Emotional Resilience in Action at Fukushima

"The workers felt the earthquake through the soles of their feet as they watched the sea heave sharks and cars across the plant’s pavement.”

For most people, the word ‘Fukushima’ brings to mind the triple meltdown and explosions at the Daiichi plant. But Fukushima Daiichi has a lesser-known sister plant called Fukushima Daini. The Daini plant is about 10km to the south and was also inflicted with severe damage. The site’s superintendent, Naohiro Masuda, and the 400 employees on duty were able to meet the fearsome challenges by summoning up huge mental reserves. They did it by:

• Fighting for survival

• Sharing evolving reality

• Gathering data

• Challenging cultural norms

Fighting for survival. Masuda and his employees were faced with an earthquake, then a tsunami and the threat of annihilation from radiation. The sheer magnitude of their plight is hard to imagine. The world as they knew it had been shattered and they were forced to operate beyond any training or experience. Nevertheless, despite the high degree of uncertainty enveloping them, they were obliged to formulate a response. They operated in unpredictable circumstances under extreme pressure without sleep for days. And the emergency surrounding them on all sides got far worse before it got better.

Masuda’s large team had to find a way of processing the direct threats to their physical and psychological survival. ‘Fight or flight’ reactions were activated, but clearly running was not an option, because there simply was not anywhere to run to. As the disaster began to unfold, punctuated with frequent earthquake aftershocks, the workers became increasingly terrified by the thought of what was happening to their families beyond the plant.

Sharing evolving reality. In these circumstances, reality was a fast-changing, disruptive and complex beast. Despite the bleak outlook, there was a very human need to make sense of things. After the earthquake struck, Masuda instructed everyone to gather in the plant’s Emergency Response Centre (ERC). The goal was to cool down the four reactors to protect against potential disaster. In theory, this would be fairly straightforward. But this was not an ordinary tsunami.

Tsunami alerts began to arrive about 20 minutes after the first violence of the quake at 2:46pm. Masuda’s appointed lookouts scanning the ocean were now able to glimpse one of gargantuan height. It would likely reach the pumps and the reactor buildings, with the Japan Meteorological Agency putting its final tsunami height estimate at 10 metres.

When the waters hit the ERC and the lights went out, Masuda estimated that the tsunami’s true height must have been closer to 17 metres. This endangered the cooling of the reactors. If the power supply was affected, cool down would be extremely difficult to achieve. A radioactive breach loomed large. In these conditions, how did Masuda hope to concentrate minds on recovering control of the plant?

Well, he simply used a whiteboard! In a corner of the crowded ERC, he began writing down the frequency and magnitude of the aftershocks. This graphically conveyed a sense that the danger might be decreasing, even if this was not entirely convincing to the workers gazing at the board. By sharing his assessment of the grim reality everyone faced, he was able to enlist their support. The board was also used to outline the recovery strategy and to gain commitment. They would all be able to confront the precarious nature of their existence together.

Gathering data. At 10pm, Masuda asked his workers to choose four teams of ten workers. The teams would go out to each reactor and survey the damage. A key part of emotional resilience is staying calm to assess all the options. Good data from the field was needed for setting these out. Each team was able to carry out a calm, rational assessment of what worked – and what did not – at each of the four reactors. Engineers calculated the sequence for powering them up.

A list of operational priorities and supplies was drawn up. Parts, materials and cables would be coming from off-site to assist the recovery operation. Pump motors would be replaced. Damaged parts of the cooling system would be connected to the radioactive-waste that could still draw power. The workers at Daini would have to lay more than nine kilometres worth of cable to connect to the three disabled reactors and restore power. This job would usually take 20 people with the right machinery more than a month to complete, but they had just 24 hours from when the supplies arrived on the morning of 13 March.

Challenging cultural norms. There was bound to be surprise difficulties and obstacles, but a rigid fixation on the whiteboard plan could have derailed the recovery. ‘Sticking with the programme’ is a recognised cultural trait of the Japanese. If Masuda had stuck with the programme, the consequences could have been catastrophic. Fortunately, a form of cultural mindfulness prevailed at the critical hour. Masuda had originally wanted to use the radioactive-waste building as the power source. Its interior layout suggested the cables could be threaded through with relative ease. But the building’s remoteness proved problematic. Each 200-metre section of cable weighed a ton and required 100 people to move it. Switching plans, Masuda made the decision to use the only working generator.

An even bigger challenge was threatening to put an end to their good work in unthinkably tense conditions. There had been an explosion at the Daiichi sister plant. Radiation levels were spiking. If the radiation drifted towards Daini, it could stop the workers in their tracks. To this background, Masuda was knowingly about to upset the plan’s implementation.

Of the reactors, Unit 2 had initially been given priority, as it had been the first to show signs of rising pressure.

But as the hours passed on 13 March, engineers spotted that the pressure was rising faster in Unit 1. Masuda instructed the workers out in the field to switch their attention to Unit 1. Cable that had already been laid needed to be re-routed, causing confusion and further delay. The last-minute change to the plan proved to be critical to the recovery operation’s success. Nine kilometres of cable were threaded through the site, with the work finishing just before midnight on 13 March. Masuda deserved the round of applause he received from his workforce. Very few people would have been able to handle the situation in that way. It was a battle to contain the reactors, but also one to keep at bay the paralysing fear and anxiety only those at the plant’s site could have truly understood.

The cooling system came back online at 1:24am on 14 March, just two hours before Unit 1 would have exceeded its maximum pressure threshold. They were out of the woods. By late afternoon, all the other units’ cooling systems were functioning as they should. Cold shutdown of all four units was achieved by the morning of 15 March. Everybody could breathe again with an almost unimaginable sense of relief. Their survival instincts had been tested to the limits, but their emotional resilience had triumphed.

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