and he did not give up. arthur came in. he didn't want to repeat the mistake of the league of natio nations. he created a beautiful rebuilding of japan and look what has happened as a result. they are one of the biggest economies in the world. >> the current theory is that there isn't a world war i and world war ii that it's one big war with the break and that's the current military thinking about world war i and world war ii. >> the greek philosopher says -- [inaudible] >> hi. is the nuclear age over and should it be? >> i wish it wasn't but i think

it is over. i think we are seeing the falling apart of it now. we are worried about iran having a nuclear device but that's the only nation we have been worried about for a long time. you would think with the fall of the soviet union ukraine would want one in kazakhstan would want one in the spec as dan would want one but it actually isn't happening. we have party live through stalin and mao that killed tens of millions of people without dropping a singular nuclear device. we have probably -- the worst people to have nuclear weapons. [inaudible] >> every time we have an accident is so grossly mismanaged that they have destroyed the political willpower to maintain nuclear power and so i myself am very glad that china and vietnam for

example are building a lot of nuclear plants because it would be of great benefit to the world to have them use less coal and more nuclear. but i think in the developing countries it seems to be on it's last leg unless we have this technological breakthrough that makes it both safe and cost-effective. yes maam. >> people shouldn't always be afraid of nuclear but. [inaudible] a lot of the restaurants had to put up signs our seafood does not come from japan. then to the lady right there we were taught that winston churchill had to promise roosevelt that they would -- their colonies to keep the american support for entering the war but they really were afraid of him.

>> yeah, well if i was a pregnant woman i wouldn't eat fish i caught myself off of the shores of fukushima but other than that we have actually have had some. remember that in our most bombs i showed you the scariest exclusion of all time that huge explosion in the water we actually have someone return to the islands in a submersible to test for radiation and we assumed there would be a lot of radiation all over bikini because they had one bomb after another. this was not a power plants melting down. this was a huge nuclear device being exploded there and in the only radiation they could find was in the sandstone tombstones of the islanders. the rest of it have been sort of dispersed by the effects of the ocean. so our fears of fukushima contaminating us aren't anywhere near as bad as mercury poisoning fish already.

okay. thank you very much. [applause] okay, thank you. >> my first reaction was surprise because i had worked for mr. sterling. i coached the clippers in the year 2000. he invited me to his daughter's wedding. i had no idea exactly what was going on but i also because of my association i know elgin baylor and i know what he was complaining about so i was confused not knowing exactly which set of facts mr. sterling stood behind and then when his words came out it was so obvious and shocking and just disgusti

disgusting. all of those things wrapped in one but the surprise of it to find that type of sentiment and someone who relies on black americans for so much of his success and public profile is amazing. i just couldn't believe that someone could have that much bigotry inside and think that it was okay.

>> next "after words" with author set to. her latest book deals with a 2011 meltdown of the fukushima nuclear power plant. former u.s. nuclear regulatory commission chairman gregory jaczko hosts this hour-long program. >> host: welcome susan. this is a great opportunity for me. normally i'm the person having the questions asked of me and now i get the opportunity to ask a former journalist questions about the book that you wrote so i look forward to doing that. just go i will do my best. it's in a custom role for me to answer questions. it's good to be here. >> host: i am glad. i wanted to start just to ask

you a few issues that are general in nature about the book and the first question i wondered is what drove you to this topic collects what made you interested in writing a book about the fukushima accident? >> guest: as a journalist it was a very compelling story. i had covered the three mile island accident when i was a reporter at "the philadelphia inquirer" and half follows nuclear issues ever since. the first moments of that accident when the news accounts began to come out, i watched transfixed because it was the first time i think the world has ever watched an accident unfold, and so i got caught up in the story, not necessarily the technical aspects of it that the human aspects in the very high drama of what was going on in japan. and as events began to continue

to unfold, i saw a number of parallels to what it happened at three mile island. and i was curious as to what sorts of lessons have been learned and had not been learned on three mile island and why there were so many differences. so it just brought me into it from that angle. >> host: maybe could talk about that a little. you won a pulitzer prize for your work. >> guest: the inquirer did. i was part of a large team that was sent to cover the accident. i did a lot of the writing so i never went out there. i'd i've been out there but i didn't go to the scene but i was working as a rewrite person for the reporters and photographers. it too me was a very frightening event. the accident that we had all been led to believe that

