Earthquake Prediction and Tsunami Protection

There is increasing evidence that earthquakes can in fact be predicted. When rocks grind together under pressure, they give rise to a range of electromagnetic phenomena, including so-called "earthquake lights" (EQLs), that can be regarded as precursor phenomena of a forthcoming quake. Empirical data exist showing that such luminous displays often occur before earthquakes; indeed they have been reported since ancient times; in the case of the Saguenay quake in Canada (25 November 1988), such lights were reported 25 days before the event. (The meaning of these lights is controversial among seismologists.)

Another sign of an impending quake is a disturbance to the ultralow frequency radio band, which has been observed weeks before an earthquake. A third precursor signal is a magnetic field change in the vicinity of a forthcoming upheaval. All such phenomena — EQLs, radio disturbances, and magnetic field changes — can be and have been observed by satellite, and for this reason the French government has a earthquake-detection satellite in orbit: DEMETER (Detection of Electro-Magnetic Emissions Transmitted from Earthquake Regions) that has observed such precursor phenomena from space.

Some of these phenomena, furthermore, have been reproduced in the laboratory. For example, researchers have performed experiments in which rocks subjected to high pressures produce bursts of electrical discharges consistent with those observed before and during quakes.

Earthquakes are natural, not supernatural, phenomena. They result from known physical forces, stresses, and fractures within the Earth's crust. Further research on various types of precursor phenomena, together with the emplacement of a range of Earth-based and satellite sensors, might one day enable us to predict earthquakes with enough precision to make an early warning system possible and realistic.

In his essay, Bruce Parker says that technology "could never be enough, without huge sums of money being spent to build 40-foot sea walls along almost the entire Japanese coastline…" Well, societies spend huge sums of money routinely, often for projects that have little if any economic or scientific return or tangible benefit, for instance the building of the Great Pyramids at Giza.

But another large and ancient project, had it been deployed at the Japanese coastline, arguably could have prevented some of the destruction wrought by the Sendai tsunami: the Great Wall of China. The Great Wall extends for a distance of 8,851 km (5,500 mi.), and was built starting in the 5th century BCE. The coastline of the Japanese island of Honshu is some 5,450 km (3,386 mi.) long, with the Atlantic-facing side comprising about half of that distance. This means that the Great Wall could have almost doubled the length of Honshu's Atlantic coastline. If a structure built during ancient times could have provided some protection against a tsunami, it is likely that modern technology is fully up to the task of building a seawall that would be effective against the tsunami at Sendai. Whether or not to build it rests on factors, such as cost, political vision, and tolerance for risk, that are outside and independent of science and technology proper.

Three Realities: Cultural Capital, Scientific Measurements, Political Denial

The magnitude of the earthquake that hit North-East Japan was 9.0, the fourth largest on record in modern times. The earthquake and tsunami risk was on the level of once in a thousand years, for this region: the last comparable earthquake in that region occurred in 869, according to historical and archeological evidence. In a shocking and totally unpredictable way, this disaster exhibited the hidden every-day culture of Japanese society. The dignified attitudes of survivors and the efficiency of their mutual help networks indicate the high level of civility instituted in the North-East of Japan. This tangible cultural capital will be an enormously positive asset for the social and economic recovery of the region.

In stark contrast, the very serious problems with the nuclear power plant in Fukushima have unearthed another, more problematic aspect of Japanese culture: their amazing ability of political denial in the face of scientific facts. I am gravely concerned that this disaster reveals the long-term practice of a hidden organizational culture related to the use of nuclear technology with a completely disfunctional regulatory system. It is truly alarming to see the government projecting to the public an imaginary third political reality, in which the first reality of the scientific radiation measurements is covered up in order to highlight the second reality of the social resilience of the Japanese public.

Risk-taking is an integral part of our every day life. Constructing and operating huge public projects involves the issue of appropriate levels of risk and budget considerations. But when combined with an organizational culture of structural secrecy and organizational conformity, it has grave consequences, in spite of all the courage of individual engineers, workers and fire fighters now toiling around the clock in life threatening circumstances at Fukushima Daiichi.

I am writing a longer essay with Junichiro Makino, professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology, who has been expressing his concerns in his Japanese blog on this issue since March 12th. His main point is that the situation is much closer to the Chernobyl disaster than the official understated governmental interpretation lets us believe. After two weeks, the ongoing problems at the Fukushima reactors are in line with Prof. Makino's dire predictions. Here are some salient points.

Already on March 17th, six days after the earthquake, following explosions at Fukushima's Daiichi nuclear power plant, the radiation level in the surroundings were comparable to that of Chernobyl. In one small village, Namie-machi, 30 km the plant, the radiation level was measured to be 170 microsievert/ hour. This value corresponds to an amount of I-131 of 1.3x10^14 Bq/km^2. This probably corresponds to an amount of Cs-131 of 3x10^12 Bq/km^2, roughly the same value as what was observed 30 km from Chernobyl. This measurement was taken by a team, reportedly led by the vice minister Kan Suzuki of Ministry of Education (MEXT).

