lost between all that. by the story, i mean the essential context and framework that we humans place around an accident so that we can with stand it and share and communicate with others. story telling, even today in the hyper internet media driven and still the most powerful form of communication. i was struck by today's accounts of the anniversary of the sinking of the titanic. i imagine how the story of the fukushima accident is going to be boiled down over time and passed on to generations to come. so i asked myself a question, i asked those here in the audience and those that might be looking in, does the fukushima accident

a black swan event? referring to its length that has an impact and is only predictable in hindsight, you might say. or was it much like the titanic or a combination of engineering and perhaps complacency conspired in a snacenario where you had a speeding passenger ship traveling in the vicentety invested with icebergs, had an unknown flaw in its hull. our perspective on fukushima -- on behalf of the u.s. client wopted to understand more about the accident. to put in a comparison, if you will. and i undertook that to continue

through the fall of september 2011. in the assessment, i reviewed a u.k. chief's reports done by mike waitman. i reviewed the iaea report on its fact finding expert mission. i reviewed the japanese government's report to the iaea and finally, i reviewed our own u.s. near seas report. my preliminary conclusion, preliminary because not all the information is in. and still today, it's not in. is that there was a great deal of dissimilarities between the sights. here in the u.s. and particularly the one i studied. so i concluded and i sort of sint thized the story of fukushima my own mind, that my story was that fukushima accident was in hindsight

foreseeable and hindsight foreseeable. that may sound like a non se-- number one, the plant was located about 110 miles from the intersection of two tech tonic plates, so-called ring of fire. the natural sight elevation originally a former imperial japanese air force base was actually lowered from its original elevation 35 meter high. it was lowered 25 meters to drop below ten meters, exposing the sight to the impact, increasing the tsunami risk, if you will. for a variety of reasons, the sea wall that was installed in and around fukushima was

underdesigned for the tsunami that reached the shore there. the emergency disels that are the back up in case off site ac power is lost were placed in the basement of the turbine buildings facing the pacific ocean. you ask why were they placed in the turbine buildings in the basement? because they wanted to protect them from a seismic event. then some gaps in regulatory oversight. the sea pumps, in addition to the disel generators were located in a location below the level of a potential tsunami. so, the accident in my view was not the inevitable consequence of a rare act of god. but certainly if in fact through sound practices of engineering,

sound regulation, periodic inspections and evaluations, certainly that's something that i think in the future, certainly we can prevent. causes of fukushima obviously as we all know, the earthquake knocked out the six external transmission lines. ensuing tsunami that follows about 40 minutes later. there was a series of waves, seven all together. knocked out 11 of the 12 diesel generators which were located in a basement of the turbine buildings. again, facing the pacific ocean, totally swamped. the critical this is a point not often mentioned, that the critical sea water pumps, these are the pumps that are required to remove the heat from the plant.

they were basically rendered destroyed an the connections between the switch gear, between the, between the emergency power and the pumps was lost. so as a result of this, is called commonly blackout, but what is not talked about, station blackout occurred in a combination of loss -- as a mentioned, the fact that the sea water pumps were lost -- completely destroyed, therefore eliminating any possibility to remove heat to the sea. now the heat seek without the ability to remove heat from the sea. the only option left was to

eject the heat to the atmosphere, which was done, but could not be done quickly enough and then the action sequence accelerated. we had the hydrogen build-ups in the secondary containment and then the hydrogen explosions and so forth. so, the lessons learned from this that i take away is that the flight hazard and risk of tsunami are that of the size mick earthquake. the periodic risk assessments should be considered data and methods obviously change with time, so we need to refresh our design basis. for the protection of national hazar hazards, at least every ten years and there can't be complacency about nuclear safety. this is the point i want to emphasize. i'm going to come back to it

because i have a little vignette to share. the plant operator owner, not the government, is ultimately the primary entity that's responsible for safety. now i'd like to share an account print printed in the "wall street journal" and i'm on may way to wrap up here. on april 13th, about the titanic. the ship carried 2,224 people. and had only enough lifeboats to squeeze in 1,178. and yet, as this article reports, the titanic was fully compliant with all marine laws. the british board of trade required all vessels about 10,000 metric tons required only 16 lifeboats. the titanic had four more than 16. but the white star, the owner of the ship, had built a ship that

was 46,000 tons. four times the limit that was societyuated with the number of lightbulbs. and so the conclusion that this author in melbourne, australia, he writes and regulates entities tend to comply with specifics of regulations not the goal of regulations themselves and all too often, once government takes over what was private risk management comes regulatory compliance. at this accident's core, he's talking about titanic, is this reality. british regulators assume responsibility for the life boeps, then botch that responsibility. with close reading of the evidence, it's hard not to see that the tie tanic disaster was an example of government failure. why might i mention this?

