According to the plant's operator, which is now under investigation for possible criminal negligence, workers violated government procedures and used far more uranium at one time than was safe. The accident occurred in the morning at the JCO Co. nuclear fuel plant in Tokaimura, about 70 miles northeast of Tokyo. Yet it took the central government nearly 11 hours to set up a crisis-management task force. It was the first time the Japanese public had been exposed to radiation from a nuclear accident. The local fire department was not even told that a dangerous chain reaction had started when managers of the reprocessing plant blithely requested an ambulance for three workers exposed to huge amounts of deadly radiation.
Analysts say that partly reflects Japan's educational approach.
While both schooling and training are rigorously emphasized, the focus is on rote memorization, with little emphasis on individual creativity. It can look terribly confusing to outsiders. A preference for consensus over decisive leadership also permits Japanese to duck individual responsibility for their actions, which is another reason decision-making is seldom crisp and straightforward, even in a crisis, experts say. That can make it difficult to coordinate policy in a crisis. During the 1995 Kobe earthquake, for instance, the Ministry of Transportation didn't always know what the Ministry of Defense was doing to open highways made impassable by falling debris.