Thus, already six days after the accident, it should have been clear that the amount of radioactivity released is comparable to that of Chernobyl. Even so, as of March 25, representatives of Tokyo Electric and NISA (Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency) still stick to their estimate that the accident is at INES level 5, corresponding to 10,000 times less release of radioactivity than what was actually measured. This is inexcusable.

On March 22nd, DoE released data recorded from its Aerial Monitoring System, which shows that the heavily polluted area, with more than 125 microSievert/hour, was extended in the North-West direction of Fukushima-Daiichi over more than 30 km. On March 23, MEXT released results of their analysis of soil samples, 40 km North-West from the reactor, which, not surprizingly, was extremely high in both I-131 and Cs-137. According to the MEXT measurements, the amount of Cs-137 is 10-20% of that of I-137. So the level of pollution by Cs-137 might be as high as 2x10^13 Bq/km^2 at 30km distance.

In conclusion, the Japanese public, and the world at large, have been confronted with different realities: MEXT has been reporting a very high level of radioactivity since March 17th, comparable or ever higher than that of Chernobyl, and yet NISA and Tokyo Electric apparently refuse to accept what is going on. The one reality is based on scientific measurements. What can we say about the other "reality"?

It might look very strange to outside observers that there can be this large a discrepancy between what is so obvious and the official view. Unfortunately, in Japanese bureaucratic systems, such a situation is quite usual. For big projects like nuclear plants, there is of course an evaluation committee consisting of both specialists and scientists from wider fields. However, scientists critical to a project are quickly replaced by others who are willing to accept a more cozy relationship with the powers that be, with the result that such committees can easily wind up with a vast majority of dangerously uncritical members. In this unfortunate symbiosis of supportive scientists and bureaucrats, companies tend to lose an objective view of reality. In the case of the Fukushima disaster, it is hard for us to know whether they have really lost their grip on reality, or whether they only pretend to have done so. In the end, though, that does not matter much: the practical result in terms of clinging to an imaginary political reality is the same.

The only surprising thing is that even at this stage they are still behaving as though they have completely lost touch with reality. They continue the illusion of a relatively small accident that can be fixed in "just a few days", totally ignoring the reality of an ongoing Chernobyl-type situation. Yes, it is true that Chernobyl started with one huge explosion that caused the main contamination. But now that the Fukushima plant is producing a similar amount of contamination over a period of two weeks, with no end in sight, it is altogether possible that over the period of March and April the total contamination will significantly exceed that of Chernobyl.

Viewing the Nuclear Accident in Japan Through the Lens of Systemic Risk

Predicting risk might sound like an oxymoron, but it isn't: We do it everyday. Everyone knows, for example, that the risk of a dangerous fall on a steep mountain trail is higher than it is on level ground. Prediction of risks is more difficult, however, when they are systemic. Systemic risks occur when individual components of a system interact and collectively generate new modes of behavior that would never occur for a single component in isolation, amplifying or generating new risks.

The recent financial crisis provides a good example. Banks normally manage risk under the assumption that the financial system will behave in the future more or less as it has in the past. Such estimates are based on historical losses. This is fine under normal circumstances. But in the recent financial crisis a small drop in housing prices triggered a chain reaction that suddenly made the financial system behave completely differently, and extrapolations of risk based on historical losses became irrelevant.

Systemic risks are hard to predict. They are inherently complex phenomena, typically involving nonlinear feedback that couples together the behavior of many individual components. Systemic risks frequently occur in systems where there are neither good models nor good measurements, where theory or simulation is impossible. They often involve modes of interaction that have not been seen before, making past experience of little value. The amplitude of the resulting problem is often far larger than previously imagined possible.

How can we anticipate and minimize systemic risk? The key general principle is stability. Systemic risks occur when bad behaviors feedback on one another, so that small problems are amplified into big problems. When things go topsy-turvy, do the problem behaviors damp out, or are they amplified? In the recent financial crisis, for example, the key problem was leverage, which amplifies both gains and losses. Leverage is good during good times, but during bad times it makes the financial system unstable.

The recent Japanese earthquake/tsunami provides another example of how a normal risk can turn into a systemic risk. For Japan, given the history of the region, an earthquake in tandem with a Tsunami might be called a normal risk. But no one realized in advance that a Tsunami could destroy both the main power and the backup power of a nuclear power plant, while an earthquake could also create cracks causing a loss of coolant. The resulting nuclear catastrophe came on top of all the other damage to the infrastructure, making the nuclear crisis even harder to solve than it would have been otherwise, and the radiation leakage has made it even harder to get the infrastructure functioning again. The risks of both have been amplified.

With hindsight the consequences of a large earthquake and tsunami seem obvious, so why didn't the engineers plan for them properly? This is the usual story with systemic risk: In hindsight the problems are obvious, but somehow no one thinks them through beforehand.

As already explained, from a complex systems engineering perspective, the key principle is stability. Nuclear power generation is intrinsically unstable. If you walk away from a wind generator or a solar cell when a crisis occurs, not much happens. If you walk away from a nuclear reactor under the wrong circumstances, it can melt down. To cope with the systemic risk one needs to think through all possible scenarios. The experts might be able to plan for all the known failure modes, but it is much harder to anticipate the unknown ones.

