Masao Yoshida, Director of Fukushima Daichii Nuclear Plant, Has Died

Doofus writes "Masao Yoshida, director of the Daichii Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, has passed away. Colleagues and politicos in Japan praised his disobedience during the post-tsunami meltdown and credited him with preventing much more widespread and intense damage. From the article: 'On March 12, a day after the tsunami, Mr. Yoshida ignored an order from Tepco headquarters to stop pumping seawater into a reactor to try and cool it because of concerns that ocean water would corrode the equipment. Tepco initially said it would penalize Mr. Yoshida even though Sakae Muto, then a vice president at the utility, said it was a technically appropriate decision. Mr. Yoshida received no more than a verbal reprimand after then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan defended the plant chief, the Yomiuri newspaper reported. "I bow in respect for his leadership and decision-making," Kan said Tuesday in a message posted on his Twitter account.'"

Comments

So a CEO tryed a mr burns I think in an emergency

[Joe_Dragon]

In an emergency the on site staff should full control over what is going on.

Blame Fukushima

[Russ1642]

Every case of cancer in Japan for the next 200 years is going to be blamed on Fukushima.

Re:Blame Fukushima

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power isn't safe. It *could* be done safe, but not in a world of corporate greed and bought politicians and regulatory agencys.

Re:Blame Fukushima

[citylivin]

"clean relatively safe nuclear power."

I don't think I would consider "safe" any industry where an accident or malpractice could result in a place being uninhabitable for 10,000 - 100,000 years. It is immoral to saddle future generations with this burden, however slight you perceive the risk to be.

Nuclear apologists need to wake up. Human error is always going to be a problem. Untill the world gets its act together and starts deploying more CANDU type reactors which by design cannot meltdown, I for one will still fight against nuclear power.

You have an industry that deploys proven flawed designs from 40-60 years ago, and then runs the plants way longer than recommended lifetimes. The way the world currently does nuclear power, more accidents are inevitable.

Re:Blame Fukushima

[ericloewe]

100% safety is impossible anywhere.

Fukushima would've been a non-issue as well if the backup generators had actually been logically placed.

Re:Blame Fukushima

[loshwomp]

Untill the world gets its act together and starts deploying more CANDU type reactors which by design cannot meltdown, I for one will still fight against nuclear power.

The right time to fight against nuclear power is the day after the last coal plant shuts down, because back in the real world, when nuclear shuts down, coal replaces it (immediately!) nearly 1 for 1, and coal kills many, many more people even when it is working nominally. (Coal generation also releases much more radiation into the atmosphere.)

Alternative energy proponents: Save it. I love 'em, too, and I back that up with the 7 kW of thermal and photovoltaics on my roof, but it doesn't change the fact that coal (and gas) are what ramp up (in real time) when nukes shut down. Examples abound.

Germany? Building new coal plants as it blathers about shutting down the nukes.

Japan? Partially made up for their nuclear shortfall with conservation (good!) but mostly with increased imports of coal (and especially LNG, brought to you by fracking).

Now that the last San Onofre units are offline, California will be compensating (forever) with additional coal and natural gas generation.

Re:Blame Fukushima

[drkoemans]

I'm just going to leave this here. Guess we shouldn't consider dams safe either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morvi_dam_failure

Re:Blame Fukushima

[dissy]

So basically a technology that "resulted in a place being uninhabitable" thousands of times known as coal is perfectly OK in your book, and natural gas lifting which has done the same for roughly a hundred cities is also OK, but nuclear which has done this twice is Mr Evil?

So your whole argument is 2 > 100 > 50000+ ?

Re:Still no deaths

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because the US Navy's nuclear propulsion program and France's government run nuclear power program have had SO many problems...

Wake up, the only way to SAFELY run a reactor is to put operational safety ahead of making money. Ironically you will probably make more money that way...

Re:So a CEO tryed a mr burns I think in an emergen

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever thought about the possibility, that there are some people visiting slashdot, whose native language is NOT english?
And take that a bit further. Have you ever thought about the possibility, that such people MAY NOT be speaking english perfectly? ...or am I feeding a troll again?

Re:from the somebody's gonna say it dept:

[sjames]

So you allege that a bizarre accident involving a paper clip, a fuel rod, and a tsunami transported undetectable ghost radiation back in time and deposited it in his esophagus?

Re:Tepco

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Fuckyoushima may not have been the origin of his cancer, but it probably accelerated the disease.

If that is the case, it's much more likely that the suppression of his immunity system's ability to fight cancer was a result of psychological stress (which he was exposed to) associated with the incident and the government's meddling into his culpability, rather than a result of acute radiation poisoning (which he didn't experience anyway).

I know it's all fun and games here

[kaizendojo]

But what he did was heroic. Especially in a society that empahsizes respect for superiors. In the US, we wouldn't think twice about second guessing a higher up if we thought there was an inherent risk but this is almost unheard of in the Asian culture. Anata ni keii, Yoshida-san.