""There were studies which showed a one-in-1,000-year probability of the Fukushima coast being hit by a 10m tsunami," he said. "Unfortunately, those studies were dismissed. The nuclear industry didn't think it would happen, so they didn't prepare for it," [Tatsujiro Suzuki, of Japan's Atomic Energy Commission] said.
...Prof Kurokawa blames what he calls "regulatory capture", a process by which the nuclear power industry "captured" the bureaucracy that was supposed to regulate it.
...The result was a nuclear industry imbued with a culture of arrogance, secrecy and complacency. Lessons learned after Chernobyl and Three Mile Island in the US were not implemented here. When disaster struck, Japan was woefully ill-prepared.
An investigation by Japan's NHK broadcaster last year found that simple equipment, things like mobile generators and battery packs that could have helped prevent the meltdowns, were sitting at a depot just 25 miles (40km) from the Fukushima plant.
After the tsunami knocked out the plant's electrical system there was still time to bring in the back-up equipment. Army helicopters were on standby. But there was no plan. Chaos ensued.
A senior company official in charge of logistics was asked by the NHK team why he had not dispatched the equipment. "We had a very long list of things they needed. We had no way to prioritise which should go first," he said."
52 comments:
""We had a very long list of things they needed. We had no way to prioritise which should go first," he said."
Pick a plumber and an engineer from the phone book and give them the list to prioritize.
You know why that list wasn't followed? Because they needed a sequence of committees formed with multiple lists and it was just too hard to get everyone to show up for the meetings.
The problem with big organizations, especially government ones is that although they have the resources to do big things, they are incapable of doing all the little things that need done with simple efficiency, because they handle simple tasks the same as complex ones.
When your trash can catches on fire, you don't need a checklist.
I see the failure here as the same one evident with the government instructions on how to dispose of a fluorescent bulb, which apparently involves about the same complexity as shutting down a nuclear plant.
Careful and dutiful can be at odds with one another.
But ultimately, the Japanese just can't help fucking up with nuclear stuff. First they put two of their cities under a couple of US atomic bombs, and then the whole Godzilla thing, and now this. And Godzilla's scheduled to hit again sometime next Spring. Looks like they're going to have to get Heisenberg (another name with ominous nuclear connections) to come clean the mess up for them.
...
Or something....
In '42, they called it Victory Disease. They laughed when MacArthur said he would return.
In '44, they were trying to bail out the last sinking carrier.
This archetype you mention, it's a Western one. The corresponding Japanese cultural one is of the authorities as being complacent, shamelessly corrupt, and far more concerned in "saving face" with a well-crafted cover-up than in ever fixing a problem. It isn't just the nuclear power industry that "captured" their regulators - it is pretty much the Japanese way of life. Banks and companies and their pets in the ministries, all tom-catting all over town on marathon drinking binges & blowing wads of yen in the hostess bars.
People see the export-oriented industries of Japan, and think they're "Japan", but all of the efficiencies and carefulness and so forth are concentrated in that single sector. There's really two economic Japans, and the internal one is mind-blowingly corrupt and small-minded. The other economic Japan has heavily out-sourced itself to the rest of Asia since the popping of the bubble, in search of cheaper and more abundant labor.
Did you ever attend a public meeting called for the purpose of convincing the neighborhood to support the construction of a flood control channel designed to contain a "100-year storm" run-off?
Maybe it is because I have so many Asian friends and associates, but the description I most often hear applied to the Japanese isn't "they are careful and dutiful". It is "they are arrogant and incapable of admitting error, and we can't stand them".
Toyota's tying billions of dollars to a semi-ditzy Megan Draper look-alike so I figure women's lib must be pretty much dead because those Japs know exactly what they're doing.
Mitch and Rev, I stand corrected. So I guess the high suicide rate is due to fear of losing face, which they will do anything not to.
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fukushima - one of these is not like the others...
deb: Well, somewhat, but it also has a lot to do with a cultural acceptance, or even endorsement of suicide as a valid choice. There's no religious bar against it, either, except for that 2-3% of the population who are Christian.
No back up equipment.
