TEPCO's Masao Yoshida announced his resignation today for the purpose of receiving medical treatments for an undisclosed condition. TEPCO spokespersons would not confirm or deny that radiation exposure was or was not responsible for the sudden illness.
In a statement issued on Monday, Yoshida expressed his regret over leaving the plant at a crucial time and apologized to all the people involved. He said he has to undergo treatment for a disease that was discovered in a health check-up.
Yoshida has been at Fukushima since the onset of the disaster on March 11, when a 9.0 earthquake off the coast generated a tidal wave that wiped out the emergency generators at the 6-unit Daiichi facility. Tweety rumor at Fukushima Diary is that Yoshida may soon (his position ends Thursday) come forward with some truths about the conditions.
Meanwhile, conditions at Daiichi unit-2 are still subject to extreme revision from the last time you got reassurances from TEPCO. Seems the suppression chamber ('torus') has heated up enough to go off-scale. Which, the sub-geniuses figure, means something. But they don't know WHAT it means, because nobody is dumb enough to get close enough to check the heat gage. Or, since the post doesn't actually put it that way, maybe they just physically can't get that close, and they know that because someone tried to do so (and didn't get very far)…
Drywell is also 'unusually' heated. But that's probably okay, since other temp gages hundreds of feet away aren't freaking out. Just another busted gage. Which makes me wonder why they bothered to report it. Makes no sense.
Fortunately, an unexpected and arguably influential U.S. media source has come out to say it's time to quit nuclear power altogether. That can't be anything other than good news. Of course, being the Christian Science Monitor, they absolutely had to insert the opposing view as equally valid. Because that's the 'rules' nowadays per media. TEPCO, we are told, thinks everything's hunky-dory. But that was probably before their chief executive at Daiichi quit so he could get medical care…
Meanwhile, new surveys have confirmed that cesium from the disaster fell out all over Japan, and that Ibaraki and Tokyo got an inordinate supply. The people of Japan aren't nearly as okay with it as the MSM would like to portray.
Not to worry. Speculation seems to be that upon retirement, an executive is freed to speak truth. I for one will wait to see what Yoshida has to say about it. I hope he's ready to bare his corporate soul.