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.'"

Comments

Legality

[macraig]

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.

Re:Legality

[hey!]

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.

Laws and legal liability *intersect* social ethics. There are cases where complying with law or regulations would be unethical.

Re:Legality

[Sarten-X]

Just to clarify a point here, because it's a pet peeve of mine...

Jury nullification is for when the law itself is unethical, not just when one application is unethical. If you have an ethical reason to break a law, that's mitigating circumstances, which can itself lead to a "not guilty" verdict, without bringing the issue of the law's legality into question (which almost always just makes a trial more complicated).

There are really rather few cases where nullification is a reasonable option, but the hivemind here seems to be obsessed with it as a panacea for unpopular laws.

Re:Legality

[TheGratefulNet]

it works the other way, too.

just because someone bought a law decrying X to be illegal does not mean its immoral to so X.

in fact, if the law is recent enough, likely THE LAW is unethical and the behavior perfectly fine. very likely, given our back-assward world we now live in.

Re:Legality

[TheGratefulNet]

JN _is_ a viable way to fight unjust laws. not just instances of injustice but whole laws.

we all know that getting laws passed (or even worse, revoked) is near impossible for regular people.

the JN option is essentially the only option we have left, as 'little people'. our power faded when corps took over making (and even sometimes enforcing) laws.

but if you are in the jury box, you DO have a way to say 'enough is enough' this is bullshit and this guy does not deserve X to happen to him. I simply don't give a shit about what law you claim he broke; sending him to prison is WRONG and I won't allow it'.

that's what JN is about. standing up for your view of ethics even in the face of 'establishment' saying otherwise.

Re:Legality

[iserlohn]

Um.. did it ever cross you mind that the weathy has a responsibility to ensure that the society which is has benifitted from immensely is sustained?

There is a moral argument for providing a social safety net (and by extension a working universal healthcare system), and then there is a practical one - a country where the majority of it citizens is not able to sustain a minimium living standard will be prone to widespread civil unrest.

May I remind you that there were a time when government was small - social cohesion was usually maintained by force - and the living standards of the many were squalid. Are you seriously adovcating the return to those times (just so we can compete with China on cheap labor)?

Re:Legality

[iserlohn]

By your argument, Somalia must have the fastest growing economy on earth due to the lack of government intervention.

The industrialization of America is not the result of less government - (in those times America has similar amount of industrial regulation when compared to its contemporaries). It is because America at that time had lots of resources, including natural resources and labor that has not been fully developed into an industrial economy. Similar to how China is right now.

I hate to say this, but you're adding nothing to the argument. The thing we should be discussing is not whether to regulate - it is established beyond doubt in economics, especially after the events of 2007, that blind deregulation leads to extremely bad outcomes. What we need to determine is what to regulate and how to do it.

Your argument that because government regulation may lead to some bad outcomes some of the time, so shouldn't be doing it all of the time is a logical fallcy and doesn't hold water. BTW, the proper way of dealing with government tyranny is to ensure that the constitution of government is accountable to the people, not to destroy the mechanism of government.

Re:Legality

[miro2]

May I remind you that there was time when USA had the most individual freedoms FROM government intervention (specifically between the Civil war and WWI)

I don't think that was exactly the most freedom-filled time for those of us who are not white, straight, men.

Re:Legality

[Jawnn]

Um.. did it ever cross you mind that the weathy has a responsibility to ensure that the society which is has benifitted from immensely is sustained?

- what crossed my mind is that this is exactly the kind of thought process that destroys the society by taking away people's individual rights and killing off the economy.

The history of the United States would contradict your fairy-tale views. When the U.S. was it's most prosperous, when the standard of living for the average citizen was at it's absolute highest, the extremely wealthy were "suffering" tax rates far, far higher than at any time before or since.

Re:Legality

[jd]

Then you're a moron. Your points are contradicted by reality.

Individual rights cannot exist without collective rights for them to exist within. Anarchy has total freedom but no rights.

Social safety nets exist because all natural systems degenerate to the 80:20 rule and the 80:20 rule is neither efficient nor ethical.

