Tragic Choices at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant

In high-risk industries, the development of reliable safety systems has made it easy to forget that operators may one day be confronted with dramatic, life-threatening situations. This article examines such catastrophe, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. It will shed light on mechanisms at work in operators’ attempts mitigate disaster, even as they knew would exposed a radioactive environment. Using available literature and official reports, show how decision process used by workers make tragic choices involving self-sacrifice unfolded within three orders determination: institutional, organizational, field. Although these regimes did help actors hard choices, we simultaneously created ethical blind spots. Just complexity tight coupling this industry leads “normal accidents,” argue wake accidents is masked what call blindness,” which hides underlying must make. argues normal blindness need not inevitable further exploration reflection lessons accident could us better prepare for situations future.