Abstract
The Spring 2011 meeting of the Main Commission of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) was scheduled for mid-April 2011 in Seoul, Korea. It goes without saying that the Fukushima accident, which had occurred just a month before, affected the agenda for this meeting. Many discussions were devoted to trying to understand the implications of the accident in terms of radiation protection, to reflect on actions which the Commission could undertake to help the ongoing situation in Fukushima, and to learn lessons from the accident vis-à-vis the ICRP system of radiological protection. This was greatly facilitated by the initiative, taken by Main Commission member Ohtsura Niwa a few days before the meeting, to organise a special session with Japanese colleagues invited to Seoul in view of the geographical proximity, and a videoconference with officials of Tokyo Electric Power Company.
The atmosphere of the meeting contrasted sharply with the relaxed ambience that usually characterises gatherings of the Main Commission members. We were all deeply concerned about the extremely complex situation that was facing the population, the professionals, and the authorities. I will never forget the arrival of the Japanese delegation to the meeting room where the special session was held. Their faces were serious and tense. One could feel the weight on their shoulders. Among them was Dr Kazuko Ohno from Kyoto College of Medical Science, the only woman in the delegation, dressed in an impressive pink kimono. With her choice of clothing, and the dignity and pride she displayed, she revealed how the accident had shaken the deepest roots of her country.
On the sidelines of the Main Commission meeting, discussions on the consequences of the accident continued during lunches generally taken together as a group, and during the evenings in small groups in local restaurants. On several evenings, Niwa, ICRP Scientific Secretary Christopher Clement, and I continued the day's discussions late into the night. Niwa, aware of my long involvement in the Belarusian territories affected by the Chernobyl accident in the context of the Ethos Project and the Core Programme in the late 1900s and the 2000s, questioned me constantly about the measures taken at the time to reduce the consequences of the accident. He was also very interested to know how the people had reacted at the time of the accident and what is the situation today in the affected territories. Despite my efforts to answer his questions, he admitted that he found it difficult to fully understand the situation. Once again, I realised the difficulty of transmitting the experience of living in a contaminated environment to radiological protection colleagues who had never been confronted with residents from such areas. Finally, I suggested to Niwa and Clement that a mission to Belarus should be organised so that they could see first-hand the living conditions in the affected areas.
Due to various constraints on all sides, the Belarus trip could not be scheduled until the end of September 2011. During the summer, there were many exchanges between the three of us. Niwa visited Fukushima Prefecture on several occasions and informed us of developments in the affected areas. He also kept us informed of the actions of the public authorities, and of the many debates that marked this delicate period following the initial phase of the emergency.
In June 2011, many members of the Commission received invitations to participate in the International Expert Symposium in Fukushima on Radiation and Health Risks, organised and supported by the Nippon Foundation and Fukushima Medical University, on 11 and 12 September, the 6-month anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami. Thirty-one international experts were invited to Fukushima City, including 16 members of ICRP, including Niwa, Clement, and I. The meeting was also attended by many Japanese experts already working in Fukushima, including Shunichi Yamashita of Nagasaki University, who had been appointed as the Fukushima Prefectural Radiation Health Management Adviser just after the accident, and who became the Vice-President of Fukushima Medical University the following summer; Toshimitsu Homma of Japan Atomic Energy Agency, who had been very involved in the management of the emergency phase of the accident; and several experts from Fukushima Medical University. Beyond the scientific and technical considerations presented and discussed during the various sessions, and the visit to the devastated Fukushima power station that followed, this symposium was a welcome opportunity to meet with many Japanese colleagues involved in managing the consequences of the accident. However, regrettably, it was not possible for Clement and I to meet residents from the most affected areas on this occasion.
