Radioactive Performances - Teaching about Radiation after the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster

Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and its release of radioactive contamination, the Japanese state put into motion risk communication strategies to explain the danger of radiation exposure. Through an ethnography of state-sponsored exhibits, hands on activity, and didactic centers aimed at providing radiation information, this article examines how state expertise on radiation hazards is increasingly being disseminated to the public via teaching infrastructure that are jargon-free, interactive, and amusing. In particular, educational infrastructure in post-Fukushima Japan foster a process that I call “radioactive performances,” where radiation is presented as non-threatening and even beneficial. What is the impetus for resorting to such forms of explanations in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster? I argue that radioactive performances promote asymmetrical information about radioactive risks, being partisan toward a state-laden politics of revitalization in Fukushima in order to manage the vulnerabilities of an ecologically and economically precarious Japan. While providing comprehensible information, radioactive performances are partial in their nature, as they omit controversial aspects of radiation dangers, as well as different understandings of what counts as recovery. The notion of radioactiveperformances is useful to understand how environmental hazards get materialize to support specific politics of recovery in post-disaster contexts. [Keywords: Japan, Fukushima, nuclear disaster, radioactive contamination, performance, risk communication, normalization]