a Japan visit last month when he said the disaster would result in more than 1 million deaths. "Fukushima is still boiling its radionuclides all over Japan," he said. "Chernobyl went up in one go. So Fukushima is worse."

On the other side of the nuclear fence are the industry friendly scientists who insist that the crisis is under control and radiation levels are mostly safe. "I believe the government and Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco, the plant's operator] are doing their best," said Naoto Sekimura, vice-dean of the Graduate School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo. Mr Sekimura initially advised residents near the plant that a radioactive disaster was "unlikely" and that they should stay "calm", an assessment he has since had to reverse.

Slowly, steadily, and often well behind the curve, the government has worsened its prognosis of the disaster. Last Friday, scientists affiliated with the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the plant had released 15,000 terabecquerels of cancer-causing Cesium, equivalent to about 168 times the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the event that ushered in the nuclear age. (Professor Busby says the release is at least 72,000 times worse than Hiroshima).

Caught in a blizzard of often conflicting information, many Japanese instinctively grope for the beacons they know. Mr Ichida and his colleagues say they no longer trust the nuclear industry or the officials who assured them the Fukushima plant was safe. But they have faith in government radiation testing and believe they will soon be allowed back to sea.

That's a mistake, say sceptics, who note a consistent pattern of official lying, foot-dragging and concealment. Last week, officials finally admitted something long argued by its critics: that thousands of people with homes near the crippled nuclear plant may not be able to return for a generation or more. "We can't rule out the possibility that there will be some areas where it will be hard for residents to return to their homes for a long time," said Yukio Edano, the government's top government spokesman. "We are very sorry."

Last Friday, hundreds of former residents from Futaba and Okuma, the towns nearest the plant, were allowed to visit their homes – perhaps for the last time – to pick up belongings. Wearing masks and radiation suits, they drove through the 20km contaminated zone around the plant, where hundreds of animals have died and rotted in the sun, to find kitchens and living rooms partly reclaimed by nature. "It's hard to believe we ever lived here," one former resident told NHK.

Several other areas northwest of the plant have become atomic ghost towns after being ordered to evacuate – too late, say many residents, who believe they absorbed dangerous quantities of radiation in the weeks after the accident. "We've no idea when we can come back," says Katsuzo Shoji, who farmed rice and cabbages and kept a small herd of cattle near Iitate, a picturesque village about 40km from the plant.

Although it is outside the exclusion zone, the village's mountainous topography meant radiation, carried by wind and rain, lingered, poisoning crops, water and school playgrounds.

The young, the wealthy, mothers and pregnant women left for Tokyo or elsewhere. Most of the remaining 6000 people have since evacuated, after the government accepted that safe radiation limits had been exceeded.

Mr Shoji, 75, went from shock to rage, then despair when the government told him he would have to destroy his vegetables, kill his six cows and move with his wife Fumi, 73, to an apartment in Koriyama, about 20km away. "We've heard five, maybe 10 years but some say that's far too optimistic," he says, crying. "Maybe I'll be able to come home to die." He was given initial compensation of one million yen (£7,900 / $ 12,860.96 ) by Tepco, topped up with 350,000 yen from the government.

It is the fate of people outside the evacuation zones, however, that causes the most bitter controversy. Parents in Fukushima City, 63km from the plant, have banded together to demand that the government do more to protect about 100,000 children. Schools have banned soccer and other outdoor sports. Windows are kept closed. "We've just been left to fend for ourselves," says Machiko Sato, a grandmother who lives in the city. "It makes me so angry."

Many parents have already sent their children to live with relatives or friends hundreds of kilometres away. Some want the government to evacuate the entire two million population of Fukushima Prefecture. "They're demanding the right to be able to evacuate," says anti-nuclear activist Aileen Mioko Smith, who works with the parents. "In other words, if they evacuate they want the government to support them."

So far, at least, the authorities say that is not necessary. The official line is that the accident at the plant is winding down and radiation levels outside of the exclusion zone and designated "hot spots" are safe.

But many experts warn that the crisis is just beginning. Professor Tim Mousseau, a biological scientist who has spent more than a decade researching the genetic impact of radiation around Chernobyl, says he worries that many people in Fukushima are "burying their heads in the sand." His Chernobyl research concluded that biodiversity and the numbers of insects and spiders had shrunk inside the irradiated zone, and the bird population showed evidence of genetic defects, including smaller brain sizes.

"The truth is that we don't have sufficient data to provide accurate information on the long-term impact," he says. "What we can say, though, is that there are very likely to be very significant long-term health impact from prolonged exposure."

In Soma, Mr Ichida says all the talk about radiation is confusing. "All we want to do is get back to work. There are many different ways to die, and having nothing to do is one of them."

Economic cost
Fukushima: Japan has estimated it will cost as much as £188 / $ 306.06 bn to rebuild following the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis.
Chernobyl There are a number of estimates of the economic impact, but thetotal cost is thought to be about £144 / $ 234.43 bn.

Safety
Fukushima: workers are allowed to operate in the crippled plant up to a dose of 250mSv (millisieverts).
Chernobyl: People exposed to 350mSv were relocated. In most countries the maximum annual dosage for a worker is 20mSv. The allowed dose for someone living close to a nuclear plant is 1mSv a year.

Death toll
Fukushima: Two workers died inside the plant. Some scientists predict that one million lives will be lost to cancer.
Chernobyl: It is difficult to say how many people died on the day of the disaster because of state security, but Greenpeace estimates that 200,000 have died from radiation-linked cancers in the 25 years since the accident.

Exclusion zone
Fukushima: Tokyo initially ordered a 20km radius exclusion zone around the plant
Chernobyl: The initial radius of the Chernobyl zone was set at 30km – 25 years later it is still largely in place.

Compensation
Fukushima: Tepco's share price has collapsed since the disaster largely because of the amount it will need to pay out, about £10,000 / $ 16,279.70 a person
Chernobyl: Not a lot. It has been reported that Armenian victims of the disaster were offered about £6 / $ 9.77 each in 1986

Aid
Fukushima: The UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported bilateral aid worth $95m
Chernobyl: 12 years after the disaster, the then Ukrainian president, Leonid Kuchma, complained that his country was still waiting for international help.