I forgot the wow just wow.
wow just wow.
Revenant said...
Maybe it is because I have so many Asian friends and associates, but the description I most often hear applied to the Japanese isn't "they are careful and dutiful". It is "they are arrogant and incapable of admitting error, and we can't stand them".
I would concur with this assessment considering I used to work for a Japanese company. In fact I'll go as far to say that they saw themselves as being superior in every way. I'd even heard them refer to themselves as the 'Golden People'. Granted, this came from many of the Japanese that were exiled to paradise, meaning they were shipped off to the US to get away from those that saw them in disfavor, so the irony isn't lost on me at all. I'll never work for a Japanese company again.
Mitch H. said...
This archetype you mention, it's a Western one. The corresponding Japanese cultural one is of the authorities as being complacent, shamelessly corrupt, and far more concerned in "saving face" with a well-crafted cover-up than in ever fixing a problem. It isn't just the nuclear power industry that "captured" their regulators - it is pretty much the Japanese way of life. Banks and companies and their pets in the ministries, all tom-catting all over town on marathon drinking binges & blowing wads of yen in the hostess bars.
People see the export-oriented industries of Japan, and think they're "Japan", but all of the efficiencies and carefulness and so forth are concentrated in that single sector. There's really two economic Japans, and the internal one is mind-blowingly corrupt and small-minded. The other economic Japan has heavily out-sourced itself to the rest of Asia since the popping of the bubble, in search of cheaper and more abundant labor.
That problem lies from the institutionalized economy that that they set up, that being a corporate state. It does all the things you describe and more.
I have a sister-in-law who is Japanese and yet I've never felt even the slightest urge to bang her.
Weird.
I blame the environmentalists.
I find Bagoh's comments regarding government very odd in this context. The plant was designed and built by some of the most successful companies in the world and run by the most successful power company in Japan, TEPCO.
There certainly were plenty of failures but they lay primarily with the design of the plant and operational organization. Government apparently did not have much if any say in any of this.
There certainly were plenty of failures but they lay primarily with the design of the plant and operational organization. Government apparently did not have much if any say in any of this.
You confuse "the government said nothing" with "the government had no say". :)
TEPCO, like all Japanese utilities, was heavily regulated and monitored by government officials. Who mysteriously failed to notice any of the safety problems, for reasons the Japanese public has been assured had nothing whatsoever to do with the money TEPCO directs to politicians and regulators.
This is the problem with cries for regulation, of course. The regulators always end up bought by the people they supposedly regulate. You get the same disasters, with the added bonus of having paid to supposedly avoid them. The only real effect is to make it too expensive for new businesses to enter the market.
I think we all agree that under a "Free market" none of this would have happened.
I'd still rather be a Japanese living in Japan in a time of catastrophe than an American living in America when the S hits the F. It's called homogeneity and it's Tony the Tiger G-R-R-R-EAT!!!
I wasn't talking about the failure of the design, but the failure of the simple act of moving generators and equipment in order to address a disaster when almost any action was superior to the paralysis the large organization demonstrated.
My comment was about the weaknesses of large organizations in general in handling simple things. Government is often the largest organization in a society, and that was the connection.
Regardless, from what I've read, like nearly everywhere, but especially in Japan, the largest companies are pretty quasi-governmental, with many of their procedures and operations heavily dictated by the government, but also like most places, poorly tested or reevaluated for effectiveness. Regulations are as much for the feathering of cronyism as safety nearly everywhere. This results in poor performance when a real emergency develops.
It still makes little sense to blame government when the primary actors were private companies.
Private companies repeatedly make monumentally stupid and short-sighted decisions, affecting not only themselves but also the lives of innocent bystanders. It is a bit like the false dichotomy that many conservatives see between the military and the rest of government.
In reality all three entities are run by deeply flawed humans.
I'm not saying there is a better solution necessarily, although I bet there is. I'm saying the government is of little help and probably exacerbates the weaknesses of large organizations by adding little more than cost and additional complexity.
If you have experience running an organization, you will rarely - actually never - find government an aid in making it more efficient or effective.
