Communicating Disaster: How Did Government Scientists, and the Media Perform in the Crisis?

摘要

For most of Japan and the rest of the world, the first clear sign of trouble at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was a breaking news video aired the day after the tsunami in March 2011. Captured live by Fukushima Central Television (FCT) and broadcast four minutes later, the video showed a thick white cloud emerging over the plant-what turned out to be the explosion of the Unit 1 reactor (above). At the time, however, the only facts that were known came across in the newsreader's urgent voiceover. It looked like smoke, she said, but it might be water vapor. It appeared to be drifting north, over the ocean. Yuji Terashima, the FCT managing director responsible for airing that footage, described those desperate days for attendees of the Fukushima and the Ocean conference in Tokyo in November 2012. Terashima was part of a panel of Japanese and American journalists who examined efforts to communicate during and after the disaster.