How and why did credible scientists, engineers, government officials, journalists, and others collectively give rise to a drastic failure to control the threat to the population of the Fukushima disaster? Why was there no effort on the part of inter-organizational networks, well-coordinated in the nuclear village, to prevent the risks from turning into a disaster?

This book answers these questions by formulating the concept of "structural disaster" afresh. First, the book presents the path-dependent development of structural disaster through a sociological...