The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident:
Entering into Resilience Faced
with an Extreme Situation
Franck Guarnieri
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.
Keywords Fukushima Daiichi Á Nuclear accident Á Resilience Á Entry into
resilience Á Extreme situation
1 Introduction
Unfortunately, dramatic nuclear accidents are a source of information, knowledge
and learning for researchers in the safety studies. As their career progresses,
members of the community learn more: safety is driven by accidents, catastrophes
and disasters of all kinds. While this is obviously a tragedy, it is clear that we do not
really know what else to do.
The accident at Three Mile Island on March 28, 1979 taught us that inappropriate actions can lead to core fusion, that serious accidents necessarily involve all
stakeholders in civil society, that the defenses of a nuclear installation must be
‘deep’, and that each accident contains in its genesis ‘precursor’ scenarios that, if
they can be identified, may help to avoid the situation becoming worse [1].
The Chernobyl accident on April 26, 1986, taught us that ‘global’ public opinion
about nuclear safety cannot be ignored [2]. In particular, it showed us that operaF. Guarnieri (&)
Centre for Research on Risks and Crises (CRC), MINES ParisTech - PSL Research
University, Sophia Antipolis, France
e-mail: franck.guarnieri@mines-paristech.fr
© The Author(s) 2017
J. Ahn et al. (eds.), Resilience: A New Paradigm of Nuclear Safety,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58768-4_1
1
Entering into Resilience Faced
with an Extreme Situation
Franck Guarnieri
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.
Keywords Fukushima Daiichi Á Nuclear accident Á Resilience Á Entry into
resilience Á Extreme situation
1 Introduction
Unfortunately, dramatic nuclear accidents are a source of information, knowledge
and learning for researchers in the safety studies. As their career progresses,
members of the community learn more: safety is driven by accidents, catastrophes
and disasters of all kinds. While this is obviously a tragedy, it is clear that we do not
really know what else to do.
The accident at Three Mile Island on March 28, 1979 taught us that inappropriate actions can lead to core fusion, that serious accidents necessarily involve all
stakeholders in civil society, that the defenses of a nuclear installation must be
‘deep’, and that each accident contains in its genesis ‘precursor’ scenarios that, if
they can be identified, may help to avoid the situation becoming worse [1].
The Chernobyl accident on April 26, 1986, taught us that ‘global’ public opinion
about nuclear safety cannot be ignored [2]. In particular, it showed us that operaF. Guarnieri (&)
Centre for Research on Risks and Crises (CRC), MINES ParisTech - PSL Research
University, Sophia Antipolis, France
e-mail: franck.guarnieri@mines-paristech.fr
© The Author(s) 2017
J. Ahn et al. (eds.), Resilience: A New Paradigm of Nuclear Safety,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58768-4_1
1