When viewed after the fact, it rarely matters which swan it was -- black, grey, or white. What
does matter is the damage these risks have caused, and how they could have been
anticipated, addressed, or avoided.
Lessons in Risk
Let's look at some of the far-reaching risk events that have rocked industries around the
globe:
Negligence: Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
Ranked as one of the largest 25 nuclear power plants in the world, the Fukushima Dai-Ichi
Nuclear Power Station was constructed and operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company
back in 1971. The plant gained notoriety on March 11, 2011, when a magnitude 9.0 earthquake
took place off the northeast coast of Japan. The earthquake set off a deadly tsunami with
waves (up to 45-foot high) that swept over the island of Honshu and killed more than 18,000
people.
In only a three-minute timespan, the waves
crashed over the protective seawall and
enveloped the station. While the systems at the
plant automatically shut down the reactors, the
water knocked out the emergency generators
which were pumping coolant around the cores
to keep them from overheating. The result: the
plant suffered several chemical explosions and
three of the reactors had partial meltdowns.
This released radioactive material into the air
and forced the evacuation of hundreds of
thousands of people from the region.
The Fukushima disaster is ranked as the second
worst nuclear disaster (behind Chernobyl in
1986).
According to the BBC, "an independent
investigation set up by Japan's parliament
concluded that Fukushima was "a profoundly
man-made disaster", blaming the energy
company for failing to meet safety
requirements or to plan for such an event."
THE NEW RISK MANAGEMENT | 2