at the time of p measuring i, the industry concluded that mere compliance with regulation wasn't sufficient. it wasn't good enough. just to be compliant with the regulations. that the owners were the primary responsible entity for ensuring safety. and with that recognition, they formed an institute for regular power operations, located in atlanta, georgia, which took collected responsibility by the owners, realizing an accident some place was an accident everywhere. so i'm heartened and encouraged to learn that now the japanese plant owners and operators are forming their own to improve their operations and that they will be taking full responsibility for the safety in years to come. so with that, i'd like to conclude my remarks and be happy to engage in a conversation with

the panel. thank you very much for listening. >> thank you for teaming up, specifically, risk management and lessons learned, two topics. i had started just one month before hurricane katrina and my role was -- and the worst case scenario happened in august of 2005. katrina has been with me ever since. i had the opportunity to be part of the team to one look the

lessons learned from the disaster and two, implement those. invited us to be part of -- deja vu. here is another disaster that had catastrophic consequences where in hindsight, the failures to that response were obvious. we could call that a black swan. a black swan of course was something that we didn't anticipate ahead of time, but ultimately had catastrophic consequences and in hind site sooigt, seemed so obvious. and i'll make a counterargument. i'll say it was a black swan what happened in japan. it's a black swan because it wasn't just an earthquake. it wasn't just a tsunami.

it wasn't just a nuclear incident. it was all three of those things wrapped together. the reason hurricane katrina was so catastrophic is because it wasn't a single disaster. it wasn't just a hurricane. it was a hurricane, by the way, it was a category 3 hurricane when it came ashore. category 3 hurricane. shouldn't be catastrophic. what made it catastrophic was the failure of the levees. it's something we commonly known as a disaster within a disaster. right? those two scenarios, one of which was unlikely, the levees being breached and one fairly likely, a hurricane, category 3. those two things together make a disaster a catastrophe. what japan faced wasn't just what we faced.

disaster in a disaster. it was a disaster within a disaster within a disaster. and i got to tell you, not only was there an earthquake, a tsunami and a nuclear incident, that nuclear incident has such a strong feeling for all of us. particularly, the japanese. that can cause not only physical consequences, but severe psychological consequences. and one of the things that we saw in that disaster was really the resilience of the japanese people. we all remember the tv images from hurricane katrina or frankly from many disasters we've faced in the united states where i got to tell you, americans, we're not, we're not as resilient. how many of us have food stockpiled in our homes and water and medication? we know we should, but most of us don't. but how would we react to a terrible catastrophe hitting us,

destroying our homes, ininjurying, killing our friends and family, then to see on tv the japanese people waiting in line for food and water in an orderly fashion immediately after the disaster was really remarkable. it's a testament to the resiliency of the japanese people. i could only hope we as americans adopt some of these. one of the areas i feel strongly about in part of this task force is the need for individuals to take the responsibility seriously. if you think the government, whether it's the japanese government or the u.s. government are going to be there to help you in a disaster, you're crazy. you're going to be on your own. the department of homeland security tells you you're going to be on your own for at least 72 hours, but they're serious. you're going to be on your own and local governments and state governments and certainly not the federal government cannot be

this for you in your time of need. on the risk side, we talked about this being a black swan. i mentioned that for the same sake of argument, it was a black swan. we need to realize that we have to be prepared for extremely low probability, high consequence events. and i would say that japan example is probably the best example of a low probability, high consequence event. those three scenarios all rolled into one. who could have predicted that? it seems easy, of course it does. but one, who's going to allocate resources to that event? by definition, not going to happen or not very likely. now, the probability isn't zero. we say it was zero, say we don't need ail kating -- it was one in 1 thourks. as a policymaker, how would one

allocate those resources? this is a vexing challenge we face in the united states for years. something we call homeland security and homeland security grants, for example. it was very very controversial we started this program and giving money to state and local governments to prepare for disasters. which states do you give more money to? on a per capita basis? or is every state deserve a certain amount? does north dakota deserve the same amount as any other state? eventually, we came to a solution and today, grants are ail kated based on risks. probably the number one variable that goes into that is population, but there's a lot of other things to consider. it's not perfect, but at least

