The Roots of Fukushima

When Chiro Okuba was a young engineer in his 20s, he went to work on the containment and safety systems of one of Japan's earliest nuclear power plants, Unit-1 of what would become a complex of six boiling-water reactors at Fukushima north of Tokyo, site of the unfolding nuclear emergency.

Fukushima Unit-1 is one of the oldest nuclear power plants in Jap…