whatever happened was happening. fortunately it wasn't as severe as things that fukushima daiichi but i also sense that this had caught the experts offguard too. the nrc, the utility officials, state government officials and so that was the parallel track with fukushima daiichi too. we had 30 some years to learn the lessons read it didn't appear that they had quite sundem from three mile island. >> host: what was different watching the fukushima accident in a sense of a layperson as opposed to three mile island where you had a professional goal? >> guest: i was taking notes constantly and visually i mean, visually it was phenomenal. as we write in the book, people watched the reactor building explode. we saw the helicopters flying over. you saw the people being rousted

from their homes, packing their belongings and fleeing compounded with this horrific natural disaster. i think we tend to lose sight of the fact that a natural disaster would have been headline making in and of itself. so i did watch it with a certa certain, with a certain arm's length objectivity but i kept taking a lot of notes because i had a lot of questions that i wanted to find out more about amp to my reporter's hat on. >> host: to me a little bit about the combination. >> guest: i had worked with david sought bomb as a source and had met him just once but i had come to rely on the union of concerned scientists an number of other organizations as good

go to people when i was writing about issues. i had not really worked out much with ed lyman until just before the accident. in june of 2011 high was asked by the union of concerned scientists to team up with dave and with ed to put together a book. my idea of the book was a little bit different i think then what the ucs folks had originally. i came at it as a journalist. i came at it as a storyteller and i felt that if the public were to become engaged in this issue as i felt they really showed, the best way to do it was to tell it for a general audience through the drama of an unfolding event. so i am not an engineer. i am not a physicist.

i am a reporter so i began to pull together a lot of different threads and we put together a proposal. it was accepted and we set about the task of writing the book. and so i would draft many of the chapters and then ed and dave would read them and have a lot of input in the technical issues. as the book progressed and it gets into some of the background on nuclear regulation in the history of regulation in this country, ed gave a lot more. it was a good collaboration. >> host: when you read it and someone who is familiar with a lot of these issues i can see some the places where it looked like those were the pieces that they contributed. >> guest: their fingerprints are in a definitely.

>> host: you talked about this as a story in this or read the book and having lived through a lot of these stories personally, it was clear that this was about people and their drama. tell me about the two or three people or characters in a way that stood out to you the most in the story. >> guest: there were several and boot difficulty with this work nonetheless speaks japanese. we did this from the u.s. and so it was a lot of gathering of information from official reports and from news accounts and things like that. we didn't get a chance to talk to the people at the plant obviously that's one of the stories that resonated with me was the moment when they are dithering about whether or not they needed to inject seawater

into unit one and it's a matter of the clock is ticking and they are just about down to the wire. there messy oyou tschida and i think that's how you pronounce his name the plant superintendent who in the end would have to make the final call knew that they need to get water in their very quickly. meanwhile everybody wants a say in the tepco officials and the japanese government officials are hemming and hawing and he gets an order from one of his supervisors at tepco that the government hasn't signed off on. he has a hearty started and so he basically calls one of the staff people over and says i'm going to give an order but ignore it. so he loudly proclaimed so everyone in tokyo can hear they

would do the seawater injection when in fact they didn't. to me that was a human element in that story in which in japan where ignoring the rules and acting on your own is not reported. here was a moment where a guy knew that if he didn't act things would go even worse than they were going so he did. that one was a very interesting one. >> host: he definitely stands out. it's. >> guest: i wish i would have had a chance to meet him. i really wish i had any talks very little to the press and unfortunately he died but some of his lines of the accident were very compelling. the other characters in the book and there weren't many characters. there was chuck castell and i really liked chuck. we talked to him.

he was very kind and chuck was the nrc expert on boiling water reactors who was brought into tokyo and was there as i recall there for almost a year. he became in our tale that kind of central person who is buffeted by all the forces at work. the government of japan and the culture of japanese society and government. the urgency to get the best possible advice to americans living in japan through the ambassador who was there and then the scramble and infect your office is trying to figure out what was going on and getting to it. he is working by all appearances 24/7 full out struggling to keep all the in the air. to me he was a human face of a

safety system that was just not ready or what it was being asked to do. >> it seems three mile island and he touched on this in the book there were faces bear too so it seems in these accidents people become the faces of this technology that seems to be so mechanistic and all of a sudden it becomes very personal and very human. >> guest: well it does and that's good because if there isn't a human face on an issue it's very difficult for people to become invested in making sure that they are done properly. so i think that comment that was my goal in starting out the book the way we did. i wanted to tell a story where people began to really calm and got engaged in it. they may not know anything about

