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TEPCO misled Diet panel, averted quake-damage inspection at Fukushima plant
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Anonymous Coward |
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Fukushima nuclear disaster investigation must continueNow TEPCO is saying the falsehood "was not intentional." That's hard to believe. Even if this was a crime of omission, if TEPCO simply failed to adequately check conditions at the plant for the Diet investigators, that in itself would be a major problem.
In a disaster as major as the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns, finding the cause must be given highest priority. The Diet investigation was working on behalf of the Japanese people, and thus TEPCO was duty-bound to cooperate with it to the greatest possible extent, for the sake of digging up as much truth about the disaster as there is to find.
If TEPCO gets an inspection request like the one from the Diet committee, it must assess conditions on-site and make sure the investigators can do their job without risking their health. If TEPCO had performed these common-sense tasks, there is no way the utility could have claimed the No. 1 reactor building was "pitch black" inside, because it wasn't. At the very least, TEPCO displayed a shocking lack of respect and sincerity to the Japanese people.
What the government inspectors wanted to see was the emergency isolation condenser, or IC, on the fourth floor of the No. 1 reactor building. They wanted to check if the unit had been damaged during the March 11, 2011 earthquake, before tsunami inundated the plant. The IC is supposed to pump water into the reactor core and keep it cool if the plant loses power, but it did not function properly on that day.
TEPCO insists that the IC unit was not damaged by the magnitude-9 Great East Japan Earthquake. According to one Diet investigative committee member, however, one witness stated that a water leak had been detected on the fourth floor before the tsunami hit, suggesting at least the possibility that the piping in the IC unit had been damaged in the quake.
But this issue is not just about unraveling the Fukushima disaster. Whether the quake damaged vital equipment at the plant also affects future reactor risk evaluations and safety standards. New safety standards are at this very time under evaluation at the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA). If reactor systems were in fact seriously damaged by the quake, that would be ample basis for demanding very strict regulations on vibration resistance.
Furthermore, after being stymied by TEPCO on its first attempt, the Diet must renew inspections, and not just of the No. 1 reactor's IC unit. The investigation into the cause of the meltdowns is not over. The Diet nuclear disaster investigative committee and its government cousin have been dissolved, their final reports filed, but the investigation must continue. [ link to mainichi.jp]
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