Strategic Research Could Help Inform Post-Fukushima Policies

Interdisciplinarity and globalization of Japanese energy and environment research could help inform policymakers in a post-Fukushima world, say researchers.

AsianScientist (Mar. 11, 2016) – Five years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japanese researchers are calling for more strategic energy and environment research efforts to provide effective scientific advice and invigorate Japanese energy and environmental policy.

Today, March 11, marks five years since the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami killed over 15,000 people and crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. While Japan has implemented new energy and environment polices since the disaster, many issues surrounding nuclear safety, renewable energy policy and reactor decommissioning remain unaddressed.

In a comment in Nature, Assistant Professor Masahiro Sugiyama and his colleagues at the University of Tokyo’s Policy Alternatives Research Institute argue for increased interdisciplinarity and globalization of Japanese energy and environment research. These could help develop a solid scientific foundation that can inform and invigorate energy and environmental policymaking.

“There is a tendency or custom for Japanese researchers working on policy-relevant research to publish only in Japanese,” says Sugiyama.

“This is natural. Japanese is the native language of the Japanese policymakers their research targets. However, unlike traditional disciplines where Japan boasts Nobel laureates, there is a limited pool of researchers in Japan who can scrutinize and critique this interdisciplinary research. Internationalizing Japanese research will expand the pool of researchers who can contribute to this process.”

Sugiyama and his colleagues also decry the lack of interdisciplinarity in Japanese research, citing probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) research as an example. PRA is a tool used to evaluate accident risk of Japanese nuclear power plants, but prior to the earthquake, PRA research focused on mechanical failures and human error from an engineering perspective and did not incorporate perspectives from seismology, geology, atmospheric science and ecological modeling. This is in contrast to PRA research in other nuclear-reliant countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, and France.

“Hearing the difficulty of interdisciplinary research, people often imagine the gap between the natural and social sciences. This is indeed a challenge. But in Japan, even efforts to connect the natural sciences and engineering disciplines have not been successful,” says co-author Professor Hideaki Shiroyama of the Graduate Schools for Law and Politics.

The authors suggest that Japanese publishers and major Japanese granting programs should include non-Japanese researchers in their review process; Japanese funding agencies should require scientists working on policy-oriented research to publish part of their results in international journals; and that strategic, policy-oriented research programs should be designed so that projects can benefit from international experience, and experience can be shared globally.

“The worldwide impact of March 11 is just one example,” says another co-author, Professor Taketoshi Taniguchi. “I hope the research community will take the lead in globalizing research, which can then provide a stepping-stone to globalizing policy discourse.”



The article can be found at: Sugiyama et al. (2016) Research Management: Five years on from Fukushima.

———

Source: University of Tokyo; Photo: deedavee easyflow/Flickr/CC.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.

Asian Scientist Magazine is an award-winning science and technology magazine that highlights R&D news stories from Asia to a global audience. The magazine is published by Singapore-headquartered Wildtype Media Group.

Related Stories from Asian Scientist