The Mihama No. 2 tube rupture and the rebuilding of self-regulated safety (1991)

How far a reckoning with overconfidence reached

What sets this response apart is that it did not stop at a faulty component or a contractor’s bad workmanship: it reached into the state of mind of the organization, the conviction that such a thing “simply could not happen.” Making the president also the head of the nuclear division, siting a safety research institute outside the company, holding safety before all 25,000 employees as the first objective — each was an attempt to pull responsibility for safety away from the plant floor alone and toward the centre of management. That the president himself went into print calling the accident a man-made disaster suggests a willingness to take it on as the company’s own, not the industry’s misfortune.

Whether the warning against overconfidence took root in every corner of the organization was asked again thirteen years later, when a missed inspection at Mihama No. 3 killed workers in 2004. If the self-regulated safety proclaimed in 1991 came apart again under the pressure of an era chasing cost efficiency, the question of how much that reckoning actually bore remains open. Between building a structure that places safety at the centre of management and keeping that structure working as the years pass, there was evidently still a distance.