Interestingly, the article suggests that the people at the plant actually did the right thing, while the prime minister seems to have dithered because of his own lack of trust, and it was the PM who wouldn’t let the U.S. get involved, NOT the company.
A lot of people speculated that the company was the problem, but now it seems it was the government.
Company is indeed the problem, the management and organization. It is the organization culture and management who made things worse or react timely, while some guy in the field has good grasp of what is to be done. There are many crap companies with good field talents. Still it fails and go down because it refuses to take feedback from the field and makes the wrong decisions.
Apparently Mr. Yoshida has a backbone but I suspect that there are few who can challenge management in such a way. Nuclear industry is a small community. If you get blackballed by TEPCO, you should get a job outside the industry.