The US has never been particularly productive, individual freedoms != individual rights (Americans really need to grasp this), and the time between the Civil War and WW1 is when it was guilty of most of the theft of technology from other nations, had one of the worst civil rights records and was most interested in financially backing tyrannies and dictatorships. It fought many wars in that time out of greed and perversion (not claiming more recent wars were better, merely those wars were cynical, self-serving and degenerate), xenophobia and religious extremism were rampant. The South, especially, became dangerously close to Failed Nation status out of its desire to circumvent individual rights in the name of individual freedom.

I regard the US as the worst possible example of progressive or rational thinking. The first President had it right - political parties are destructive monstrosities and liberty is no excuse for the destruction of society.

Re:Legality

[Xyrus]

- what crossed my mind is that this is exactly the kind of thought process that destroys the society by taking away people's individual rights and killing off the economy.

Your opinion is backed up by facts. Popular uprising and social unrest always results from the haves trampling the have-nots. You can either think ahead and plan for a sustainable system or you can pilfer by force through a robber-baron culture until people get pissed off enough to take to the streets.

not by using majority to steal from minority. There is absolutely nothing moral or just about it.

Nobody is stealing anything. It takes money to maintain a large nation, and it has to come from somewhere. You certainly aren't going to get it from the poor, which make up a surprisingly large percentage of this country.

Sounds to me like your perfectly happy letting the rich rape the poor though.

- May I remind you that there was time when USA had the most individual freedoms FROM government intervention (specifically between the Civil war and WWI) and that was the time when USA became the most productive country, becoming world's biggest creditor nation, exporting highest quality, affordable manufactured goods. All this, while increasing the strength of its own economy and making everybody who lived in it much wealthier (the dollar gained value by factor of 2, while USA still became the largest exporter of manufactured goods).

[citation needed]

Some of the worst economic crisis happened during that period, including recurring bank runs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States). What your describing happened after WW2, and that's because we were one of the places with an economy and manufacturing capability still intact after the war.

This was definitely prior to USA growing a huge government and destroying its economy and society in the process, while becoming world's greatest debtor nation not only on the planet at the time, but in history of humanity.

That's the fault of congress and the wealthy that fund and control them. In case you hadn't notice, there aren't exactly many poor people in positions of power so your "tyranny of the majority" argument has no basis. Th wealthy are in control of the nation, and it is the wealthy who will drive it into the ground for their own benefit.

USA is now bankrupt, only holding together by other nations providing it with the consumables that it eats without producing anything in return.

We are not bankrupt. You're opinion is that we are bankrupt, but by any legal definition we are far from being bankrupt.

And once again, you have only the wealthy to blame. They pushed to remove regulations and restrictions, and once they got what they wanted they shipped everything off overseas to increase profits, created entire markets on speculation, and trashed the economy and manufacturing in this country in the process. Sure, we can get those jobs back if we roll back labor laws to allow conditions like third world countries to occur here but I'm pretty sure that will result in some serious issues.

There is no such thing as 'responsibility' of the few to maintain standard of living for many, that's pure nonsense.

Well, at least not to a sociopath such as yourself.

Voluntarism is the key, but it only works in a free society, there is no voluntarism in a totalitarian regime.

Voluntarism doesn't work at large scales. Do you honestly think people will donate enough to offset the social safety nets in this country? Especially when almost all the wealth is controlled by a very tiny percent of the population? You're incredibly naive if you thinks so.

Again: democracy leads to tyranny, that's what you have now.

You really have no fucking idea what tyranny is. Grow up.

when will we ever learn

[wickerprints]

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.

Re:when will we ever learn

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I think that Feynman, while he has a nice point, is really far too optimistic in saying that we 'refuse to learn'. There are, certainly, examples of engineering fuckups caused by genuine failures of understanding or lack of information; but there is also the common instance where the 'we' making the decision knows full well that they won't be the people who get injured or killed(or even subjected to civil or criminal liability) and so make the perfectly value-rational decision to go ahead and do it.

