Abstract

On July 5, 2012 the Investigation Committee on the Accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) issued a final, damning report. Its conclusions show that the human group – constituted by the employees of TEPCO and the control organism – had partial and imperfect epistemic control on the nuclear power plant and its environment. They also testify to a group inertia in decision-making and action. Could it have been otherwise? Is not a collective of human beings, even prepared in the best way against nuclear risk, de facto prone to epistemic imperfection and a kind of inertia? In this article, I focus on the group of engineers who, in research and design offices, design nuclear power plants and model possible nuclear accidents in order to calculate the probability of their occurrence, predict their consequences, and determine the appropriate countermeasures against them. I argue that this group is prone to epistemic imperfection, even when it is highly prepared for adverse nuclear events.