The Account of the Fukushima Daiichi Accident by the Plant Manager: A Source to Study Engineering Thinking in Extreme Situations

Aissame Afrouss (1)

1 CRC - Centre de recherche sur les Risques et les Crises

The concept of “engineering thinking in extreme situations” has been defined to make up for an epistemological lack in the field of Safety Studies. After the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, official reports did not take an interest in analysing the conditions in which the recovery efforts had to be carried out. The description of the accident and its representation in the accident investigation reports convey these shortcomings. The Fukushima Daiichi plant manager Masao Yoshida testimony may allow us address them partly. Actually, the transcription of his hearings contains essential details and information to understand the sequence of events which took place after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. This article intends to show the importance of studying this narrative, in order to highlight the relations between the Fukushima accident management and the concept of “engineering thinking in extreme situations”.

Mots clés: Engineering thinking; Extreme situation; Yoshida testimony; Narrative analysis; Mental representation

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société; Gestion des risques et des crises

Aissame Afrouss. The Account of the Fukushima Daiichi Accident by the Plant Manager: A Source to Study Engineering Thinking in Extreme Situations. Prof. Dr. Joonhong Ahn, Prof. Dr. Franck Guarnieri, Prof. Dr. Kazuo Furuta. Resilience: A New Paradigm of Nuclear Safety. From Accident Mitigation to Resilient Society Facing Extreme Situations , Springer International Publishing - Available under Open Access, pp.233-241, 2017, Print ISBN 978-3-319-58767-7 Online ISBN 978-3-319-58768-4. ⟨10.1007/978-3-319-58768-4_19⟩. ⟨hal-01574814⟩