I hate to keep repeating myself, but the question
remains: why did Kurokawa have two different forewords:
one for foreigners blaming Japanese culture and one in Japanese talking of regulatory capture? And why is that discrepancy not itself more of an issue within Japan? I found a piece on this in the English-language Asahi
(http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/analysis/AJ2
01207120045),
datelined NYC July 12. Can anyone tell me its prominence in the Japanese-language version and whether other Japanese-language publications are picking up on the discrepancy?

Jeffrey Broadbent wrote:

> But it is also interesting to compare it with those
made in studies of
> technological risk management by Charles Perrow and
others....The
> explanation, as I recall it, is that the technology
was so complex
> that it made human operational error highly likely.

With all due respect, while this is undoubtedly part of the story, to me it underplays the pivotal role of conflicts of interests. Your statement leaves us to infer that, even if TEPCO had done everything reasonable to counter foreseeable problems, in the end, accidents will happen. There is a big difference, in my view, between unavoidable human error and foreseeably bad decisions made to protect vested interests. And there would have been a big difference between the severity of the results--and of public reaction--had TEPCO taken all the required preparations. The fact is that TEPCO was repeatedly warned to improve preparations in case of an accident--including a warning of the need for a higher sea wall by the plant manager at Fukushima--and repeatedly stonewalled. And, in the face of this stonewalling, NISA repeatedly crumbled.

The English summary of the Kurokawa report
(http://www.nirs.org/fukushima/naiic_report.pdf) goes through some of this stuff on pgs. 26-28 "Was the Accident Preventable?"

A March 24 piece in Asahi
(http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affair
s/AJ201203240031)
reports that NISA refused to compel the utilities to take safety measures that NISA deemed necessary because it was "concerned that it could pave the way for lawsuits disputing the soundness of the design of some reactors." This is based on internal documents from
2010 released to the press under the Information Disclosure Law. Since when is it NISA's business to protect utilliies from lawsuits? Its job is supposed to be protecting public safety.

I read somewhere--but cannot find it now--that the government never required the utilities to have contingency plans for a complete loss of electric power.

> Even in
> a well run management system, at many points in
design and operation,
> both manufacturers and operators have to make
decisions about how much
> risk to allow in the production of a social benefit,
in this case,
> electricity.

True, but TEPCO and other utilities are incapable of making this judgment call. That's putting the foxes in charge of the hen house.
Company executives compare the certain downside of spending $1 billion today versus the small likelihood of a catastrophe on their watch.
Remember, it is not TEPCO per se making these decisions; it is the individual executives in charge of TEPCO for a few years. What is needed is a fully independent, powerful regulator that can make this judgement.
Mistakes will be made--and the danger of regulatory capture remains a big one--but mistakes are very different from the bias of compamy executives. As the old legal maxim says: no one can be a judge in his own case.

We don't know how high a seawall a truly independent regulator would have recommended. We do know that Japan lacked such a regulator, that TEPCO was warned by its own plant manager to build a higher wall, and that a higher wall was built at Onagawa and there was no disaster there.

What is required are institutional checks and balances.
I remember former Citibank CEO John Reed saying that, at a well-run bank, there should be people with the job of saying yes to loans and other deals, and a separate group of risk managers whose job it is to say "no."--and that these two groups of people should not be going out for drinks after work.

The analogy between Fukushima and the financial derivatives crisis is
perfect: powerful vested interests preventing proper regulation. In another example, CEOs paid in stock options in the US tended to take much bigger risks and suffer much bigger losses than those paid in cash and in outright stocks.

Fukushima was, to a large degree, a case of preventable and, now, correctable, institutional failure, not an unforeseeable natural disaster nor excessively complex technology nor Japanese culture. As the Kurokawa report put it:

> In spite of the fact that TEPCO
> and the regulators were aware of the risk from such
natural disasters,
> neither had taken steps to put preventive measures in
place. It was
> this lack of preparation that led to the severity of
this accident.

[snip]

> There were many opportunities for NISA, NSC and TEPCO
to take measures
> that would have prevented the accident, but they did
not do so. They
> either intentionally postponed putting safety
measures in place, or
> made decisions based on their organization's self
interest- not in the
> interest of public safety.
> Following the implementation of new regulations in
other countries,
> discussions were held about revising the guidelines
to include a
> scenario where the AC power source was lost. The
discussion also
> included reviewing the reliability of existing DC
power sources.
> Unfortunately, these talks did not result in any
revision to the
> guideline or the regulations, and at the time of the
accident no
> serious consideration had been given to a scenario
involving loss of
> AC power to the plant.

Again: why one explanation for the foreigners and another one for Japanese?

Richard Katz
The Oriental Economist Report