Educating the Post-Fukushima Nuclear Engineer

Abstract

While the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident shook the community of nuclear engineers, it had a special significance for nuclear engineering students. What were they supposed do? How should they and could they answer questions about nuclear safety? What about their future opportunities? The incident caused many students to question their deepest convictions about all things nuclear and opened up new questions about their social responsibilities. This chapter looks to the history of nuclear engineering education to provide context for the discussions that took place during the summer school. Historically, students have seldom had opportunities to engage the socio-ethical dimensions of their work. The summer school offers evidence that today's students are actively seeking new analytical skills and different ways to conceptualize the socio-ethical complexity of nuclear engineering problems. Moreover, students are poised to play a key role in shaping much needed curricular reforms.

Engineers, Social Scientists, and Nuclear Power

“…The only adequate way to close is with admiration for those colleagues and NE students and postdocs who made it possible for social scientists to engage with nuclear engineers. 9 For similar reflections see Sunderland 2014 in this volume [3].…”

“…There are ceremonies and speeches expressing aspirations to serve society with advances in technology. 3 There are lots of technical talks from professors and other highstatus people, supported by powerpoint slides. In this case the meeting's technical agenda was overlaid with an emphasis on international collaboration and a gettingto-know-you-better function between engineers from Berkeley and Tokyo.…”

Towards More Open-Minded Nuclear Engineering

“…18, the problems centering around the nuclear power utilization "are not amenable to engineering's traditional utilitarian reasoning and optimization studies" in Post-Fukushima era [9]. However, the outraged experts seemed not to recognize this important and irreversible change.…”

“…argues, "one of the core issues with the problems surrounding Fukushima is that the answers rely on more than numbers" [9]. Fukui District Court's critical point is tightly connected to this notion.…”

“…Fukui District Court's critical point is tightly connected to this notion. In fact, the discussions in our Summer School covered this issue and "much time was devoted to searching for ways that nuclear power could be justified without weighing its costs and benefits in numerical terms" [9].…”