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A medical doctor led Fukushima's inquiry
Full authority
Kurokawa was given full authority to go after anybody in any way, and they held a ton of meetings. No one on the committee could have any institutional connection to the regulator or the power company.
Three mandates
He set three mandates for himself. Human safety came first, and he did not want the investigation to become a battle about nuclear energy. It also had to result in recommendations. And he knew the weight of the moment from a global perspective, because of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
The report
The report came out seven months later, and the committee chose to publish it in English first because they were worried about global transparency and how they were perceived. Its first sentence declared that the accident at the power plant could not be regarded as a natural disaster, that it was profoundly man-made, and that it could have and should have been prevented.
Why did Three Mile Island shape nuclear oversight?
The 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania led President Carter to appoint a commission chaired by Dartmouth president John Kemeny. The commission concluded that the accident had roots in people and institutions as much as in equipment. Its findings led to the creation of the industry-run Institute of Nuclear Power Operations and to changes at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011 are the only accidents rated at the top of the seven-level International Nuclear Event Scale.
Why would a doctor lead a nuclear inquiry?
Kiyoshi Kurokawa, the chair, was a physician and professor of medicine who had served as president of the Science Council of Japan. A commission's central questions in cases like this concern institutions, oversight, and decision-making as much as reactor physics. The Kemeny Commission after Three Mile Island was likewise chaired by a college president, John Kemeny of Dartmouth, rather than a nuclear engineer.
How does an inquiry stay independent?
Independence usually rests on a few structural features: statutory power to summon witnesses and documents, a budget and staff separate from the bodies under review, and members without ties to them. Parliamentary and congressional commissions often publish their findings in full so the public can check the conclusions. The US 9/11 Commission, created by Congress in 2002, had ten members, five from each party.
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