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Masao Yoshida, former manager of the Tokyo Electric Power Co's stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was rushed to hospital last week to undergo surgery for a cerebral hemorrhage, TEPCO said Tuesday.
Yoshida, who was the on-site chief at the Fukushima plant when the earthquake and tsunami hit on March 11, remains in a stable condition after the surgery, TEPCO officials were quoted as saying by Sankei Shimbun.
Although he is still a corporate officer at TEPCO, Yoshida retired as plant chief in December due to being diagnosed with esophageal cancer.
Earlier this year, Yoshida gave a testimony in which he criticized the handling of the crisis at a Diet hearing of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission. He described how the problems in the days following the earthquake were exacerbated by communication failures and told the independent Diet panel, "The chain of command was a total mess."
Doctors said that they do not believe the radiation to which Yoshida was exposed since 2010 is connected to the bleeding in his brain, Sankei reported.
© Japan Today
15 Comments
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Vesperto
Doesn't matter, everyone will assume it is.
Yubaru
I hope that he recovers. This guy was outspoken and one shining light of TEPCO. The doctors are all going to say it want due to the radiation but like Vesperto wrote everyone is going to assume differently.
smithinjapan
If it were Shimizu I'd say it's karma, but Yoshida is one of the few guys who seemed to have a proper head on his shoulders, and criticized what was an obvious breakdown of communications with the government. I can't see any way in which a cerebral hemorrhage could be related to radiation. Now, if he had a tumor in his brain then MAYBE, but not a hemorrhage. Stress, maybe... radiation? I doubt it. Hope he recovers.
ExportExpert
Jees this guy has had a bad run, on site during the initial stages of the disaster, diagnosed with esophageal cancer and now rushed ot hospital with cerebal hemorrhage, how much does one have to endure - the poor guy.
Onniyama
Nope. Nothing is EVER due to radiation exposure.
gogogo
Cancer and now this, feel sorry for the guy,
gaijinTechie
Exactly the same reasoning that denies radiation's effect on anything can be used to claim that the hemorrhage and this cancer IS radiation's fault. Word by word.
kurisupisu
Research is Japan on exposed individuals seems to not support the doctors' opinions in the article.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3274709/
A+b/a=a/b≡?
@kurisupisu:
Superb URL link. Good read. Thanks.
basroil
kurisupisuJul. 31, 2012 - 01:34PM JST
That research only states late life risk of stroke, and was done 40 years after the bombs. They even say that for low dose (<5Gy, or 100x the legal yearly limit and 15x the highest dose you can receive in a year outside the plant) that it is growths that are the probable reason, not direct causes. It takes quite a bit of time for that.
Radiation therapy for cancer on the other hand, could exceed 5Gy locally.
basroil
Hopefully people can leave politics aside and just wish this guy a speedy recovery.
nath
I think more research is needed on effects of continous low dose radiation on nuclear plant workers and residents near plants
whiskeysour
BUT THE CLEAN CREW IS STILL WORKING DAY AFTER DAY !!!!!
PLEASE CEMENT THE PLACE PLEASEEEEEE
gaijinTechie
Rick Kisa, there is a 26 year old and still ongoing research on just that. Japan is not a special case nor first and definitely not unique, they need to accept that and foreign research on Chernobyl if they want to learn fast enough to help their own. A wise man learns from his own mistakes, but it takes a genius to learn from the mistakes of others.
Yoshida is an employee of a company infamous of it's decades long radiation safety failures. He may have not been exposed much after 2010, but he's been in the company longer than that. It's the total that counts in the end. I sure hope he pulls through.
kurisupisu
Thinking about the nature of radiation and how it affects the body I would have thought that in the absence of any other cause that radiation would have been a direct cause of the hemorrhage.
Around 1000 rems exposure has been seen to cause tissue damage/rupture.
http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/understand/health_effects.html
Is it possible that Mr Yoshida was exposed to this much radiation?
After the accident the number of dosimeters were inadequate. Staff entered reactors where the soles of their shoes were melting in contact with the ground. Reactor roofs were blown off due to critical heat build up produced by atomic reactions.
Certainly there was enough radiation being emitted to harm the body........