I'm just speculating of course , but I bet if you look into what the battery of procedures and protocol was in place to handle that emergency, you'd find them unworkable under a situation with limited resources and time which nearly all such disasters are. I bet there were layers upon layers of stuff, requiring separate authorities unlikely to be available, and unrealistic timelines that would sacrifice a successful outcome for process.
In such times, a single man or a team of people ignoring the the rules was probably needed. Again just speculation.
bagoh20 said...
If you have experience running an organization, you will rarely - actually never - find government an aid in making it more efficient or effective.
First, the government is generally trying to minimize the negative impacts of the company's actions on everyone else, so this is largely to be expected.
Second, obviously the maintenance of a civil society, infrastructure etc. has an enormous positive effect on most companies. Try running the same company in southern India or even southern Italy and you would quickly gain an appreciation of our current government, however deeply flawed it might be.
So ARM, are these anarchists seriously blaming a government for what a private company did?
Sounds predictable if so.
ARM,
Of course the infrastructure and law, etc of government helps business, which is the people. That's why we have it.
But, this is naive:
"First, the government is generally trying to minimize the negative impacts of the company's actions on everyone else".
The objective of government is like any other organization of any size: to serve the needs of those in it, specifically to attain and keep power, income, and benefits for them. The main difference between business and government is the freedom of the customer to choose an alternative to pay and serve them. It's a huge difference to the customer. That would be you and me.
I'm not blaming the government for this failure in Japan, although it might be to blame. I just don't know. I'm just saying from my experience, the more involved they are, the more complex the system becomes, and in a disaster complexity is paralyzing and deadly.
bagoh20 said...
In such times, a single man or a team of people ignoring the the rules was probably needed.
Some TEPCO employees and emergency response people did behave with remarkable bravery, risking their lives to radiation poisoning.
I was struck at the time by the stupidity of placing the emergency generators at ground level and therefore subject to water inundation. This one design decision caused much of the subsequent disaster, although the original sin was the height of the sea wall.
Did you ever have someone in the car with you telling how to drive? You have to be careful, because the natural thing is to start listening to them instead of thinking and reacting on your own. You subconsciously relinquish some responsibility and of course the person barking out instructions never really takes responsibility for what happens, because "Hey you were driving."
Now if that back seat driver is someone you have to be nice and respectful to because they have some power over you, it's especially dangerous.
I like to reserve the right to punch such a person in the face when I'm driving, and I have. We were both safer afterward.
It still makes little sense to blame government when the primary actors were private companies.
See, the problem is that you big-government types aren't really honest about what you want. If you came right out and said "we demand more regulatory power because it gives us opportunities for graft", nobody would fault you when the people you regulate get up to no good.
But of course you don't say that. You say "we NEED more regulatory power in order to protect The People from Those Nasty Corporations". Then you pocket the tax money, and you pocket the graft money, and then when disaster strikes you shrug and say "don't look at me, man. The corporations, not me. Give me more money and more power and I totes promise to do something... next time".
bagoh20 said...
But, this is naive:
"First, the government is generally trying to minimize the negative impacts of the company's actions on everyone else".
The objective of government is like any other organization of any size: to serve the needs of those in it, specifically to attain and keep power, income, and benefits for them. The main difference between business and government is the freedom of the customer to choose an alternative to pay and serve them. It's a huge difference to the customer. That would be you and me.
I don't think it is naive, that is the goal.
I don't disagree that human flaws undermine the system to a variable degree but this is why I find the nihilism of the Republican Party's all government is bad rhetoric so destructive to the country's long term best interests. There are clearly roles that government fulfills that are critical to our society. The goal is to make government better not simply eliminate it, or worse, create situations where it cannot perform its work adequately.
Many conservative parties in other country are focused on bringing good practices to government (e.g. Merkel's party). In the current climate it seems that the Republican party is incapable of playing this role, and the country is poorer for this failure to initiate a constructive rather than nihilistic debate about the role of government.
Rhythm and Balls said...
So ARM, are these anarchists seriously blaming a government for what a private company did?
I do think there is something fundamentally anarchic about elements of the current Republican party. They seem frustrated by the way the country and the world has evolved and respond by wanting to tear it apart rather than advance workable reforms.
