Now I Am Become Death, The Destroyer Of Worlds

Three years ago, a horrible disaster hit the coast of beautiful Japan, the worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl (which took place in 1986).

What some may not know, however, is that the Fukushima plant was not the closest plant to the epicenter of the earthquake.  No, that title goes to the plant at Onagawa which, like its fallen brethren, had to endure the brunt of the Tohoku earthquake and following tsunami, but is a much more populous city to boot.

The hero behind the Onagawa plant is Yanosuke Hirai.  In 1968, Hirai retired from his position as VP at

Tohoku Electric Power and joined a committee for the construction of the company's plant in Onagawa.

 The man wanted the plant to be built 50 ft above sea level, that it should have a cooling system that would provide water even if a tsunami's receding waters temporarily left the plant dry, and should be protected by a 49 ft seawall (other had planned for this wall to be a mere 10 ft tall).

Despite the critiques he received from the company's bureaucrats who wanted to save money, Hirai held firm (incidentally, he believed bureaucrats to be "like human trash...who never take final responsibility.").  The company's then president finally agreed to Hirai's design, and the wall ended up being 46 ft high (since the tsunami, the wall's been raised another 10 ft).

So what about the Fukushima plant?  That plant also had a seawall, but it didn't go over 19 feet high, so that the 43-ft tsunami that had traveled 112 miles to get there had no trouble getting over it, knocking power out, creating meltdowns, explosions, and ensuing release of radioactive matter in the ocean.

Corporate compliance is different from compliance.  Just being 'not guilty' is not enough. ~Tatsuji Oshima

But without counting all the deaths brought on by the tsunami, here's another scary aspect of this terrible incident:  the radioactive pollution that will affect/is affecting the rest of the world.

I really hope that, after all the disasters we've had in recent years (Gulf of Mexico Oil spill for instance), we've finally learned that cutting corners for a little bit of extra profit is just not worth it.  But I'm afraid history does have a tendency to repeat itself... Sigh.

Full Article:
How tenacity, a wall saved a Japanese nuclear plant from meltdown after tsunami, by Richard Read

Note:
The title is a quote from the Bhagavad Gita which was brought to J. Robert Oppenheimer's mind after he witnessed the results of the first atomic bomb detonation.