Search

Emergency response is addressed both in terms of immediate response to a disaster as well as the long-term care needed to help those displaced or otherwise effected. The initial response to the reactor overload failed to prevent the disaster, and there is some debate as to if the efforts to control the exploding reactor actually increased the amount of radiation dispersed into the air. While attempting to mitigate the disaster workers were exposed to even more radiation than the initial explosion released. This event shows the importance of expertise in response to a disaster, this was the first nuclear disaster of this scale and no one knew how to respond. The majority of the paper focuses on the challenges of caring for hundreds of thousands of individuals when their need will extend for decades if not longer. The authors indicates that the system put in place provides the necessary assistance but only to those with the ability and knowledge to work within the system for their own advantage, and in the long-term it is slowly loosing support from the general society as the Chernobyl explosions falls further into history.

This article has been referenced in several other works concerning the Fukushima plant disaster, such as “The Fukushima Effect: Traversing a New Geopolitical Terrain” by Hindmarch and Priestley, where it was quoted for its opinion that an international group would be needed to overcome bias that may be present in national regulatory agencies.