http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/sorry-sorry-sorry-as-the-nuclear-radiation-crisis-at-fukushima-deepens-at-least-tepco-know-the-script-8778017.html?origin=internalSearch
Wednesday 21 August 2013
This latest leak comes after years of farcical
mismanagement
It was a stunning contortion of logic, performed with
such a straight face that at first I thought Junichi Matsumoto was having me
on.
“Yes, taking extra safety measures [at Fukushima] would
have been interpreted as TEPCO being worried about a tsunami,” said the senior
TEPCO official. “If we had built seawalls in front of the plant…it would’ve
made [local residents] worry.”
I had just confronted Matsumoto with the claim that TEPCO
had known years before the tsunami of 2011 that huge waves could strike the
coast on which its Fukushima nuclear plant
sat. Simulations seen by some TEPCO personnel had shown that waves as high as
15.7 metres could be spawned by a powerful offshore earthquake.
The simulations were bang on. On the afternoon of 11
March 2011, that’s exactly what happened – a magnitude-9 tremor sent a 15-metre
monster barrelling into the Fukushima nuclear plant, flooding the reactor
buildings, knocking out power, and triggering catastrophic meltdowns.
But despite warnings from seismologists and despite the
simulations, Japan’s largest nuclear operator had not taken appropriate
preventative measures to beef up tsunami defences in front of Fukushima’s six
reactors. And here was one of TEPCO’s top brass explaining to me with his poker
face that if they’d acted on the warnings it would have spooked the locals
living nearby. Using the sort of convoluted wordplay employed by the scheming
Sir Humphrey Appleby, Junichi Matsumoto appeared to be conceding that TEPCO had
sat on its hands. In other words, the Fukushima nuclear disaster might have
been preventable. Perhaps it was a man-made cataclysm, and no act of
nature.
Denial
I have learned through my many dealings with TEPCO that
this is a company rooted deep in denial. It is a firm that has apparently put
public relations before disaster planning. It is a corporation that has
seemingly learned little from the world’s worst nuclear disaster in a quarter
of a century.
Two and a half years on from the triple meltdowns at
Fukushima, a depressingly familiar pattern has developed. This is a tale
trapped in an endless loop of farce, its plots both improbable and alarming.
Here is how it seems to play out.
In the first act we are confronted with outright denial.
The Fukushima plant is stable, the reactors are under control. There is no
problem. In the second act a problem is exposed in all its radioactive glory –
it could be a nuclear water leak, or
contaminated groundwater leeching into the Pacific, or a power failure to pools
cooling thousands of toxic fuel rods, or mysterious steam oozing from a
shattered reactor building (all have happened). In the final act, a line of
sober-faced TEPCO officials fills the stage. They choreograph their bows, and
the dialogue begins.
“We apologise again for causing anxiety among the
public.”
TEPCO General Manager Masayuki Ono has apologised a lot
lately. TEPCO’s trust rating among the Japanese public had already dropped
through the floor, like the melted fuel in one of its doomed reactors. It
wasn’t helped by TEPCO’s repeated denials that radioactive groundwater was
seeping into the sea.
Those denials were eventually challenged by Japan’s
atomic watchdog, the Nuclear Regulation Authority. With unprecedented candour,
the NRA’s chief, Shunichi Tanaka, told reporters he believed the Fukushima
plant had been leaking contaminated water into the Pacific since the start of
the crisis in 2011.
Confronted with this stunning slap in the face by the
nuclear regulator, TEPCO revealed that it had known that at least 300 tonnes of
radioactive groundwater was flowing from the plant into its harbour next door
every day.
his toxic soup contained substances that sounded like
they were straight out of a Superman comic - tritium, caesium-134, caesium-137,
and strontium-90. Strontium has a half-life of about 29 years, and is known as
a “bone-seeker” because it replaces calcium in bones, often causing cancer.
The French Institute for Radiological Protection and
Nuclear Safety estimates that the Fukushima meltdowns caused the largest single
nuclear contamination of the ocean in history. But TEPCO said there was nothing
to worry about the contamination was being dispersed through the Pacific. It
would have minimal impact. Few in Japan believed the company’s spin.
Taking the public pulse after TEPCO’s latest PR disaster,
Japan’s government decided to act. Everyone waited for the big announcement
that TEPCO would be sidelined, that the government would send in its own
experts, maybe even international teams of nuclear accident specialists. An
announcement came – the government would pump more money in to help TEPCO pump
more radioactive water out of the ground. The company would remain in charge.
Grief
Then this week…Groundhog Day.
“We’d like to apologise for the concern we’ve caused
people due to this problem,” said TEPCO’s Masayuki Ono [this week]. The conga
line of officials had shuffled back on stage to try to plug the latest crisis
at Fukushima – yet another radioactive leak. But this would turn out to be the
worst leak since the meltdowns two-and-a-half years ago. One of the giant tanks
storing highly contaminated water had sprung a leak. Despite
regular inspections, no one had seen the puddles of water shimmering on the
ground around the faulty tank. When they finally did notice these pools,
someone tested for radiation. The reading shot off the scale – 100
millisieverts an hour.
“One-hundred millisieverts an hour is…a radiation level
strong enough to give someone a five-year dose of radiation within one hour,”
said Masayuki Ono.
In other words, if you stood half-a-metre away from one
of these puddles for one hour you would be exposed to five times the annual
allowable dose for an international nuclear worker. If you stood there for 10
hours you’d develop radiation sickness with symptoms such as a drop in white
blood cells and nausea.
As Michiaki Furukawa, a nuclear chemist, told Reuters:
“This is a huge amount of radiation. The situation is getting worse.”
At the start of this crisis, it was keeping water out of
the Fukushima plant that was TEPCO’s major failing. Now, it is keeping water
in. What next in this endless loop of black farce?
Mark Willacy is a double winner of Australia’s highest
journalist award – the Walkley - for coverage of the 2003 Iraq war and the
Fukushima meltdown. He is the author of Fukushima (Pan Macmillan,
2013) .