There are ignorance problems and there are malice problems(and, hovering somewhere between the two, there are the gamblers who take on risks that turn out to go badly)...

Re:when will we ever learn

[AmiMoJo]

Better safety measures to protect their million/billion dollar assets are very much in their interest.

Two reasons why it is not:

1. Profits are higher 99% of the time, and when something goes wrong it wasn't their fault (big tsunami, rouge operator mistake etc). Ultimately someone has to decide to spend money on safety, and chances are that person won't be to blame if there is an accident but will get a bonus if the share price goes up so there is little incentive for them to chose the less profitable option.

2. The majority of the cost of an accident is born by the government anyway. The cost of insuring nuclear installations would make them uneconomical so the government has to do it. I don't have a figure for Japan to hand by in the UK the required insurance is £140m per site and in the US it is $10bn for the entire industry. Fukushima has already cost orders of magnitude more than that, and while TEPCO will eventually pick up some of that cost the majority is being met by the government.

Re:when will we ever learn

[TapeCutter]

or even subjected to civil or criminal liability

No, unlike software engineers, real engineers are legally accountable (at least in the west). If you sign off on a doggy bridge design and the bridge falls down, it will be shown (by other engineers) that you failed in your due dilligence, you will go to jail, you will never hold another engineering position on a western project. You will get sued in civil court, not just by the victims but also by the insurance companies that will have to pay to clean up your mess and build a new bridge.

Politicians have nowhere near this level of accountability. If they are warned about (say) levees but ignore the problem for decades. When they inevetibly break at the hieght of a king tide, it's called a "natural disaster", "a freak occurence" or if they're really nailed to the wall, "aging infrastructue".

Social Contracts

[MrKaos]

Too often, in corporations, we see that it is up to the individual making sacrifices to their career to make a company fulfil it's social contract to operate ethically to make profit.

I wonder if TEPCO will attempt to claim credit for something they didn't want to do.

Re:Social Contracts

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

We at TEPCO are proud to retroactively congratulate any and all peons whose thankless personal sacrifices turned out to have been in our best interest. We would like to take a moment to encourage future sacrifices by employees on behalf of TEPCO.

While not everyone will have the honor of insisting on sound engineering at vulnerable nuclear facilities, we are sure that all of you can find a way to squeeze in some unpaid overtime or not seek reimbursement of job related expenses.

Re:Social Contracts

[Anonymous Coward]

what's so sad about the whole fukushima mess and this article, is that the meltdown wasn't even caused by the tsunami - unit 1 (at least) was already melting down, out of control, and venting radioactive xenon, iodine and caesium before the tsunami even hit. the earthquake itself was enough to shear the reactor coolant pipes. even if the diesel generators weren't wiped out, the plant would have suffered the exact same fate.

but for all the apologists saying plants in the usa are safe, i wonder what they'll do when an earthquake knocks out cooling for a plant that's nearby themselves or their family. probably run for the hills i assume - any nuclear plant that's not 100% passively safe (that is, every plant on the face of the earth as of right now) should never have been built. then again, who cares what engineer's think about failsafes.

but we had to go with a reactor that could breed bomb-grade plutonium, instead of a passively safe plan like a thorium reactor. look where it's got us.

Re:Huzzah!

[tqk]

The spirit of the Samurai still lives. This is good. I'd thought MacArthur had bled that out of the Japanese.

Samurai were conservative engineers? Who knew? I thought they were a warrior race.

Wikipedia: "From the earliest times, the Samurai felt that the path of the warrior was one of honor, emphasizing duty to one's master, and loyalty unto death." That's what I was talking about. He didn't just "build to code." He built what he believed was necessary to satisfy the requirements of the situation. He was also proved right.

Re:Huzzah!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm not sure that's a 'Samurai' thing as much as a 'not a sociopath' thing...

A toast to Mr. Hirai

[Tablizer]

They should build a giant statue of Yanosuke Hirai as a reminder. My organization needs one also.

logical conclusion

[spineboy]

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.