Fukushima

Throughout the semester our group chose to follow the Fukushima Nuclear disaster and what actions are being taken to prevent future spills while monitoring the precautions TEPCO is taking to clean up the nuclear spill. A lot of the time it seemed as though the Japanese government was trying to keep information on the spill quiet, and didn’t necessarily want any other involvement from outside organizations to help the situation. I don’t think this worked in their favor especially since there were multiple spills after the initial disaster that they didn’t prepare for.

Our group chose to divide the assignment up by giving each person a specific week to turn in their blog post. This was extremely convenient since our group wasn’t able to meet as often as we wanted to. We influenced each other’s work by sharing certain articles that we thought were interesting. I thought this was an effective way of sharing information because certain group members would have busier weeks than others so sharing the information allowed me to catch up the group members who were unable to research the disaster for the week and vice versa. This way we were able to keep each other on track.

            This assignment taught me that sometimes group work is not as easy as everyone just meeting up on a weekly basis. Each individual has different schedules and responsibilities so finding a medium between that is difficult, however I think our group did a good job of working around our inability to meet up. Also, I learned about an issue I probably would not have paid much attention to if it weren’t for this blog. Initially I chose Fukushima so that I could learn about something I had little knowledge of so I now have a better understanding of nuclear reactors and radiations spills that I did not previously have.