About 50 workers stayed behind at the Fukushima plant, enduring horrendous conditions and potentially signing themselves up for certain death, to prevent a total nuclear meltdown.

Corbis

n inquiry into last year's nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant ruled that the disaster was preventable. The 641-page report, released by the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, says the plant's cooling system might have been damaged in the March 2011 earthquake that sparked the tsunami, raising questions over whether the country's nuclear power plants are sufficiently earthquake-proof. "It was a profoundly man-made disaster — that could and should have been foreseen and prevented," says Kiyoshi Kurokawa, the commission's chairman. "And its effects could have been mitigated by a more effective human response."