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Why Onagawa Nuclear Power Station Survived the Tsunami
Kyusaku Natsume writes "While the town of Onagawa, Miyagi Prefecture, was hit hard by the March 2011 tsunami, the nuclear plant it shares with the equally devastated city of Ishinomaki survived. The reason it did so is mostly down to the personal strength and tenacity of one Yanosuke Hirai, who passed away in 1986 and insisted that the plant should have been protected by a 14.8 m tall seawall. A great quote from the article: 'Corporate ethics and compliance may be similar, but their cores are different, from the perspective of corporate social responsibility, we cannot say that there is no need to question a company's actions just because they are not a crime under the law.'"
Dear Slashdot,
In an hope of developing an hardware that comes as fully open source and with an help file arranged in an hierarchy like a tree I am providing this information. The help file will contain all information regarding the project. It is important to me as I would like to buy an house with the profits. It would be a honor if you can spend a hour or less looking this message over and thinking about it.
The desire is to build an helicopter, but not just any helicopter, an helicopter that is open source! It might sound like an hopeless pipedream but I assure you this is not an hack and it will be successful. It is definitely not planned to be an hilarious failure. First we need to find an horizontal plane on which to fix an hydraulic pump. Without an horizontal surface the project will be an horrible failure. With an horsepower as great as an helicopter has, an horizontally mounted hydraulic pump is an absolute requirement. Anyone is welcome to give an hand is this project to provide ideas but I think that the pump is essential.
To start the project I need a few things:
First, I am looking for an hand in finding an hydraulic pump that is in an horizontal plane and wondered how many people have one.
Second, would it be a good idea to have an hang-glider attached to the bottom of the helicopter in case there is an horrible accident? An horrible accident could happen if the horizontal plane is out by as much and the width of an hair which would cause an hazardous situation that may require the pilot to abort. Without the hang-glider it may not be possible to avoid an harmful situation and it would certainly be an hazard. Having a hang-glider is surely an harmless addition even if it does not provide any pragmatic use (it would also be fun to fly.)
Pilots will of course be provided with an helmet. Even people riding an horse have to wear an helmet otherwise they might end up in an hospital after the horse tries to jump an hurdle and there is an hump where it lands! There is a honest desire to get this project off the ground so please discuss.
Yours Sincerely,
Fellow hacker
Laws and legal liability are a subset of social ethics. Just because you can do something legally isn't a vindication that you should do it.
... we cannot say that there is no need to question a company's actions just because they are not a crime under the law.
The spirit of the Samurai still lives. This is good. I'd thought MacArthur had bled that out of the Japanese.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
The right thing to do is not necessarily the profitable or expedient thing to do.
To quote Richard Feynman, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." Engineering must NEVER have its integrity compromised by issues of money, politics, law, marketing, religion, bureaucracy, or superstition. History repeatedly teaches this to us and yet we still obstinately refuse to learn. And the result is that people are injured or killed.
As a computer engineer, I am always a little jealous of the "all in a days work" attitude of good civil engineers. This is a bit of a puff piece, but the unfortunate fact is, we, as engineers, often can't or at least don't anticipate all possible problems down the line. This is an amazing story of success, but it just underscores the fact that this is exception, not the rule. Regardless, technology keeps marching and we can only hope to get better and better, despite governments' inadequacies.
I wonder if TEPCO will attempt to claim credit for something they didn't want to do.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
This story includes malware. Happy I have antivirus, and a system that can't run .exe's.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
They should build a giant statue of Yanosuke Hirai as a reminder. My organization needs one also.
Table-ized A.I.
If you've read Professor Yunus's Book, "Creating a World without Poverty" in which he describes the concept of "Social Business" as an alternative to pathological profit-maximisation, you will fully appreciate his interpretation of "Corporate Social Responsibility" being synonymous with "Corporate Financial *irresponsibility*".
the damage caused by allowing Corporations to get so out of control at a National (and an International) level should by now be quite obvious, with these kinds of examples such as Fukushima. there is an alternative pathogen which consumes all resources and maximises its own gain to the absolute exclusion of all other considerations: it's called Cancer. Profit-maximising Corporations are a Cancer and should be treated as a disease.
While I'm far from disagreeing that nuclear power stations should be as safe as conceivably possible, what about the cities?
18 Cities were largely or completely destroyed by the tsunami (others merely to some small part). This is where people lived, this is where people died. Where is the scandal, where is the outrage about exposing some 500,000 to the risk of the on-rushing water? Where is the investigation why it could be that almost 20,000 people died?
There has been so much supposedly outraged talk about Fukushima Daiichi, about how anybody could expose the people to such risks, that it is grotesque that nobody is talking about the risk that was there, that was obvious, that killed people.
Interesting argument, but it relies on a logical fallacy that implies our wealth is derived from being free, and not from being a growing industrialized nation. China might be an argument against your supposition.
Other thought - while our country was "free" there were horrors, like rivers catching on fire from accumulated waste, and working situations like "the Jungle" by Upton Sinclair.
Our wealth is beng polarized by the new Oil Barrons, and wasteful wars, etc.
..........FULL STOP.
If you do not learn from history you are doomed to repeat it's failures. Hirai new this
after he examined this historical tsunami data. Good on him for prevailing.
Has anyone figured out what a big wall around fukushima would have cost, and compared that to the loss (many incalculable) from not having said wall? I'm thinking a 1,000 to 1 payback...
I come here for the love
...and most government officers rarely are good public servants.
Many cities had seawalls. There were several places that survived the tsunami. The seawalls coupled with the tsunami alerts bought thousands, maybe millions enough time to evacuate, but, since people had to run uphill, this meant that the elderly were unable to evacuate. This is the reason that caused that a very high percentage of elderly people -even for japanese standards- died in the tsunami. They make the bulk of casualties. Is easier to harden a small place than to try to protect thousands of kilometers of coast. Still, there is a nice story about the small city of Fudai in Iitate Prefecture that survived the tsunami:.
How one village defied the tsunami
Long story short, a very long and expensive project to protect the small city, "waste of taxes" in the view of critics, but that saved the whole town in the end. People went to pay their respects to the grave of the city's mayor that pushed for the seawall, Mr. Kotaku Wamura. We can say that good politicians coupled with good engineers and a society able and willing to pay taxes saves lives.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
it relies on a logical fallacy that implies our wealth is derived from being free, and not from being a growing industrialized nation. China might be an argument against your supposition.
China was piss-poor until they adopted a free economy system.
The fallacy is on you, when you consider all the industrialization plans they implemented in communist countries, hoping they would provide wealth. The end result? Communism is no more, except in Cuba and North Korea.
The reason only Fukushima NPP was destroyed is because only Fukushima had the Stuxnet computer worm infection in Japan. That is, because only Fukushima was doing plutonium production in Japan and the axis of New York - Tel Aviv wanted to prevent that, just like they wanted to prevent Iran's programme. Japan started to produce and stockpile plutonium as a preparation for rapid nuclear weapon production, after the USA denied it exports of the F-22 Raptor super-fighter jet, throwing her fodder to the commies of DPRK, Russia and mainland China.