The French TSO and public communication during crisis: lessons learned from the Fukushima accident. First results

This paper presents the feedback experience of the TCC (Technical Crisis Centre) experts during the Fukushima accident. An important aspect of the job was answering questions coming from the public. It appeared that a majority of the calling persons had first read the information they asked during the call, but wanted to be told the information, as if the status of information was quite different when delivered by a human being. Another aspect is the trust in the information given by experts, the Chernobyl syndrome with 'the radioactive cloud stopped at the frontier' is still there: the general idea is 'the experts lied to us once why would they tell us the truth now?' A significant number of calls related to planned visits to Japan or stays in Japan and the information about health hazards and risks was not sufficient to the callers, they wanted a more 'digested' information, in fact they expected a decision: to go or not to go, to stay or to fly back. Another aspect is the vocabulary used by experts, it must be appropriate, simple and creative and must draw in the caller's mind a right picture of the situation concerning the aspects arisen by the caller's question. To have all the experts answering in the same room helped to have exchanges between them. (A.C.)