The prognosis for nuclear accidents based on simple historical extrapolation is disturbing. After roughly 14,000 cumulative years of nuclear plant operation, we have now had three major accidents. If we ramp up nuclear power by a factor of ten, which is necessary to make a significant contribution to mitigate global warming, we will increase from the 442 reactors that we currently have to about 5000. Historical extrapolation predicts that we should then expect an accident of the magnitude of the current Japan disaster about once a year.

But I don't trust the historical method of estimating. Three events are unlikely to properly characterize the tails of the distribution. My personal choice for a really nasty nuclear scenario goes as follows: Assume the developed world decides to ramp up nuclear power. The developing world will then demand energy independence and follow suit. For independence you need both reactors and fuel concentrators. There will be a lot of debate, but in the end the countries with stable governments will get them. With a fuel concentrator the waste products of the reactor can be used to make weapons grade fuel, and from there making a bomb is fairly easy. Thus, if we go down the path of nuclear expansion, we should probably assume that every country in the world will eventually have the bomb. The Chernobyl disaster killed the order of ten thousand people: A nuclear explosion could easily kill a million. So all it will take is for a "stable government" to be taken over by the wrong dictator, and we could have a nuclear disaster.

I'm not an actuary, so you shouldn't trust my estimates. To bring the actuaries into the picture, anyone who seriously advocates nuclear power should lobby to repeal the Price-Anderson Act, which requires U.S. taxpayers to shoulder the costs of a really serious accident. The fact that the industry demanded such an act suggests that they do not have confidence in their own product. If the act were repealed, we would have an idea what nuclear power really costs. As it stands, all we know is that the quoted costs are much too low.

Danger is not the only property that makes nuclear power exceptional. Even neglecting the boost in cost that would be caused by repeal of the Price-Anderson Act, the cost curve for nuclear power is remarkable. My group at the Santa Fe Institute has collected data on the cost and production of more than 100 technologies as a function of time. In contrast to all other technologies, the cost of nuclear power has roughly remained constant for 50 years, despite heavy subsidies. This cannot be blamed entirely on the cost of safety and regulation, and after Japan, is anyone really willing to say we shouldn't pay for safety? In contrast, during the same period solar power has dropped by a factor of roughly a hundred, making its current cost roughly equal to nuclear. Wind power is now significantly cheaper than nuclear. Solar will almost certainly be significantly cheaper than nuclear within a decade, roughly the time it takes to build a nuclear plant.

To properly assess systemic risks, the devil is in the details. We can't debate the risks of a technology without wading through them. But from a complex systems engineering point of view, one should beware of anything that amplifies risk. Systemic risks are difficult to predict, and precautionary principle dictates that one should take care when faced with uncertainty.

In college, I had a friend who, despite his 158 IQ, had an affinity for taking foolish risks. He rode a Harley motorcycle, and got a great kick out of roaring down the Long Island Expressway at 120 mph. He liked to brag that his enjoyment of that experience was amplified by a few stiff shots of 151 rum. His defense: "It's important to live life to the fullest, because you never know what will get you. Some people get killed crossing at an intersection."

My neurotic's reaction was: While you may be taken out by random unforeseen events, you have some control over probabilities. Some intersections are a lot more dangerous to cross, and crossing them drunk on a speeding motorcycle gives random unforeseen events a bit more of a chance to strike.

Those who study the psychology of risk like to compare per-mile probabilities of dying in airplane crashes with probabilities of dying in car wrecks. When the tsunami struck Japan, I was visiting Australia, where one encounters frequent reminders that the odds of being eaten by a shark are substantially lower than the odds of being killed in your car on the way to the beach.

Despite this knowledge, I stayed out of the ocean, finding it difficult to forget a vivid story of a colleague who was actually attacked by a shark during her tenure as an assistant professor in the land down under. She survived, so what was I so worried about?

The psychology of risk is a fascinating and complex issue, but I'll offer a defense of defensiveness. It boils down to psychological economics: What is the enjoyment you'll get from a given activity, and is it worth the risk? To a risk-averse person like me, the slight risk of death is enough to keep me away from some otherwise enjoyable recreational activities (scuba diving in any body of water with any frequency of sharks; skydiving in any body of air over four feet above the earth's surface). If you're worrying about death, that adds a large cost to an otherwise beneficial experience. I had lots of fun hiking around in the hills, where I had visual access to any kangaroo who might want to challenge me to a boxing match. On the same reasoning about economic psychology and risk, I also mostly avoid unnecessary airplane travel (though I do attend occasional conventions, including the one that brought me to Australia).

What does imply for tsunamis and nuclear power plants? I'm with the Black Swan avoidance camp here. As a member of Neurotics Anonymous, I'd say: Let's not compare nuclear deaths (so far) to coal deaths (so far), let's instead invest in solar and tidal power and use the ample existing technologies for energy conservation. Of course, one way to conserve energy is to stay off airplanes (even to take pleasant vacations in Australia). Which has the incidental benefit of a (very slight) reduction in your odds of being eaten by a shark.