Cause-effect analysis on Fukushima accident reports. What did McMaster undergraduate students learn?

In the ENG PHYS 4ES3 Course "Special Topics in Energy Systems (2014-2015)" in McMaster University, sixteen 4th-year undergraduate students studied the Fukushima accident, discussed the causes of accident and its impacts on the energy systems from the sustainability point of view, made the oral presentation and submitted the reports. In this paper, a cause-effect and causal-loop analysis was applied to the discussion in the reports, the diagram of cause-effect relationship was drawn, and the important problems were extracted from the diagram. It was found that the important problems and the diagram of cause-effect relationship McMaster undergraduate students considered were similar to the essential problems and the diagram Horii pointed out, although Interim Report of the Investigation Committee on the Accident at Fukushima Nuclear Stations of Tokyo Electric Power Company which Horii used was not adopted in the reports submitted by students. (author)