nuclear power. they may not have any opinion on nuclear power but by getting them to invest and understand the drama then i think hopefully by midway in the book with hooks them and they are saying i'd like to know a little bit more. it's. >> host: you certainly do capture i think a lot of the moments. >> guest: that's good coming from you. it's kind of nice to know that. >> host: i was just curious, you talk a little bit about that you relied on government documents. talk a little bit more about what kinds of sources you used and where you talk to people and if you found differences from what people said as opposed to what was in the record. >> guest: well, the nrc was a treasure trove. the e-mails and the folio materials that came out, those transcripts that the nrc cap date transcript from the

operations center. >> host: not by intention necessarily but it really was a wonderful historical record in being there. >> in the newspaper business there something called the tech talk which is a story told minute by minute by minute and that made it possible for us. we didn't have quite the same level in the information from japan although there were many really good records from the investigative reports that were in english but the phone conversations, the chronology, the names of people were very useful and as you read through that you know you are with the crew and the operations center because you are able to tell it that way. so that i think was one of the ways that i hope to bring the story alive.

we could write all we want to about filter defense or seawater injection but until the reader understands the urgency with which these decisions have to be made and just do nothing going right and these poor people scrambling against the clock to get something to work. >> host: where those conversations surprising to you or did they go the way you thought they would in a situation like this? >> guest: i think an honesty the thing that surprised me the most was how little, how little knowledge there was about what was going on. i think of the nuclear regulatory commission charged

with protecting the american people and we have never had an accident like this. and yet i got the sense and only through the materials that we had access to that the nrc was as confused and was scrambling to learn, desperately to learn what was going on. it wasn't just the time difference in the language difference. it was the uncertainty of the technology and of trying to divine what was going on in these reactors and get us best information you can to your crew over there and to the america people too. they were watching this too and we make a point in the book that

this was not a japanese nuclear accident. it was a nuclear accident that just happened to have occurred in japan. so there really was the reason for americans to follow what was going on. >> host: there was in many ways very familiar yet so completely different because as you mentioned at the end there were language differences. they were timing differences. we had a team in washington that was sleeping when everyone else was awake and they were sleeping when you were awake here so you have to manage that difference in time that added a layer of complexity. >> guest: i am sure that's the case and culturally chuck casto talks about going to these meetings that lasted forever that accomplish nothing. here the american -- the americans are saying we need decisions now. we need to deal with this now and yet as you pointed out this

is not your accident or our accident. this is their accident and the u.s. experts are kind of in you know in a holding pattern until they are called in to ask what to do and then when they were it was almost too late or the recommendations were not necessarily followed. >> host: you mentioned it was one of the joys for me to read the book was to look back and see things that were said that i had forgotten that was one. there was a great quote from the executive director, everybody at the nrc is fussing and trying to figure out what to do in his advice to the nrc people is don't scratch the itch. that was exactly the position. i think what was revealing to me

also was just how everybody seemed to be caught flat-footed. one of the messages we have in this book is historically regulators have dismissed low probability high consequence accidents because they don't fit the script and historically at three mile island and with this accident, they reactors are supposed to follow a scenario. and they did and it took a shame. they might as well have thrown the script out the window so what you have here is a story of people who are charged with protecting -- protecting the public health and safety many of whom have no higher calling than

protecting public health and safety. just completely flummoxed by what was going on. there had been no, there had never been an accident of multiple reactors. there had never been an accident world the backup systems failed. there had never been an accident and you can just go down the checklist. and so you begin to wonder who was making the rules. we have a line in the book that says the safety starts at x. nobody asks if x plus one happens and i think that maybe one of the clear messages of this book that we need to start asking about. >> host: i did read the book and i have lots of questions. >> guest: i will do my best. >> host: it's very helpful to hear your overview and here how

you developed the material that's in here. this is something that's on page 42 and 43. you have a discussion about earthquakes and what the japanese were doing in history dealing with earthquakes. obviously it's a country that deals with these on a relatively regular basis. i've been to japan three times in the last two years. it's something that's almost regular. one of the interesting dichotomies here is that this is a country that in many respects the scientific community is viewed as being one of the premier countries when it comes to understanding earthquakes and yet the technology they pride themselves on and he mentioned this in the book, they view themselves as being very expert in nuclear technology. two of their really primary technological areas of expertise failed them have.

tell me about how did you reconcile this? a country looking back seems to have missed -- so many opportunities to address this. >> guest: i think there's a similar thing here. its cost and who has the ear of those who are in the decision-making capacities. and i think one of the interesting things is this is an accident that happened in a technologically savvy very sophisticated country and so consistently, and we write about this in the book, when there were calls for more preparation for earthquakes, when there were some questions about the adequacy of seawalls pursue nominees and preparations for

tsunami's. these were kind of dismissed or postponed or studied and worked kicked down the road for a later date. that day came and they were needed. so when you have a very influential industry which the nuclear industry in japan definitely is, and very close ties to government, its wishes usually take preference to the few academics are the few scientists who are saying we are really not adequately prepared. that really was another recurring thing not only on earthquakes but on the radiation monitoring and some of the evacuation issues. >> host: do you have a sense that things have changed in japan?