Well ARM, if Bags is really saying that nuclear energy is over-regulated then that would be an interesting way of confirming what you're saying.
"The objective of government is like any other organization of any size: to serve the needs of those in it, specifically to attain and keep power, income, and benefits for them."
I seem to have forgotten the part of the constitution that says this.
"The main difference between business and government is the freedom of the customer to choose an alternative to pay and serve them. It's a huge difference to the customer. That would be you and me."
The equivalent in this case would be voter, whose absence in that statement is curious and leads to other questions.
But the obvious flaw exposed in it is the presumption that business and government serve similar ends. Or that governments should function like businesses. Not understanding those differences usually leads to disastrous results, and this is the lesson that some people sure are taking their sweet time learning.
Revenant said...
See, the problem is that you big-government types aren't really honest about what you want. If you came right out and said "we demand more regulatory power because it gives us opportunities for graft", nobody would fault you when the people you regulate get up to no good.
I have not ever worked in any regulatory capacity. I cannot in any way materially benefit from 'more regulatory power'. This is true of the vast majority of voters who pull the handle for Democrats.
One word, Thalidomide. The US regulatory agencies succeeded in protecting the population from this particular disaster. Regulation is not uniformly bad.
Regulation is part of life, whether it is the criminal code or corporate regulations. It is imperfect and, like the police, sometimes the regulators are corrupt but the appropriate response is reform of the system not eliminationist rhetoric
There is quite a bit of difference of opinion on:
human nature vs law
customer vs voter.
conservatism vs anarchism
workable reforms vs unsustainable vote buying policy
We can't all be right, of that I'm sure.
Revenant believes government doesn't have a right to prevent flipper babies. Unless by government you mean the court system. Retroactively.
Which must be a hell of a consolation to flipper babies.
"Regulation is not uniformly bad."
Of course not, and it's wrong to pretend that's the conservative argument. The argument is that love of regulation to the point of believing it's the solution to all societal problems is bad, blind, close minded and destructive. And yes, I think that regulation as the only solution is an accurate statement of the left's point of view on policy.
Few conservatives would argue against reasonable drug regulations of the type needed to prevent another Thalidomide.
If it occurred in a natural herb, it would still be legal, as long as it didn't get you high, in which case it never would have been legal to begin with.
bagoh20 said...
The argument is that love of regulation to the point of believing it's the solution to all societal problems is bad, blind, close minded and destructive. And yes, I think that regulation as the only solution is an accurate statement of the left's point of view on policy.
Here you are wrong. I am all for dismantling large sections of the criminal code and for reducing the reach of the surveillance state, broadly in line with a large swathe of the left.
Regulation of private enterprise, we seem to all agree, is a tricky issue. There are directly competing interests, no one is going to end up completely satisfied. As R&B pointed out that's why we have elections.
"They seem frustrated by the way the country and the world has evolved and respond by wanting to tear it apart rather than advance workable reforms."
You need to realize this is exactly how the other side looks to both sides. We just differ on what things are unsustainable and need reformed, and of course how. Most especially on what is "sensible"
The rest of the arguments are hyperbole, but that's cool. We're just having fun here.
"As R&B pointed out that's why we have elections."
As Jefferson warned us about, voters are not customers. There are competing interests to balance, and that balance is the difference between prosperity and decline. When policy puts so many people on the side of voting for it's benefits instead of the freedom to create them, you get less production and less prosperity. Who wants to work for what they can simply demand at the polls?
"Here you are wrong. I am all for dismantling large sections of the criminal code and for reducing the reach of the surveillance state, broadly in line with a large swathe of the left."
Spying isn't regulation - that's lack of regulation, so you still want more regulation, and the right generally agrees with the non-partisan left on this.
We all want less laws, we just differ again on what is sensible, or even fair and right to be illegal.
I guess one difference is that a wingnut would rather you be punished for harming, while a moonbat would prefer it be illegal to even have the option, and thus has to prevent lots of options just in case. They both have their weaknesses.
