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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.'"
In an emergency the on site staff should full control over what is going on.
Every case of cancer in Japan for the next 200 years is going to be blamed on Fukushima.
If you want to make the preposterous claim that Yoshida's esophageal cancer was induced by the radiation released in the Fukushima incident, fine, go ahead, make a fool of yourself. His cancer went symptomatic mere months after the incident, which is a timeframe that makes it all but certain that the neoplastic changes leading to the malignant growth in his esophagus had been going on for years before that and that the timing is mere coincidence. Although there have been cases of fast-acting radiation-induced cancer, such cases are associated with massive doses of radiation leading to severe acute radiation poisoning, which, AFAIK, he hadn't experienced (from what I know, only two workers were treated for acute radiation poisoning, and he was not one of them), and the fast-acting cancer usually happens to be leukemia (and it takes at least year and two to develop anyway, not months), whereas other kinds of tumors (hint! Hint! Esophageal cancer!) take something like ten years to develop, at the minimum.
Ezekiel 23:20
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...
What TFS doesn't mention was that he died of esophageal cancer. And he got it after nine months of being at the power plant after the accident.
TEPCO claims the cancer is not related to the accident. Of course they would.
Because it's not. Cancer takes a long time to show up (decades) unless it's leukemia, which isn't what he had. If the works are going to start dieing from cancer (which they very well might) it'll start happening around 2020
TEPCO claims the cancer is not related to the accident. Of course they would.
Yes, just like an evolutionary biologist knowledgeable in his field would claim that humans have evolved from other mammals, now extinct. You could say "of course he would" in that case, too.
Ezekiel 23:20
Medical facts are on their side. You simply cannot go from cancer free to death by esophageal cancer in this timeframe. That means he was already developing it before the tsunami.
Frankly, it probably wasn't. Odds are, he smoked like a chimney--lots of Japanese still do, you know. Esophageal cancer is also more likely with alcohol consumption--and drinking parties are another Japanese tradition--in those with alcohol flush reaction, which is a common genetic disposition in Japanese people.
And you claim they are related?
Let's see some evidence.
If Tepco claimed that his turning into a green-skinned, giant rampaging brute wasn't related to the accident, THAT might be suspect; but saying that terminal cancer nine months after exposure ISN'T.
Because nobody ever suffocated in a deep dark pit mining coal.
Poor industrial hygiene isn't particular to the nuclear industry. In fact, the energy density is so much higher, you need to do a lot less of the dangerous mining and processing for nuclear fuels per unit energy. Her actual cause of death being a car accident also seems to point to a hazard which, while a lot could be done to improve things, has nothing to do with nuclear power.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Why does that matter?
What is the Whoops about?
Have you ever thought about the possibility, that there are some people visiting slashdot, whose native language is NOT english? ...or am I feeding a troll again?
And take that a bit further. Have you ever thought about the possibility, that such people MAY NOT be speaking english perfectly?
Its disingenuous to remove Chernobyl from the "Still no deaths due to radiation" statement.
Deaths due to the explosion and initial radiation release
Any accident that causes rescue operators to die from radiation sickness is relevant.
"The future can only affect the present if there is room to write its influence off as a mistake." - Yakir Aharonov
In an emergency the on site staff should full control over what is going on.
u japanize?
also, it was reported that it probably isn't radiation from the accident, as the illness is the type that would have had to mature for years if it was from radiation.
that's not to say of course that there wasn't a covered up radioactive godzilla attack earlier!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Esophageal cancer isn't something that crops up in a mere nine months.
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?
There will be no shortage of tracking either, vs. trends expected in Kapan vs. reality, and w.r.t. the rest of the world.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Furthermore, Japan loves to smoke. And this is one of the cancers that you can get from smoking.
A little google-fu turned up this article which shows that he was most definitely a smoker:
He recalled in the interview often passing out cigarettes to workers in a heavily used smoking room beside the bunker during the disaster and once joked: “We don’t have the US army fire trucks we need but at least we have got smokes.” Fukushima boss Masao Yoshida breaks silence on disaster -- The Australian
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
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).
Ezekiel 23:20
I don't think that was what he meant.
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.
"Wake up, the only way to SAFELY run a reactor is to put operational safety ahead of making money"
But that is not highly profitable.
Can we at least use minimum wage workers and temps?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Besides, esophageal cancer is so common in old men of 58 years.
Yes, esophageal cancer is very common in old men of 58 years who smoke like chimneys.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Even with a massive dose of radiation, he wouldn't get esophageal cancer in this timeframe. If anything, he would get leukemia
Nuclear power still remains the safest, most powerful energy source yet known, so long as the government isn't running the show (see Chernobyl).