>> guest: i have not been there but i don't get the sense. it will get the ongoing debate about the restart of the reactors and you have public opinion polls with a huge majority of the japanese people opposed to restarting the reactors or at least some of the reactors and they are marching right into a restart without fully understanding what happened to fukushima. eventually there may be a good reason to restart the reactors but i think there is a real legitimacy to the claims that are being made by those who are opposed to the research that we don't know enough of what happened and we really need to learn the lessons and put in a new regulatory framework because you have the old framework that clearly didn't work and now you have got the newer one. whether that's going to change things i don't know because you have got the pressure from the

government to get those reactors up and running. >> host: you have an interesting quote in that theme if i can find it. the prime minister talking about the message and essentially dismissing it. >> guest: they are out there making noise again and again you weigh everything in what is the customary responses in japan and protesting in the street is not as common as it might be here in the united states. >> host: that's an interesting point and i'm glad you addressed that. you can talk about that a bit more because you have some pictures in the book and you talked about these protesters, tens of thousands, 45,000. that's a huge huge issue.

it's not a typical day in japan. >> guest: when you look at those photographs of the protests and they aren't students. they are grandmothers and they aren't the typical people who just get out to protest. i mean there are a wide swath of the japanese public by outward appearances if you look at the photographs and so this is an issue. fukushima daiichi touched a huge segment of japan's society and economically my gosh i mean you know it was an armored accident of consequence. so you have got a lot of people who now have a stake in it. personal, economic, health, and people who are going to pay their utility bills that really you are saying this is not what we want and their voices aren't being heard.

>> host: why do you think that is? >> guest: why don't know. i think it's because as i say the nuclear industry has two be the decision-makers and they don't wield the st. cloud as the grandma with the protest signs. i think it's very churn in the united states as well, that the nuclear industry in this country has been very successful in influencing the level of nuclear regulation. there have been some changes but they are not necessarily adequate in terms of for example looking at fukushima. you have the 50-mile evacuation issue. you made that call and it was a wise call and yet in this country the nrc has said in the

event that we needed to expand it we would have plenty of time. i think that somebody used long island or the hudson river for example is going to say you are going to get me off cape cod if there's an accident or you were going to be able to evacuate 50 miles from indian point expeditiously? moving that many people. one of the figures is 40% of americans live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant. i think that's 120 million americans of those 120 million americans have a real stake in how state the reactors in their neighborhoods are. so i think that, i think you ask

why change did occur and is not occurring in japan. i think the better question would be why is change also not occurring in the united states? i know you have spoken about this issue. >> host: how would you answer that? you touched on some of these issues in the book. >> guest: i think again it's the influence of the nuclear industry. i think it's cost and the industry has a terrific ability to get ahead of the nrc on issues and say we are going to make these look good. you don't need to do this, we will do this so you have got a series of responses to safety issues that are not set by regulation. they are voluntary. we have aligned and this is dave saw bomb's line in the book that the traffic departments don't

put up a sign that says don't go too fast. they say the speed limit is 55 miles an hour and what has happened in the nuclear industry's own initiative is regulation pretty much is don't go too fast. don't do things that are safe when in fact what really seems to be called for at least in the lessons that have come out so far is a clearer sense of what the industry needs to do and the nuclear task force, the group of senior nrc officials that took 90 days to make recommendations to the nrc was very very clear. their first priority was we need to get rid of this patchwork of regulation. i'm not telling you anything you don't know but this patchwork that has allowed a this

voluntary noncompliance, some compliance this mishmash of regulations and pity the poor in rc inspector that walks and and some of its voluntary and some of it isn't. i think the point that we make in this book and what the near-term task force said is let's restructure regulation in this country from the ground up. let's get a clear set of speed limits for these reactors. the 55-mile an hour spent a limit for a reactor. get those in place. learn what we can from fukushima but make sure that we can say clearly that these reactors are

as safe as we can make them plus one. so i think that really is the message that we want to convey. >> host: if i can switch gears a little bit and take the focus back to japan for them in it, i'm interested in your thoughts in particular because you are reporter and you talk in the book a little bit about the press clubs in japan and i get a sense from reading the