Returning to Tokyo, Niwa arranged a meeting in the lobby of a hotel with Jun Ichiro Tada, a member of the non-goverment organisation (NGO) Radiation Safety Forum Japan, chaired by Shunichi Tanaka who was engaged in decontamination works in Date City. Tada introduced me to the decontamination work of individual homes that he was undertaking with the assistance of the residents. He showed me many pictures to illustrate his point, and I noted the presence of people, including youngsters, taking measurements or helping the decontamination team. Referring to my experience with Chernobyl, I underlined the importance of involving the inhabitants of the affected areas in the rehabilitation of their living conditions, and encouraged Tada to continue the efforts of his NGO in this direction. Tada told me about the administrative constraints and the difficulties he experienced cooperating with the various stakeholders whom he had to face to carry out his work. I underlined the fact that we had encountered the same obstacles in Belarus, and that this state of affairs was not specific to the Japanese situation. The Chernobyl experience in Belarus, and in Norway where the Sami people had been severely affected, had shown that dialogue among all stakeholders was the only realistic way to overcome misunderstandings and antagonisms, and to gradually encourage the involvement of the affected population in actions to improve the situation. I noted in passing that this was clearly emphasised in the Commission’s recommendations on the protection of people living in long-term contaminated areas after a nuclear accident (ICRP, 2009). This led to a discussion on how the dialogues in the villages of Belarus had been organised and conducted more than a decade ago.
In hindsight, this impromptu exchange with Tada appears to me to be the starting point of the process, which led us to organise the first ICRP dialogue meeting in Fukushima only a few weeks later. Meanwhile, Niwa, Clement, ICRP Committee 4 member Michiaki Kai, and I ended up in Minsk at the end of September 2011 to start a week-long visit to the contaminated areas of Belarus. We first met with national authorities and experts in the capital, and then went to Bragin District, adjacent to the 30-km exclusion zone around the Chernobyl plant, to meet local authorities and professionals as well as the residents with whom I had worked for 5 years in the framework of the Core Programme in the second half of the 2000s. The mission ended with a visit to the Research Institute of Radiology Research in Gomel, where we were presented with a detailed overview of the protective actions implemented in the contaminated territories.
The narrative of the residents of Bragin District on the dialogues organised by the French experts, and their involvement in the rehabilitation of their living conditions with the cooperation and support of local authorities and professionals, finally convinced my colleagues to try a similar approach in Fukushima Prefecture. Back in Japan, Niwa, with the help of Tada and Yamashita, contacted various representatives of local communities, as well as experts and professionals involved in actions to improve the radiological situation in Fukushima Prefecture, to find out if they would be interested in participating in a meeting to present their actions and to interact with other participants. Several responded positively, and gradually a programme took shape. From the outset, we thought it would be important to involve representatives from Belarus and Norway to testify about their actions in their own countries following the Chernobyl accident, as well as national and local media to ensure the transparency of the process. One important element for the success of the meeting with foreign participants and local residents was simultaneous interpretation, so two highly capable interpreters, Kanae Hirano and Kimiyo Machida, were recruited to perform this task. A key point was the title of the meeting. The term ‘dialogue’ was obvious but it was also necessary to determine its object. After several e-mail exchanges, we adopted the title ‘Dialogue on the rehabilitation of living conditions after the Fukushima accident' to make it clear that the issue at stake was the wellbeing of the inhabitants of Fukushima Prefecture, and not only their fight against radiation.
Obviously, one important point related to the financial aspects of the meeting. It was necessary to quickly find funding to support the travel expenses of some participants, and the simultaneous translation of the presentations and discussions. After we had each explored a few possible avenues, I ended up asking the organisations that had supported projects in Belarus in the past: the French Institute of Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety; the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority; the French Nuclear Safety Authority; and the Committee of Radiation Protection and Public Health of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency. All responded positively without hesitation, and it is important to underline that they continued their unfailing support for 4 years, covering all 12 of the ICRP dialogue meetings. Fukushima Prefecture, Radiation Safety Forum Japan, and Fukushima Medical University also contributed.
