The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is still failing to sufficiently ensure the safety of its nuclear operations, a government-appointed panel looking into the causes of last year's disastrous accident said Monday.
The operator of
Japan
's
crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is still failing to sufficiently
ensure the safety of its nuclear operations, a government-appointed panel
looking into the causes of last year's disastrous accident said Monday.
But in a final report that largely traced the argument of an interim version
released in June, no new light was shed on the many questions that remain
unanswered about the disaster, an indication of the difficulty of getting to
the bottom of the ongoing crisis. While the panel confirmed that the biggest
leakage of radioactive materials occurred at Unit 2, it acknowledged it was no
closer to finding out exactly how, when and where it happened.
"High levels of radiation were obviously the biggest obstacle to our
investigation. They kept us from conducting an actual examination of the
damaged facilities," a panel member said at a press conference.
At the Fukushima Daiichi's six reactors, three suffered meltdowns, spewing
deadly radioactive materials inside and outside unit buildings. Accessing the
reactors is expected to remain difficult for years or even decades to come.
The latest report said Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501.TO) still doesn't have
the ability to respond flexibly to unexpected situations. The company also
isn't trying hard enough to figure out what went wrong after March 11 last
year, when a massive earthquake and tsunami knocked out power and sent reactors
spinning out of control, the report said.
The 448-page report, compiled by a 10-member panel with support from a team of
public prosecutors and government experts, said that "even more than a
year after the disaster, Tepco isn't showing a sufficient amount of willingness
to investigate the accident thoroughly in order to avoid a recurrence of such
disasters."
The report also argued that Tepco, a monopoly utility, responded to the
disaster only according to a manual, showing little ingenuity or flexibility in
dealing with the rapidly unfolding crisis.
These problems are so entrenched in the utility's corporate culture that
"it may be necessary to create a totally new organization rather than try
to fix the problems," Yotaro Hatamura, panel chairman and professor
emeritus of engineering at the University of Tokyo, said at the press
conference.
Tepco said that while it is aware of the report it needs to examine its
contents carefully before commenting.
The panel had some tough words for government regulators. Noting an earlier
attempt by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency to play down the
possibility of reactor meltdowns, the report said government officials made
"misleading" remarks early in the crisis that were "extremely
inappropriate."
Unlike a report released earlier this month by a panel of
parliamentary-appointed experts, however, the government report held on to its
view that the magnitude-9 earthquake was not a direct cause of the meltdowns
and the radiation releases at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
"The report is tough on Tepco but weak on identifying problems with the
regulators," said Tetsuo Sawada, assistant professor of reactor
engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
The earlier report from the parliamentary investigation panel pointed to a cozy
relationship between the regulators and utilities as a fundamental cause for
the crisis, since it allowed Tepco to cut corners on natural disaster
prevention.
But the government report barely touched on the issue of regulatory capture,
instead making "Tepco appear the only bad guy in this crisis," Mr.
Sawada said. This raises the question of whether a new regulatory agency,
expected to be established by the government this autumn, will be any different
from the current overseers, he warned.
Set up in May last year, the panel interviewed 772 people for a total of 1,479
hours, including former Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Economy, Trade and
Industry Minister Yukio Edano, who was the government's top spokesman at the
time of the accident.
By assessing other plants impacted by the March 2011 tsunami and earthquake,
such as the nearby Fukushima Daini plant, the panel came to the conclusion that
Tepco's handling of the crisis was more problematic at the Fukushima Daiichi
plant, even while acknowledging that Daiichi was the company's oldest plant,
with the most outdated safety designs and no external power supplies during the
crisis.
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