ABSTRACT

The earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011 caused massive destruction and took many precious lives. Despite the unprecedented magnitude of the disaster, the process of rebuilding started as soon as the ground stopped trembling. Damaged roads and ports have been rebuilt, new houses constructed, and people have started new lives. Yet it has become apparent that the nuclear disaster presents fundamentally different challenges. The nature of radioactive contamination makes it difficult, and in some cases impossible, even to start the process of recovery and reconstruction to make the land habitable again. The nuclear disaster has also been highly socially divisive. It has created divisions, for example, between generations in a household due to different perceptions of radiation exposure; between neighbors due to micro-scale differences in the levels of contamination; and between communities due to different evacuation-area designations.