Tepco Essay

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co Woefully Unprepared | the Tale of Japan’s TEPCO | | The Fukushima Crisis of March 2011 and the Downfall of Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Company (Group Project for ACC3611: Corporate Governance and Ethics – Abridged Version) | Note: The authors of this case agree to the re-editing and publishing of this case. Woefully Unprepared: The Tale of Japan’s TEPCO Vice President Sakae Muto surveyed the chaos in the communications room at the headquarters of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). An earthquake had struck Japan, but the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant showed no signs of abating. The company was woefully unprepared to deal with the disaster and no one was certain of what was happening at the power plant. Muto was conscious of a sense of bewilderment. He had thought that they had everything in place for such contingencies. In fact, he was the vice director of TEPCO’s Nuclear Power and Plant Siting Division four years ago, when the company studied the possibility of a tsunami reaching 15.7 meters high hitting the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. How did this spiral out of control so quickly? Could this terrible tragedy been avoided, or at least, mitigated? A Promising Start TEPCO was already a regional heavyweight when it was founded in 1951, and soon expanded its services throughout the Kanto region, Yamanashi Prefecture and the eastern portion of Shizuoka Prefecture. When nuclear energy became a national strategic priority in 1973, TEPCO was well-positioned to capitalise on this new market opportunity. Fossil power plants for peak load supply were built around Tokyo Bay and nuclear reactors for base load supply were built in Fukushima and Niigata Prefectures. It had also expanded into the field of Liquefied Natural Gas, reducing surplus generation capacity and increasing capacity utilisation by developing pumped storage
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