we're using science here. that still won't prepare you for the black swan. that black swan is going to be so catastrophic and again, in hindsig hindsight, you can rationalize it. you have to embrace the all has ars aproch and realize that some of the practices we have such as on evacuation or infrastructure rebuilding and resiliency, are going to be common no matter what type of disaster happens. if even just one happens in japan, whether it be an earthquake, a tsunami or nuclear since -- is absolutely critical. so let's invest in planning for hazards and requirements just as we heard japan is now going to do. i frankly do not blame japan. it's very easy for us to say in

hindsight japan should have been prepared. i think the japanese government should have been too hard on themselves. i think the japanese have actually have a lot of lessons we can learn. for example, i talked about individuals. we do fire drills, right? we're lucky if we do one a smaser. at the elementary school level or even the collegiate level. in japan, do you know they have monthly earthquake drills in many places? they do that because they see that as a high probability, high consequence event. we need to be prepared, whether it be the elementary school example of the public at large needs to understand that for the

particular risk, they face, they need to be prepared for. some areas are well prepared. floridans are well prepared for hurricanes. why? because it happens almost every year. also, the florida government, the state of emergency is one of the best in the nation. why? because they also have disasters. major hurricanes frequently. get example of california. earthquakes. there's probably no better state or no individuals better prepared in the united states than the california people and the california government. they understand the risk they face. they prepare for it. again, i don't fault the japanese. they were prepared. probably prepared for a tsunami as well, but those two together with a nuclear incident, i think it's unrealistic to expect that anyone could have a, predicted it, but b, allocated significant resources for that particular

low probability high consequence event. so in closing, i hope that we do embrace some of the lessons learned. we as americans as well as japanese, from this zdisaster. but i urge us to look at it from an all hard. >> harry: adthree particular events rolled together, happening again in the near future because it could be a 1,000 year event, but individually, these or other events we don't even predict, will certainly happen and we need to be prepared for those. thank you. >> this is my honor to speak here with the speakers today and

i'm not expert -- but i can talk about public view in japan and also, i was in the -- when we had this disaster. i walked from company to my home for three hours. i couldn't forget the scene so i couldn't forget how much i felt how fear of fukushima -- you guys understand. thank you so much. and also, washington, d.c. has rare earthquake last summer just right after i move to here, so i'm kind of qualified expert of experience emergency. so, today, i will raise three

discussion questions to your perception here between the u.s. and japan. plus, why japan stopped all of nuclear power reactor. the answer is because it is hard for japanese to trust japanese government especially information. note in his paper, the rest of the economic benefits must come first however, the japanese

people do not have confidence in the japanese government. the biggest project is protect people's live. i have a good example why -- nuclear reactor or not. it was hoping for japanese people when the news came out that even the japanese government has resout of speedy assistant -- the japanese government did not tell to japanese people. instead, the government get -- the u.s. government in this association, how could japanese people trust a government even if the government says a nuclear react reactor, it isn't hard to believe it. so there was a news a couple of

days ago. nuclear industries and agency concluded what. one of the nuclear reactor and then nuclear safety commission -- i think the japanese government have to make trust through information sharing and providing -- why japan has had information sharing program. i think there are two reasons. one was caused by unique situation in japan. i understand the japanese government has some reasons for not informing japanese people at the time. japan is small country. japan didn't have the place, the transportation system for so many people to evacuate.

japanese government didn't disclose speedy information because it wanted to avoid the cost and panic in case of evacuation. at the time, japanese media had some trouble to cover. they could not provide the information the people wanted. avoiding panic in japan. i can't explain this point. movies. there are lots of movies to help understand the difference between u.s. and japan. or something but for example

deep impact and -- like this. the japanese usually don't have evacuation. i have a good example. which is in tokyo, but wanted -- witho u.s. has more space. this is why u.s. projects has -- it is not so easy to move around in japan because things are very tight. the second reason is the japanese didn't have information sharing. they have done best what they can do, but we don't have

system. u.s. housing. u.s. created an information sharing system. through this system, the federal and local government can share information in the wake of emergency. u.s. government may not know -- 2004, to make information sharing systems for a major emergency. which is after the emergency happened and what governments should do. is played to government to -- normal operation in one month. the government, operation, information sharing system identify. to get information. in the government.

as long as i know when the hurricane katrina hit louisiana 2005, the u.s. government activated coupe. it was improved from hurricane katrina. i think they have have learned from 911, 1995. especially information. in the case of -- local government in particular understand necessary for such information sharing system, however, i heard that japan has not been able to discuss about it yet. third, why this has affected japan, i think. as i mentioned, it has