The first ICRP dialogue meeting took place in a meeting room in Fukushima Prefecture on 26 and 27 November 2011 in the presence of 40 participants. Among them were the mayors of the villages of Iitate and Kawauchi, representatives from Date City, the NGOs Radiation Safety Forum Japan and Greenpeace, several local health and education professionals, and experts from national organisations and universities. Foreign participants came from Belarus, Norway, and France. Chaired and moderated by ICRP, this first dialogue meeting was classically structured around presentations followed by discussions in the form of round tables. Although the exchanges took place in a rather warm atmosphere with an attentive audience, a high level of tension was perceptible among the Japanese participants. They were clearly divided between incredulity and disarray on the one hand, and hope on the other, depending on whether the complexity of the situation in Fukushima or the progress made in Chernobyl was mentioned. The testimony of the Belarusians and the Norwegians undoubtedly played a decisive role in the dynamics of the meeting, certainly not unrelated to the desire to continue exchanges beyond this first ICRP dialogue meeting, which gradually emerged during the discussions. Quite naturally, the participants agreed with the idea suggested by ICRP to prepare a final declaration, with the proposal to pursue and broaden the dialogue adopted unanimously with a few abstentions.
It turned out that the day after the first ICRP dialogue meeting, the Ministry of the Environment was organising a public hearing as part of a series of sessions on the management policy of the Fukushima accident. Clement and I made presentations of the ICRP recommendations and the Belarussian experience. The presentations were well received by the Minister and others present, and raised quite a few questions. The meeting with Minister Hosono was also an opportunity to inform him about the dialogue meeting that had been held on the preceding day, and to transmit the final declaration.
Participation in the public hearing had unexpected consequences for the continuation of the dialogue. Back in France, in early December 2011, I received a message from a Japanese man I did not know named Kota Nakahira, stating that he was translating my presentation and asking me for an explanation about a particular point. I responded immediately as best I could, and received a thank you message in return, which also indicated that the efforts of the Commission to convey the experience of the past were very helpful in overcoming the present situation. In response to this second message, I expressed my feelings about the evolution of this situation, but also asked him who he was and what his involvement was with Fukushima. I learned that he was an engineer in the automotive sector, residing near Tokyo, and that he was not directly involved with the accident but was helping friends living in Fukushima who had to face many ‘discordant voices'.
Our exchanges, which continued at a steady pace, allowed me to send Nakahira several comments on the ICRP recommendations, as well as material concerning the Ethos Project and the Core Programme. I understood that he was part of a group of volunteers from different regions of Japan and abroad translating documents and exchanging them via Twitter to support the actions of Mrs Ryoko Ando, a resident of Iwaki City who was particularly interested to know more about the Chernobyl experience. The announcement on 9 December 2011 of the launch of the site ‘Ethos in Fukushima’ by Mrs Ando’s group, and the request to post my messages there, was not only a huge surprise for me but also a moment of great emotion. The Ethos Project had sometimes experienced severe criticism; the fact that it had served as a source of inspiration for citizens of Fukushima was an unexpected, symbolic recognition of the co-expertise approach undertaken 15 years earlier with the villagers of Belarus.
In the wake of these exchanges, it was clearly logical to invite Mrs Ando and her contacts to participate in the second ICRP dialogue meeting, then in preparation. On 26 December 2011, Niwa announced that Date City had agreed to host the second ICRP dialogue meeting by the end of February 2012. A few days later, he informed Clement and I that members of Ethos in Fukushima had contacted him to express their wish to participate. January 2012 was devoted to building the dialogue programme. With the help of Tada, Niwa made contacts with many people from Fukushima. He also went to Fukushima Prefecture to visit some of them personally. Progressively, a series of interventions was established, including many testimonies of citizens, particularly farmers of the village of Iitate, badly affected by the contamination.
