Consensus building in safety and security: a case study of Fukushima evacuees returning home

This study examines consensus building in environmental and energy policies by analyzing the minutes of the safety and security committee of the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) of the Japanese government, in the context of the discussion of the safe return of Fukushima evacuees after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami and the subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster. One important issue associated with evacuation policies was the high number of evacuees, if not all, who were not willing to return to their old homes. Although the contents of governmental committee meetings are freely accessible through the internet, they have been rarely analyzed for these purposes. In this study, we used text-mining techniques to analyze NRA committee minutes quantitatively and qualitatively. We have three primary findings. First, the committee attempted to take evacuees’ feelings into account and pragmatically discuss what was needed to restore their lives and livelihoods, as well as to make its meetings transparent and open to the public by, for example, streaming them live on the internet. Second, in earlier committee meetings, government representatives insisted on specific policies made by themselves to control the return of evacuees. However, outside experts at the meetings convinced representatives that decisions regarding issues surrounding the safe return of evacuees should consider the opinions of the evacuees themselves. Third, the NRA reported the outcome of the meetings at a Cabinet meeting to accelerate policies requiring urgent implementation as well as those related to the alleviation of people’s anxieties regarding exposure to radioactivity or those related to equal treatment among those who wanted to voluntarily move away from the affected areas versus those who want to return to their homes. Finally, this analysis further identified a number of issues concerning citizen participation and governance associated with environment and energy policies, all of which need to be overcome in order to establish consensus among concerned stakeholders.