The authors have collaborated for over three years in developing an advanced educational program to cultivate leading engineers who can productively interact with other stakeholders. The program is organized under a partnership between the Nuclear Engineering Department of University of California, Berkeley (UCBNE) and the Global COE Program “Nuclear Education and Research Initiative” (GoNERI) of the University of Tokyo, and is funded by MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology), Japan. We conducted two “summer schools” in 2009 and 2010 as trial cases of the educational program. This year, in response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, we decided to make our third summer school a venue for preliminary, yet multi-dimensional learning from that event. This school was held in Berkeley, CA, in the first week of August, with 12 lecturers and 18 students from various fields and countries. In this paper, we will explain the concept, aim, and design of our program; do a preliminary assessment of its effectiveness; introduce a couple of intriguing discussions held by participants; and discuss the program’s implications for the post-Fukushima nuclear context.

This reflection describes the reactions in Europe on the Fukushima accident, seen from the author’s perspective from his position at the Swedish Radiation Protection Institute, SSI (now the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority).

The topic of this lecture is long-term energy and environmental strategy compatible with low atmospheric CO2 concentrations. A global energy system model of optimization type, of which the objective function is the total system cost over time horizon, was used as a mathematical tool to derive the strategies. Under the great deal of uncertainty it is difficult to draw firm conclusions in which technological options are the greatest potential in achieving significant CO2 reduction in economical way. However, the simulation results in the energy system model indicate that massive CO2 mitigation targets can be satisfied under the large-scale deployment of innovative technology, highlighting essential roles for nuclear, renewables, efficient use of fossil fuel and CCS. The results support for pursuing multiple technologies simultaneously, rather than focusing on realistic technological options on the basis of current perceptions.

In the aftermath of the Fukushima accident, the focus has been mostly on the machine and how to support the machine with other machines…. better protection from severe external events, strengthening back-up power supplies (from diesel generators to longer battery life), strengthening the regulations and controlling hydrogen, among others. But what about the people involved? When Professor Ahn asked me to give a lecture at this summer school, and I began to look more closely at what happened, I decided to focus more on the people than on the machine. I began my lecture by saying, “Most of the other lecturers will be talking about the machine, so I am going to do something very different, I am going to talk about the people… and this means you! And some of you may get angry and argue with me, and say that I don’t know what I am talking about, and some of you may be astounded and say, wow, why didn’t I think of that, or yes, this feels right and want to know more. In either case, I will consider the talk a success!” And so to you, the reader of this paper… whether you agree or disagree, my goal is to make you think beyond the machine… to think about the people involved… and what all this means for the future of nuclear energy. I hope this paper is a first step at making the implicit assumptions, values and beliefs we hold regarding the nuclear endeavor explicit. . . and we begin to recognize this was as much a people accident as a machine accident.

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The purpose of this article is to introduce some background knowledge to analyze the release of radioactive ma-terials from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi (1F) nuclear power station (NPS) based on their inventory in the reactor core, mechanisms of the release and the behavior of the released radionuclide from the scientific points of view. Basic knowledge on contamination of the area and decontamination are also described.

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What is the role of the nuclear engineer and how is it learned? Motivated by the Fukushima Nuclear Accident, the 2011 Advanced Summer School of Nuclear Engineering and Management with Social-Scientific Literacy provided an occasion to reexamine the role of nuclear engineers.  Students don’t just need the different approaches offered by the social sciences–they want to learn them. Historically, there has been very little space in the curriculum for students to think about nuclear engineering more broadly, little tolerance of positions that question the safety and necessity of nuclear power, and limited resources to facilitate an informed discussion about these topics. Despite these challenges, students are actively seeking alternative ways to address the multidimensional Post-Fukushima problems that are not amenable to engineering’s traditional utilitarian reasoning and optimization studies.

The March 2011 nuclear reactor accidents at the Fukushima, Japan nuclear reactor complex triggered a scrutinous public discussion about nuclear technology on an unprecedented scale much more so than from the accident at Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. As part of this, in early August 2011, the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California-Berkeley (UCBNE) hosted the 2011 Advanced Summer School of Nuclear Engineering and Management with Social-Scientific Literacy: Reflections on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident and Beyond (PAGES 2011). This unique program, in its third year, featured world leaders in nuclear engineering, social science, and history. The student body was comprised of postdoctorate researchers and graduate students.

One of the most important questions unanimously raised during this week by the students focused on the professional identity of the nuclear engineer in the post-Fukushima society. Students had difficulty with this, in terms of a real examination of themselves as nuclear engineers and future leaders in the field. This was primarily due to the increasingly complex relationship of nuclear technology with the contemporary society. The Fukushima accidents resulted in the students coming to realizing this tangibly really for the first time. To this end, this essay will discuss the identity of the nuclear engineer. Specifically, this is directed to what will be termed the ‘third generation’ engineer; i.e., the student body at PAGES 2011. In the upcoming decades, it is this ‘third generation’ that will lead and shape perspectives on nuclear technology and develop new relationships with the society. This essay is intended to pose questions for the nuclear engineer to consider as part of their own, professional self-assessment. This is consistent with the mission and objectives at PAGES 2011. This essay draws primarily from the experiences at PAGES 2011 in an effort to direct meaningful discussions about the need to consider the identity of this third generation nuclear engineer in the post-Fukushima society.

The accidents that occurred at the Three Mile Island (TMI) Unit 2 plant in Pennsylvania in March 1979 and the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plants in Japan in March 2011 are generally and correctly regarded as two of the three most serious in the history of commercial nuclear power (Chernobyl, of course, is the third). For that reason, both accidents need to be carefully studied and appropriate lessons need to be learned.  Although TMI and Fukushima differed in causes and consequences, they provide powerful incentives to investigate what happened and to draw conclusions that, if properly applied, can help to prevent, or at least mitigate the effects of, nuclear power accidents in the future.

A collection of questions Lecturers had in relation to their lectures.

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