Pretty much confirms every damn thing we said...

~


Gov't panel: Nuke plant operator still stumbling
[link to www.google.com]

[snip]

Some employees were aware that water gauges attached to containment vessels were likely broken and their measurements unreliable. But none of them raised questions, and the company kept releasing what turned out to be wrong data for months. New gauges installed in one reactor show that there is hardly any water inside, suggesting that the two other crippled reactors may have similar conditions.

The panel said the government and TEPCO failed to prevent the crisis not because such a large tsunami was unanticipated but because they were reluctant to invest time, effort and money in protecting against a natural disaster considered unlikely. TEPCO had even weighed in on a report about earthquake risk and asked the government to play down the likelihood of a tsunami, the report said.

Political leaders were upset after a NISA official let it slip on March 12 that the reactors were possibly melting down, the report said. After that, all NISA announcements had to be run by the prime minister's office. NISA denied meltdowns for months afterwards.