Fukushima Dai-ichi at 5, Chernobyl #4 at 30: A comparison of cultural, geographical and political settings in risk and crisis management
Cultural profiles play a crucial and often underestimated role in the practice of risk and crisis management. The lecture compares the different cultural, geographical and political settings that shaped the evolution of exclusion zones around the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in 2011 and the number 4 plant at Chernobyl in 1986.
The analysis focuses on:
(1) the initial establishment of these zones, (2) their adjustment and management subsequent to the initial power plant accidents and emergency periods, and (3) current policies that allow returnees back into the radiation zones. Based on recent fieldwork inside both exclusion zones this talk will examine what lessons might be applied to the Fukushima zone after five years in light of Chernobyl’s 30th anniversary in 2016.
David W. Edgington is professor of human geography at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada. He teaches courses on the geography of Japan, China and Asia, and economic geography. His research focuses on the geography of Japan, and recent projects have involved a study of the recovery of local communities after the `triple disaster’ of March 2011 in the Tohoku region of Japan following a major earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant accident. Among his publications are “Reconstructing Kobe: The Geography of Crisis and Opportunity”, UBC Press, 2010 (translated into Japanese in 2014); and D.W. Edgington (2016) `How Safe is Safe Enough? The Politics of Decontamination in Fukushima’, in M. Yamakawa and D. Yamamoto (Eds.) "Unraveling the Fukushima Disaster", Routledge.Zeit & Ort
25.04.2017 | 16:00 - 18:00
Room 0.1063 (Holzlaube)
Freie Universität Berlin
Fabeckstr. 23-25
14195 Berlin