As it was not part of the electricity production fuel cycle, or a routine manufacturing operation where operators are expected to know their jobs well. It did not happen at a nuclear power plant, but in a high tech facility, specialised in enriched fuel, situated in Tokai-Mura, 150 km North-East of Tokyo. This surprising accident of "criticality" came about in October 1999 in Japan. The Tokaimura accident was the third serious nuclear accident in four years. Hisashi Ouchi was one of the technicians working at a facility operated by JCO (formerly Japanese Nuclear Fuel Conversion Co.) in Tokai of Ibaraki Prefecture. It was the Tokaimura criticality accident of 1999, not the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that led to more than 200,000 Japanese deaths, that prompted Japan to question its long-lasting relationship with nuclear energy. The first accident occurred on 11 March 1997 producing an explosion after improperly heated nuclear waste products caught on fire at the Dōnen plant . The image almost always comes up in conjunction with radiation poisoning, but it’s most likely not Ouchi for a … Share thisFacebookTwitterRedditEmail Hisashi Ouchi worked at the Tokaimura Nuclear Power Plant in Japan which is operated by the JCO company. There have been two Tokaimura nuclear accidents at the nuclear facility at Tokai, Ibaraki: on 11 March 1997, an explosion occurred in a Donen plant, and on 30 September 1999, a serious criticality accident happened in a JCO plant. The second incident on 30 September 1999 happened at the JCO plant . [2] A panel of nuclear experts investigating Japan's worst nuclear accident in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture, in 1999 presented its final report on Sep. 17, 2004, at a meeting of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan held in the city of Kyoto. What happened in the Tokaimura nuclear accident? [1] Tokaimura Criticality Accident. The Tokaimura accident of 1999 is the third most serious accident in the history of nuclear power, after the 1986 Chernobyl accident and the 1979 Three Mile Island accident but unlike the other cases, the Tokaimura accident did not involve a nuclear power station but a nuclear fuel factory where no nuclear chain reaction should ever happen. To get in on what was assumed to be a booming business, the… On September 30, 1999 Ouchi and two other men was exposed to extremely high levels of radiation while pouring filtered uranium solution from a stainless steel bucket. Tokaimura Accident 1999 : a "criticity" accident in Japan. Before Fukushima, the Tokaimura accident was the worst nuclear event in Japan and the third-worst in the world (behind Three Mile Island and Chernobyl). Accident #1: Tokaimura Criticality Accident 1999 This occurred in a small fuel preparation plant operated by Japan Nuclear Fuel Conversion Co (JCO). He is one of the two fatalities of Tokaimura nuclear accident that exposed him to, perhaps, the highest amount of radiation any human had exposed so far. Here is the story. In 1996 a coolant leak and subsequent fire caused an emergency shutdown of the plutonium-fuelled reactor Monju . Tokaimura Nuclear Accident – Hisashi Ouchi and Masato Shinohara I’m convinced the notorious photo of the totally skinned man is actually a Chernobyl liquidator. The following year a fire and explosion in a nuclear waste processing facility in Tokaimura exposed 35 people to radiation. The Tokaimura nuclear accident was a serious nuclear radiation accident in Japan.It took place at a uranium-reprocessing facility in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo, Japan, on 30 September 1999.The accident occurred in a very small fuel preparation plant operated by JCO. Hisashi Ouchi was employed as a plant worker at the Tokaimura Nuclear Power Plant, tasked with reprocessing uranium by a company called JCO. Location of the Tokaimura nuclear facility In 1979, nuclear power was all the rage. Over twenty people were exposed to radiation .