Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster

Himanshu Muchhal

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was a series of equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns, and release of radioactive materials at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011. The plant comprises six separate boiling water reactors originally designed by General Electric (GE), and maintained by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). The Fukushima disaster is the largest of the Japanese nuclear accidents and is the largest nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

The entire plant was flooded by the 15 m (49 ft) tsunami wave, including low-lying generators and electrical switchgear in reactor basements and external pumps for supplying cooling seawater. The connection to the electrical grid was broken as the Tsunami destroyed the power lines. All power for cooling was lost and reactors started to overheat, owing to natural decay of the fission products created before shutdown. The flooding and earthquake damage hindered external assistance. Fears of radioactivity releases led to a 20 km (12 mi)-radius evacuation around the plant, while workers suffered radiation exposure and were temporarily evacuated at various times.
Measurements taken by the Japanese science ministry and education ministry in areas of northern Japan 30-50 km from the plant showed radioactive cesium levels high enough to cause concern. Food grown in the area was banned from sale. Japanese officials initially assessed the accident as Level 4 on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) despite the views of other international agencies that it should be higher. The level was subsequently raised to 5 and eventually to 7, the maximum scale value. The Japanese government and TEPCO have been criticized in the foreign press for poor communication with the public and improvised cleanup efforts.

Foreign experts have said that a workforce in the hundreds or even thousands would take years or decades to clean up the area.

On 7 June 2011, a government-appointed committee of 10 people convened to investigate the accident. As part of the government inquiry, the House of Representatives of Japan's special science committee directed TEPCO to submit to them its manuals and procedures for dealing with reactor accidents. TEPCO responded by submitting manuals with most of the text blotted out. In response, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency ordered TEPCO to resubmit the manuals by 28 September 2011 without hiding any of the content. TEPCO had announced the steps that will be needed for long-term core fuel removal although they admit that new technologies may have to be invented to accomplish the many steps for the clearance and that this may involve multiple decades of work. 200 pages were released from the accident procedural manuals used for Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. All their contents were published, only the names of individuals liable were left out.

From these documents could be concluded:
• TEPCO did not make sufficient preparations to cope with critical nuclear accidents.
• after the batteries and power supply boards were inundated on 11 March, almost all electricity sources were lost
• TEPCO did not envision such a power failure or any kind of prolonged power loss.
• TEPCO thought that in a serious incident, carrying out safety procedures would still be possible, because emergency power sources would be available.
The agency said, the decision to publish the manuals was taken for transparency in the search as to what caused the nuclear accident in Fukushima and also to establish better safety measures for the future.
On 24 October 2011 the first meeting was held by a group of 6 nuclear energy specialists invited by NISA to discuss the lessons to be learned from the accidents in Fukushima. Their first remarks were:
• Japanese nuclear power plants should have multiple power sources
• plants should be able to maintain electricity during an earthquake or other emergencies
• TEPCO should examine why the equipment failed to work and should take appropriate actions to prevent such failures in the future.
From the reading of above facts it can be seen that even though Japan initially succumbed to the disaster, faced furthermore panic and was criticized for its approach towards handling the disaster, it eventually, due to its indomitable spirit, is overcoming the worst of catastrophes thus proving that good leadership and hope to triumph can defeat most turbulent of times.

STEVE JOBS

At a time when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Steve Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology, so he built a company where leaps of imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.

His passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products, everything else was secondary. Sure, it was great to make profit, because that was what allowed one to make great products. There’s a subtle difference between making great products & making profits, but it ends up meaning everything: the people you hire, who gets promoted, what you discuss in meetings.

Some people say, “Give the customers what they want.” But that was not his approach. He said his job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’”. People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why he never relied on Market Research.

The reason Apple resonates with people is that there is a deep current of humanity in its innovation i.e. intersection of humanities & science. Steve Jobs thought great artists & great engineers are similar in that they both have a desire to express themselves. In fact some of the best people working on the original Mac were poets & musicians on the side.

He hated it when people call themselves “entrepreneurs” when what they are really trying to do is launch a start-up & then sell or go public, so that they can cash in & move on, when they’re unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company, which is the hardest work in business. That’s how one really makes a contribution and add to the legacy of those who went before. He wanted to build a company that will stand for something a generation or two from now. That’s what Walt Disney, Hewlett Packard, and the people who built Intel did. They created a company to last, not just to make money. And that’s what he made of Apple.

Whenever something bad happened at Apple, he used to tell people to their face. That’s the culture he tried to create at Apple. They were brutally honest with each other, and anyone could tell him that he is full of shit and he could tell the same. He felt totally comfortable saying “Ron, this store looks like shit” in front of everyone else. Or he might say “God, we really f***** up the engineering on this” in front of the person that’s responsible. Maybe there’s a better way, a gentlemen’s club where everyone wear ties and speak in this Brahmin language and velvet code-words, but he did not know that way. He said it was probably because he belonged to middle class from California.

According to him one must always have to keep pushing to innovate. What drove him? I think most creative people want to express appreciation by taking advantage of the work that’s been done by others before them. He didn’t invent the language or mathematics he used. He made little of his food & none of his clothes. Everything a person does depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on. And a lot of us want to contribute something back to our species and to add something to the flow. It’s about trying to express something in the only way that most of us know- because we can’t create Beethoven’s music or Shakespeare’s plays. We try to use the talents we have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation of all the contribution that came before us, and to add something to that flow.

Steve Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality & products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware & software tended to be. His extraordinary tale is filled with lessons about innovation, character, values & leadership.