Fukushima Operator's Chief Quits In Face Of Public Anger

Excerpts from the article:

Saturday, 21 May 2011

The President of the embattled operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant has quit following months of withering criticism over his handling of the planet's worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl.

Bowing in front of a packed press conference, Masataka Shimizu apologised to the nation yesterday before announcing his widely expected resignation. "I will step down to take managerial responsibility for undermining confidence in nuclear power and causing trouble for society," he said as his successor, Toshio Nishizawa, looked on. Mr Nishizawa, a managing director, will officially take over in June. Mr Shimizu sparked particular anger with his widely ridiculed performance during the worst of the crisis. He disappeared from public view in March, later emerging from hospital after apparently being treated for hypertension and stress.

Well I can't say I am surprised. Let's hope that his successor does a better job of handling what's left of this crisis in Japan.


Article source:www.independent.co.uk...




Aditional Source Here:

Tepco's President Quits In Wake Of Nuclear Crisis
Itsuo Inouye/ AP - Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) President Masataka Shimizu (left) said Friday he was stepping down in disgrace after reporting the biggest losses in company history

www.washingtonpost.com...

funny it's may 21st in japan already...i guess the rapture hasn't happened yet!

sorry off topic...but I kind of expected this from the guy....they've been trying to deal with a huge disaster and the way they and their government is handling it is the wrong way if you ask me...just more proof they don't know what they're doing

Originally posted by here4awhile
just more proof they don't know what they're doing

Which was also the case with TMI and Chernobyl, in fact those disasters could have even greater incompetence attributed to them since they were completely man-made. At least nature played a role in the Japan disaster. And their biggest incompetence in Japan wasn't recently, but 30 years ago when they designed the and built the plant in a tsunami-prone area with inadequate protection against tsunamis in the design.

Once the disaster happened, I doubt anyone on Earth was competent to deal with it. It's overwhelming. Still, some could do better than others.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
Once the disaster happened, I doubt anyone on Earth was competent to deal with it. It's overwhelming. Still, some could do better than others.

Soo true.

When the experts were bellowing on about all the containment procedures in the early days of the accident, and assuring us nothing bad can happen because of these procedures, I was ready to blow a fuse. Lies, lies, and more lies is all I heard. We are dealing with something beyond the human body's ability to handle. It doesn't matter one bit how competent the workers are if they cannot do their work without dying.

In truth the only thing the president of Tepco did wrong, after the accident, was not relaying the proper information and trying to cover up the magnitude of the damage. As bad as that is, especially for the Japanese, it had no effect on the task of bringing the plant under control.

reply to post by FreeSpeaker

Actually one thing has come to light that might have mitigated the disaster. They couldn't vent the hydrogen because there was no power to operate the valves, and the valves could be operated manually but the radiation level was too high for humans at the manual control.

One possibility would have been to ask for a volunteer to go on a suicide mission to manually operate the valves before the explosions happened.At least one worker would have died, but now as a result of not doing that, thousands of people will probably die prematurely from cancer due to extra radioactivity in the fish they eat, etc, because those explosions were not prevented and they ruptured the containment.

I'm not sure I would have volunteered to operate the control on the suicide mission, unless they offered my family a substantial sum of money to live on after I died, if they did that, I might do it to save all those other lives.