Finally, the second ICRP dialogue meeting was held on 25 and 26 February 2012. On the first day of the meeting, it snowed abundantly in Fukushima Prefecture and many participants were delayed. This was the case for Mrs Ando, who appeared in the meeting room after a car journey delayed by 6 h! As with the previous dialogue meeting, the atmosphere was warm. However, this did not prevent several participants from expressing their anger at the complex situation with which they were confronted, and even their disapproval of the actions undertaken by the authorities. Farmers were particularly upset about the Japanese Government's decisions regarding the marketing of products from Fukushima. That said, it was perceptible that the objective of the exchanges was to seek ways to progress, encouraged by the new testimonies of the Belarusian and Norwegian participants. This was reflected in the concluding session calling for better protection of children, and to further mutual understanding and cooperation among all stakeholders. Finally, it should be noted that all sessions of the dialogue meeting were videotaped by Ethos in Fukushima, and many observers used Twitter extensively over the 2-day meeting to communicate with the outside world.
With the success of the second ICRP dialogue meeting, a dynamic was established, and the idea to deepen the dialogue between the agricultural producers of the prefectures and the consumers of the region and beyond quickly took shape. It was then decided to hold the third ICRP dialogue meeting by the end of July 2012, again in Date City. In March 2012, Ethos in Fukushima proposed to post all the presentations and debates of the previous dialogue meeting on its website, and to ensure the video recording of future dialogue meetings to promote their dissemination with full transparency. This type of approach was quite unusual for the Commission, and it took some time and several exchanges of e-mails to finally conclude that this proposal was acceptable as long as the information was also relayed on its own website. For the third ICRP dialogue meeting, Ethos in Fukushima also suggested organising an invitation via Twitter for consumers living outside Fukushima Prefecture to talk about their apprehensions and attitudes towards food products from Fukushima, and engage in a dialogue with local producers.
In view of the forthcoming confrontation between producers, consumers, and retailers on the issue of food products, which was a hot topic in Japan at that time, I proposed a structured approach to the discussions. Drawing on a technique we used widely in Belarus to facilitate discussions on complex and conflicting subjects, I suggested that two sessions should be organised during the dialogue meeting when participants selected in advance would have the opportunity to express their own views and to react to those of others in a fair way. This approach had previously been shown to be effective for developing common understanding between different stakeholders, and identifying processes and actions satisfactory to all involved participants to improve the situation at stake.
The third ICRP dialogue meeting was held on 7 and 8 July 2012 in the presence of several participants from Tokyo, Yokohama, and Kyoto, who came as expected to share their testimonies. The structured discussions were very lively, and many issues emerged which were not foreseen in the programme. These included, for example, the tradition of picking mountain vegetables (the so-called ‘sansai’), and the very sensitive question of discrimination against the inhabitants of Fukushima, especially the girls. This topic led the Mayor of Date City, Shoji Nishida, who was among the participants, to engage in a relevant intervention that captured the spirit of the dialogue, and was reported in the newspapers the following day. With this third ICRP dialogue meeting, the dialogue had reached maturity in terms of organisation. Many issues related to the rehabilitation of living conditions in the affected territories had been identified, and the process could be pursued in different municipalities as was suggested by Mayor Nishida when Niwa, Clement, and I met him the day after the meeting to thank him for his support. On this occasion, the Mayor assured us that the doors of Date city hall would always be open to welcome the ICRP dialogue meetings. Moreover, during the summer, Niwa moved to Fukushima Prefecture and devoted a large part of his activities to visiting stakeholders and building the programmes for the next meetings. This support obviously played a key role in the success of the nine dialogue meetings that followed.
In retrospect, when the decision was taken to organise the first ICRP dialogue meeting, we had no idea that this initiative would last for 4 years. Although it benefited from a series of unexpected positive events, it clearly responded to a latent expectation of many stakeholders: that of opening a space for the plurality of points of view concerning the Fukushima accident and its material and human consequences to be expressed, and for stimulating the willingness to act to overcome them. However, without the foresight and determination of all those who contributed directly or indirectly to the organisation and the conduct of the ICRP dialogue meetings, this expectation would have remained wishful thinking. To conclude, I would like to thank all these people from the bottom of my heart.