Planning for Disaster—Lessons from the 2011 Tohoku Disaster

In March 2011 a series of disasters took place in Tohoku, Japan. Beginning with a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast, the shifting earth triggered a massive tsunami that caused a series of errors and accidents that ultimately resulted in the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. Around 16,000 people were killed, more than 120 thousand homes were destroyed, and many more were left without basic needs, from food to shelter. The entire country was affected as nuclear power plants were shut down across the country. While the centre of Tokyo was spared, parts of the Metropolitan Area of Tokyo, some 370 km from the epicentre, resorted to rolling blackouts to manage an energy shortage. Each of these disasters was made worse by a long-term problem of an aging and shrinking population, and complicated an already difficult effort to rebuild. Planning at any scale assumes that it matters where and how things are built. In the case of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, short-term financial gains and a lack of local political power took precedence when searching for a site. In the aftermath of the disaster the need for better communication and open-ended planning can be argued for. However, the question of how to plan for uncertainty remains less easy to resolve. How can a country make reasonable plans to rebuild when its population, and its needs, are expected to change drastically in the next decades? This paper proposes that modern disasters are inter-connected and complex, and require a holistic and open-ended approach, whether it is before or after the worst happens. In the case of planning for the safety of nuclear energy production the paper also proposes that the main lesson of the Tohoku disaster is that the worst-case scenario must be used, that the scope of such a scenario should extend beyond the technical needs of producing energy, and that it should be revisited continuously with reference to changing circumstances in the nation and the world.