Unexpected outcomes in Berlin

Prior to the ISO meeting I was fortunate enough to be in the City on the Saturday and Sunday and so witnessed both a huge demonstration and direct action against Nuclear Power.  Germany has always been nervous about nuclear and suffered following Chernobyl.  Events in Japan have hit a nerve and Germany was beginning to reconsider its plans.

On the Saturday there were demonstrations across Germany and we were able to witness the Berlin demonstration, which was noisy, orderly and good natured.  It was a mix of people of all ages and backgrounds, judging from direct observation.

On Sunday the Brandenburg Gate was the focus as Greenpeace took over with climbers on the gate and banners displayed in German and English all day.  What I did not apprecaite at the time was that the report on the future of nuclear was being presented to the Chancellor on Sunday.  On Monday morning Germany announced that the oldest nuclear stations would close and that all nuclear would be abolished in Germany in 10 years.  So a disaster in Japan has had a direct impact on German politics, on the energy sector in the biggest European economy and will undoubtedly influence others too.  I don't suppose many of us thought this would be one effect when we first heard of the earthquake in Japan.

Some pictures of the demonstration and action are included in my Gallery.

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Disaster in Japan

Clearly the events in Japan have been a huge news story in the UK and around the world with the earthquake leading to a tsunami and then a major nuclear problem.  For an insight into the technical issues relating to the nuclear plants, I turned to the excellent Material World on BBC Radio 4 which devoted a whole programme to discussing the issues arising.

An interesting point raised early in the discussion of the piece is that nuclear power plants have a design life of 30 years or so and consequently the current disaster has impacted on plant designed many, many years ago.  The anaology of how we drove cars then without seat belts, air bags, crumple zones and without ABS braking is quite telling when one translates this to the nuclear power plants affected by the tsunami - clearly the damage and issues arising from these does not necessarily tell us very much about the potential safety of plants being designed and built today. Another plant of a different design at Onagawa has survived without problems, and people locally took refuge there as the safest place to be.

Boiling Water Reactors have not been built in the UK and the Gas Cooled principles that were followed do not have the same weaknesses, and nor do the Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) at Sizewell - which is good as this the closest to me now that Bradwell is being closed.

Nuclear power remains controversial - not least because the impact of a major incident can be so widespread, long term and deadly.  Two things contribute particularly to the unease - you cannot see the radiation and therefore avoid it, and the health impacts are difficult to understand and long term creating great anxiety.  Furthermore, the nuclear industry has a track record of secrecy, lying and cover up almost without comparison and therefore people mistrust what they are told.

In this case we have seen some of the best and worst of these responses.  The industry have been consistently over-optimistic that their efforts would contain and resolve the problems encountered - leading to the Government issuing communications along these lines only to find events contradicting them.  Unusually for Japan, the Prime Minister has now publicly criticised the power company for this and vented his frustration at being misled.  On the positive side, Japan understands the lessons of Chernobyl and has promptly issued Iodine tablets which prevents the uptake of radio-active isotopes into the body, as well as stopping the consumption of food from the affected areas.

A further complication with radiation is that measures of radiation means precious little to most people, and understanding the difference between micro-Sieverts, milli-Sieverts and Sieverts is not something that many people have a grasp of.  A really useful graphic has been produced which can currently be found at http://xkcd.com/radiation/ shed considerable light on this: the dose from Fukushima is not trivial but is considerably lower than safe limits and does not compare to Chernobyl in any way.

You can listen to the Material World podcast via this link http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/material

Business Continuity Awareness: Chief Executive Views

As this is Business Continuity Awareness Week 2011 I did not intend to post an entry as there are so many other communications vying for attention.  However, I was listening to my latest downloaded podcasts which includes the excellent Radio 4 programme, "The Bottom Line".  Hosted by Evan Davis this is a genial discussion on business topics with three senior executives and is always interesting.

This week proved to be of particular relevance as the opening discussion related to the headline events in Japan and led to an interesting discussion between the three executives.  Here we had Paul Moody, CEO of Britvic - you would know Robinson's, J2O, Tango as their leading brands but they are also the distributor for Pepsi and 7 Up; Guy Parsons of Travelodge who describes his business as an e-commerce web business which happens to specialise in hotel rooms, and Roeland Vos, CEO Starwood Hotels who number Sheraton, Le Meridien and W among their brands of luxury hotels.

Roeland speaks about the hotel in Sendai which is closed and their immediate focus being on their people, customers and staff, who were affected.  They have also be serving the many displaced people who needed food and accommodation. Evan then introduces the term "business continuity" and asks what these organisations plan for - and gets sensible, well informed answers.  Clearly business continuity is something that has penetrated to the top of these businesses.

Roeland then speaks about regular exercises and how these should be to prepare people to perform in whatever cicumstances they find themselves, and the importance of not simply preparing for specific scenarios.  

I highly recommend this, it is not ground breaking information but it is most interesting to hear management discussing business continuity, contingency planning, resilience and crisis management in such a well-informed way.  You can find the podcast at http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/bottomline