Radioactive Governance: The Politics of Expertise after Fukushima

This dissertation focuses on Japanese public and state responses to the release of radioactive contamination after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. I argue that the Fukushima nuclear disaster has led to the emergence of new forms of expertise in governing radioactive risks. These include techniques of governance that attempt to normalize peoples relationships with nuclear matter as an everyday concern. They also include decentralized strategies that empower victims of the disaster by providing access to technoscientifc practices of radiation monitoring and delegating radiation protection from the state to the citizens. My findings uncover a major shift in how societies have formerly organized responses to radioactive risks. In the aftermath of nuclear accidents, scholars have criticized central authoritarian decisions, in which state management of radioactive hazards was associated with politics of secrecy, victimhood, or public knowledge deficit. At stake in Fukushima is an increased normalization of citizens relationship with residual radioactivity, which is transformed into an everyday concern, rather than being represented as something exceptional. This is not only done by state experts, but equally via the increased activity of citizen scientists that collectively monitor residual radioactivity. My research is a significant departure from traditional sociocultural works that predominantly focus on micro-scale studies, such as how prior sociocultural factors influence a group understanding of radioactive risks. By highlighting major shifts in the structure of expertise and the regulation of life amidst toxic exposure, my research highlights how the management of contamination risks is evolving in an era where the impacts of modernization represent permanent marks on the planet

Investigation of Spatial and Temporal Aspects of Airborne Gamma Spectrometry: Final Report

A study has been conducted which demonstrates the reproducibility of Airborne Gamma-ray Spectrometry (AGS) and the effects of changes in survey parameters, particularly line spacing. This has involved analysis of new data collected from estuarine salt marsh and upland areas in West Cumbria and SW Scotland during three phases of field work, in which over 150000 spectra were recorded with a 16 litre NaI(Tl) detector. The shapes and inventories of radiometric features have been examined. It has been shown that features with dimensions that are large relative to the survey line spacing are very well reproduced with all line spacings, whereas smaller features show more variability. The AGS technique has been applied to measuring changes in the radiation environment over a range of time scales from a few days to several years using data collected during this and previous surveys of the area. Changes due to sedimentation and erosion of salt marshes, and hydrological transportation of upland activity have been observed

Haunted/Haunting Digital Archives of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: Weaving Ghost Stories around the Ongoing Disaster in the Past, Present and Future

This thesis examines the digital archives of the Fukushima nuclear disaster that took place on 11 March, 2011. I propose key thesis questions regarding the roles of the digital archive in articulating the memory and knowledge about the disaster, in relation to its capacity of storytelling. I specifically focus on the production of “ghost stories,” the stories concerning exclusions and invisibilities produced in the digital archive as a flexible, transformative vehicle of ephemeral data. This research draws on interdisciplinary discussions in the fields of media studies, sociology and archival studies, as well as the contributions of feminism and queer theory to delineating the struggles to engage with lost histories and submerged narratives. My contribution is both theoretical and methodological, in developing hauntology as a way of intervening to temporal and narrative modalities of the practices of digital archiving. In formulating hauntological methods, I attend to the creation of “haunted data” and the contingent dis/appearance of digital traces, which have allowed me to employ archival imaginaries to take into account gaps, absences and erasures as a constitutive part of archival storytelling. I also aim to demonstrate a multivalence of haunting at work in the mutual construction of the archive and the archived, with the Fukushima disaster as both haunted and haunting object of inquiry. The digital archives I analyse in the empirical chapters are: two archival repositories on the website of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) that owns the damaged plant; the Japan Disasters Digital Archive (JDA); SimplyInfo.org and Nukewatch.org; Teach311.org. They are “moving” repositories that keep archival objects in motion, and I ask how they articulate and bring together the fragments of the disaster, by intervening to, and generating the intricate web of connections between the past, present and future. Throughout the thesis, I argue that the constant and contingent retelling of the Fukushima disaster in the practices of digital archiving calls attention to narrative possibilities afforded by digital technologies. This research explores how the production of the digital archive entails the conflation of fact and fiction, of multiple temporalities that register different facets of haunting, and myriad regimes of remembering and forgetting, which would shape our understandings of the ongoing disaster with no definitive beginnings and ends

Forest Radioecology in Fukushima

This is an open access book that provides holistic information on the radioactive contamination of forests. Topics are highly interdisciplinary, ranging from the dynamics of radioactive cesium in forest ecosystems to the radiation protection or the socio-economic aspects of radiation effects. It is designed to help people understand the radioactive contamination in forests and provide hints of how to cope with it and restore their livelihoods. The book is characterized by its well-balanced structure that allows the reader to understand the whole picture without going into too much scientific content. After explaining the basics of radioactive materials and radiation, the book illustrates the radioactive contamination of forests, it also describes the impacts on the forestry and life of local people and the measures taken by. Few books address the concerns about how to deal with radioactive contamination of forests and the future perspectives. In this book, people can learn all about the Fukushima nuclear accident of forests, forest products, and people with abundant reference materials. In addition, the book contains four memoirs contributed by Japanese and European researchers that graphically record what the researchers thought and how they acted in the chaos of the aftermath of the accident. In 2021 that marking the 10th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear accident and the 35th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, nuclear disasters are in the spotlight more than ever. This thought-provoking book on how to prepare for a severe nuclear accident is suitable for sharing with people all over the world as a lesson on the next nuclear accidents, now that the number of nuclear power plants is still increasing. The translation of this work was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). Intensive improvements were subsequently made by the authors throughout the text to ensure accuracy of expression and contents and to enhance the clarity