Are you seriously arguing that the public sector is inherently less responsible than the private sector, based on a single data-point?
Maybe you should look more into what caused the Fukushima disaster: It was a serious of bad design decisions for the active cooling system all made by General Electric and TEPCO, failure to report and explain design changes that made them even less safe, falsification of safety records, and failure to heed engineer warnings about flood risks from tsunamis.
Three Mile Island happened because of workers failing to obey safety regulations, bad design in relying on turbines still being active for cooling, and bad design of the indicator light for the stuck valve -- all failures in the private sector side of things.
Of course, those are only two points of a data. I'd be a hypocrite if I insisted with such a small sample set that this demonstrated that the private industry was less responsible. However, I think that's more than enough to say that the notion that nuclear power is safe unless the government comes in and screws things up is demonstrably false. Private industry is just as capable of screwing up nuclear power.
Also, in review of all of these disasters, there was nothing inherently economic about the nature of them -- all were human failures led by failure to follow established procedures, failures of engineering, and/or cost-cutting or blame-avoiding. These kind of failures are rife in both the private and public sectors. Blaming "teh gubbermint" is just intellectual laziness and/or the product of viewing the world through a partisan lens.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"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. http://equipmentbds.blogspot.com/">please visit it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiru ... Inspired by her, Watanabe realizes that it is not too late for him and that he still can do something. He then dedicates his remaining time and energy to accomplish one worthwhile achievement before his life ends. Through his tireless and persistent efforts, he is able to overcome the stagnation of bureaucracy and turn a mosquito-infested cesspool into a children's playground. The last third of the film takes place during Watanabe's wake, as his former co-workers try to figure out what caused such a dramatic change in his behavior. ..."
"Ikiru (..., "To Live") is a 1952 Japanese film co-written and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film examines the struggles of a minor Tokyo bureaucrat and his final quest for meaning. The film is inspired by the Leo Tolstoy short story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich".[1] It stars Takashi Shimura as Kanji Watanabe.
Thank you, Masao Yoshida, for making the Fukushima disaster less bad then it could have been, despite personal career risk. I hope you are on to better things.
Another person who prevented nuclear fallout of a possible WWIII:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
"Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov (...) (30 January 1926 -- 19 August 1998) was a Soviet Navy officer. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he prevented the launch of a nuclear torpedo and thereby prevented a possible nuclear war.[1] Thomas Blanton (then director of the National Security Archive) said in 2002 that "a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world".[1]"
How close we often skate to the edge without realizing it...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
True I suppose, but if someone falls off the roof while installing a solar panel, that doesn't make the whole city the house was in uninhabitable for decades/centuries. Its not just a straight kW/h test.
"The future can only affect the present if there is room to write its influence off as a mistake." - Yakir Aharonov
What is this bizarre obsession with deaths as the only meaningful statistic? The same thing applies to evaluating war it seem. Ignore the huge numbers of people injured, often cripplingly, and ignore the huge cost. Deaths are the only metric.
Also, in the case of Fukushima the government wasn't running the show, TEPCO was.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Other views of the corporate ethics of running a nuclear facility. (Yes, I know this account if fictional.)
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Fine but I am getting the fuck out of here and it is on you.
US Navy's nuclear propulsion program and France's government run nuclear power program
The common point between the two is that they are not managed by private entities for which profit is more important than safety.
Well at least it had been the case for France nuclear program. Now that it was turned private for the sake of free market (an EU mantra), I am scared for the future.
Your mistake is in simultaneously believing two falsehoods: that it's not in one's long-term financial interest to make a safe product; and that politicians are not interested in making money (or that they have some "greater public welfare" in mind).
And as two counterexamples to those falsehoods, I refer you to Bernie Madoff, who destroyed his life, and countless career politicians who have destroyed the lives of others to their own short-term benefit.
private entities for which profit is more important than safety
Why do you presume this to be the case?
Because private entities are incited to cut corners when it comes to safety. Let us imagine you are the manager of a power plant, with bonus tied to profit and safety. You can go from x chances a year to get an accident to 2x chances of year of having an accident, while increasing profit. You may assume 2x is still low and unlikely to happen while you are in charge, and choose to lower safety for profit.
Of course the regulator's job is to set up metrics (and check them) so that you cannot do that without being detected, and perhaps your own morals will prevent you from such a behavior, but not everything is controlled by the metrics, and you may even make choices that increase the profit/safety ratio without even being aware of it.
Why would the power plant manager's boss (or insurance provider, or stakeholders) not have any interest in independently validating that the chance of an accident has not increased? Why would he take the manager's word for it that the safety has not decreased?
Yes, TEPCO was running the show, and despite the media hysteria, the measurable damage to individuals is minimal.