The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident: Entering into Resilience Faced with an Extreme Situation

Abstract

A transdisciplinary concept, resilience has emerged from monodisciplinary approaches and finds its foundations in various domains such as materials science, ecology, psychology, sociology, ethology, medicine, etc. Although the concept has been a work in progress in the scientific community for several decades, it was only adopted by the safety studies community in the 2000s. The Fukushima Daiichi accident has accelerated its popularity and led to an abundance of theoretical and methodological references, ideas and concepts, processes and approaches that are more-or-less operational.

Resilient design in nuclear energy: Critical lessons from a cross-disciplinary analysis of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear accident

“…In particular, most studies have focused on identifying root causes and accident prevention, with limited research exploring the specific actions or factors that had the most significant impact on the long-term environmental and health consequences. At the same time, while some attempts have been made to extract resilience lessons following the accident, these have either been limited to the theoretical foundations, 34 or have been focused on radiological resilience through radiation monitoring and mapping. 35 In addition, there have been limited discussion on how we can transfer resilience lessons from other natural and anthropogenic disasters 36 , 37 into the nuclear context.…”

Seismic assessment of small modular reactors: NuScale case study for the 8.8 Mw earthquake in Chile

“…This sequence of events initiated the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster with eventual core meltdown of the three cores due to insufficient cooling provided before the water flood by the emergency Diesel generators. Fukushima's disaster outcomes have led to intensive research and engineering efforts to include beyond design-basis accidents not considered in original constructions or projects [3][4][5][6][7]. Several key issues have been also identified in both the actual safety culture in the nuclear industry [8][9][10] and limitations to the actual severe accidents management strategies [11][12][13].…”