Does anyone here remember when Paul McCartney was dead? Well, as Yogi Berra might say, now it's deja vu all over again. The mysterious sequestration of Tokyo Electric Power Company's President, Masataka Shimizu, since a one-time press conference on March 13, has caused rumors of Shimizu's death, perhaps by suicide, to begin to circulate, according to the Washington Post.
Tokyo Electric, often called TEPCO, likes to call itself
the largest nuclear operator in Japan, with 17 reactors (17,308MW ) generating capacity.
This is the same
TEPCO that we now watch daily as the company flails away, trying to prevent several earthquake damaged, poorly contained and unreliably controlled reactors from becoming even more dangerous than they already are.
What TEPCO says about Mr. Shimizu matters. If TEPCO won't answer the simple question of who the hell is in charge over there, then how can anyone trust any unconfirmed information obtained from any company source? Hence the epistemological conundrum. How do we know what we know about the containment of this crisis, given that all of the information about conditions inside the plant is coming from TEPCO personnel?
Speculation over the unexplained and inexplicable absence of Masataka Shimizu has been gathering momentum. The Japan Times Online reported, with an apparently straight face, the TEPCO official company line on Shimizu:
Masataka Shimizu, the president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., fell ill March 16 and took some time off from the utility's liaison office with the government, Tepco officials said Sunday.
While Shimizu was "away," he collected information and issued instructions from a different room in Tepco headquarters to address the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the officials said.
He has already recovered and since returned to the liaison office, which is in the same building, they said.
A Tepco representative declined to elaborate on his health but said he did not collapse nor need to be hooked up to an intravenous drip.
The only actual reporting was buried at the end:
Although company presidents usually take the lead in notifying the public about large accidents, Tepco's news conferences are being led by its vice presidents, prompting journalists and the public to criticize Shimizu for shirking his responsibility.
The Washington Post report, noted above, tells us a lot more about how little we know of Shimizu's present whereabouts and status.
Shimizu last appeared in public at a late-night news conference March 13, two days after the worst earthquake on record in Japan. The tsunami triggered by the quake, said Shimizu, dressed in a blue company uniform instead of his normal business suit, “exceeded our expectations.”
So, here is what we know we know. Earthquake happened. Tsunami happened. Shimizu says, whoa, we didn't see that coming. Shimizu disappears.
Dear TEPCO:
You guys aren't doing much to bolster my confidence that you stand a chance in Hell to get control of this radiological disaster. Please do better. Thanks.
A Terrified Midwesterner in the USA