Yanosuke Hirai was a Japanese civil engineer and corporate executive in the electric power industry. He developed electric power generation in the Tohoku region during the Shōwa era with unusual foresight and a deep sense of responsibility.
25 years after his death, Hirai’s foresight protected lives and environment from the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant, designed and built under his watch, was the sole plant in the region that fully resisted the disaster of March 11, 2011: all of its three reactors successfully withstood the seismic event and subsequent tsunami, shutting down safely as designed and virtually without any incident. The site of the plant even ended up providing a refuge for three months to more than 300 neighboring people who had lost their homes.
With Yasuzaemon Matsunaga (right)
Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant
The Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant genshiryoku hatsudensho, Onagawa NPP) is a nuclear power plant located on a 1,730,000 m2 site in Onagawa in the Oshika District and Ishinomaki city, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. It is managed by the Tohoku Electric Power Company. It was the most quickly constructed nuclear power plant in the world.
The Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant