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| Reuters: steam from Unit 3 |
The sequence of events that emerged from the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power station has been fairly consistent: the tsunami breached protective sea walls and knocked out diesel generators providing emergency power to circulation pumps which shut down all cooling of spent fuel pools and the reactor cores leading to partial meltdowns in three reactors. But another sequence is reported by
The Atlantic Wire with serious implications for all older nuclear plants in quake-prone Japan. During the forty minutes after the earthquake and the arrival of the tsunami, was the structural integrity of the aging reactors already compromised? Workers speaking on condition of anonymity told the authors Adelstein & Nakajima that piping was seriously damaged in one of the reactors by the earthquake that came in two waves of tremendous shaking. Some of the bursting pipes were cold water supply pipes according to the workers. Oxygen tanks stored on-site exploded. Also, the walls of one of the reactor buildings started to collapse before the tsunami hit. TEPCo is loath to admit any structural damage caused by the earthquake alone because of the dozens of reactors its runs, some are of the same or similar vintage and design as Fukushima Unit I. In 2007, a 6.8 magnitude quake damaged the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, causing a difficult fire and leakage of radiation. The possibility of an even stronger tremblor doing serious structural damage resulting in a reactor meltdown could hardly be classified as "unforeseeable" when the company knew the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant had been built over a fault line capable of a magnitude 7 earthquake.
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| Reuters: monitoring radioactivity |
TEPCo is a monopolistic company that began as a public utility in 1951, consequently it has close institutional ties to the government which explains why it has survived a nuclear disaster so large that any ordinary company would have collapsed. At a June 28th stockholders meeting in Tokyo an angry shareholder told the chairman,
"Jump into a reactor and die!". After which, Tsunehisa Katsumata was duly reelected as chairman. In 2003 his company was reported to have falsified safety data at dozens of reactors. For over two decades the utility consistently falsified data pertaining to cracks in core structures at 13 nuclear reactors. The plants were temporarily shut for government inspections, but no criminal actions were taken. Later the company admitted to 199 more occasions when it falsified technical data. Nevertheless, TEPCo has escaped bankruptcy and shifted part of the burden of reparations to taxpayers, all with the help of the Japanese government. There are reports that TEPCo is using yakuza supplied labor. TEPCo is representative of everything that is wrong with Japanese society: collusion, corruption, secrecy, weak government and social stasis. But even for a company accustomed to lying and using it powerful influence with media and politicians to protect itself, TEPCo has dropped the ball at Fukushima. The first meltdown is now known to have occurred within a few days of March 11, when the magnitude 9 earthquake leveled northeastern Japan. It did not confirm the suspicions of outside experts until May 12th and only then because a IAEA team announced it was going to Japan to conduct its own investigation of the incident. Whether TEPCo will survive intact remains to be seen as tens of thousands of Japanese loose their homes and livelihoods to nuclear fallout and public anger rises. The Tokyo prosecutors office has begun a preliminary criminal negligence investigation as evidence emerges that TEPCo knew a severe earthquake would damage the reactors and cause a meltdown. The company's response after the event has been deemed insufficient, prompting a high ranking advisor to the prime minister to recommended that all nuclear power in the country be nationalized. Perhaps this time, 'so sorry' will not be enough.