Bagoh, you are in manufacturing, competing with the Chinese. You, in my opinion, are doing God's work. You and your people are our economic army fighting to keep our country's lifestyle afloat, at least for a few more years.
Remember that a lot of private enterprise is not as directly beneficial for our country's best interests as export manufacturing. As noted earlier in the discussion, the industries that are in direct competition with export orientated industries in other countries are generally pretty well run. The purely domestic industries on the other hand, which constitute the majority of private enterprise in the country, are a very mixed bag. Some, like property developers, rise a very short distance above common criminals. This is also true for much of the financial industry.
While it is true that the left hasn't always made these distinctions, the broad support for the auto bailout amongst the left, despite a historically negative view of the big three, but not for the financial industry bailout suggests that they can make these distinctions when push comes to shove. The left is proud of our manufacturing industries and that we can compete on a global scale. The slightly unhinged idolatry of Apple is an example of this. You guys should work that angle a little more.
As Jefferson warned us about, voters are not customers. There are competing interests to balance...
And whose job is it to find some "structure" for balancing them? Yours or some conservative politician's?
The reason the right is coming to shambles soon (even if you don't see it now) is that their traditional coalition of alliances is breaking apart. Each party determines whom to appeal to until they can get close enough to 50% to be competitive. It's not the job of the entire government to balance those interests, since as we can see, some governments and some parties just don't give a crap about certain "interests", no matter how crucial they may be. Each party does this.
If anyone should have known that, it might have been Jefferson, given how instrumental he was in cravenly dissolving Washington's "Great Men" era of politics into the first purely party-based system. But then, he was flawed as hell. He said a lot of great things, and rarely lived up to them, which speaks to how practical he was in anything but politics. Overall a pretty over-rated founding father, despite the prodigiousness of his many interests. And didn't he die in bankruptcy? Definitely not the founder for you to emulate, Bag. Tsk tsk.
I always thought that the left exaggerated the risks of nuclear power. Three Mile Island was miles from Armaggedon despite how it was played up in the press. Chernobyl was all about the Russians. They can't make a flush toilet and had no business monkeying around with nuclear power. But the Japanese melt down shook me up. The Japanese are pretty good at this high tech stuff. You don't expect it to happen there, and what happened was by no means a worst case scenario. I've read that they came within an ace of making half the island uninhabitable. The left's position is that Murphy's Law is a historical inevitability in nuclear power. I don't know if that's true, but that seems closer to an accurate diagnosis than national character or regulatory procedures to explain what went wrong.......Just a week or so before the incident, President Obama said that we needed to review our nuclear power regulations with a view to expanding these clean energy facilities. So you can see by this how inherently dangerous nuclear energy is.
I do think there is something fundamentally anarchic about elements of the current Republican party.
And I do think that there's something fundamentally fascistic, corrupt and soulless about the core and base of the current Democratic Party. So where does that leave us, jackboots?
Revenant believes government doesn't have a right to prevent flipper babies.
Revenant believes that whether or not the government has the right to "prevent flipper babies", it won't.
Unless by government you mean the court system. Retroactively.
Which is all it actually does.
I hate to break this to you, but Minority Report was a work of science fiction. There is no pre-crime. The government doesn't know in advance who the bad actors are. It can't stop bad people from doing bad things. The childish belief that it can doesn't help anybody, children or otherwise.
Which must be a hell of a consolation to flipper babies.
I'm sure the FDA is a huge consolation to the babies who die because their life-saving medication is still working its way through the red tape. So that the government can be sure the company isn't selling baby-killing drugs. Because "selling baby-killing drugs" is an excellent business model that all companies would follow if the government didn't stop them.
I do think there is something fundamentally anarchic about elements of the current Republican party.
Anarchy is absence of government.
If the federal government shut down forever tomorrow, there wouldn't be an absence of government. There would still be one, two, or even three governments (city, county, and state) managing each and every one of us.
Mind you, there's a been a strong "ein reich" vibe to the progressive movement since its birth in the 19th century, so it is easy to see how "reducing the national government" looks like "anarchy" to them. But this is about WHAT government people live under, not IF people should live under a government.
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