Published: June 9th, 2012 at 2:23 pm ET
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Subscription Only: INSIGHT: Diet panel’s conclusion on TEPCO defies evidence
Asahi AJW
HIDEAKI KIMURA
June 9, 2012
[...] the hearing on June 8 revealed exchanges on the teleconferencing system between TEPCO’s main office in Tokyo and the crippled Fukushima plant on March 14 and March 15 that showed the company was in the process of giving up the recovery efforts and abandoning the plant.[...]
According to the exchanges around 8 p.m. on March 14, someone asked: “Around what time will evacuation of all workers from the site be ready?”
Another person sought confirmation of evacuating to TEPCO’s Fukushima No. 2 [Daini] nuclear power plant, which was also hit by the tsunami but had shut down properly.
“All workers will evacuate to the visitor hall of the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power plant, is that correct?” the person asked.
[Masataka Shimizu, TEPCO president at the time] responded in the teleconference, “We have yet to finalize the evacuation.” He also said, “We are in the middle of the process of confirming with the appropriate authority.”
[...]
The newspaper also learned that Tetsuro Ito, deputy chief Cabinet secretary for crisis management and former chief of Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department, was told directly by a TEPCO official at the prime minister’s office that the utility wanted to “abandon” the Fukushima No. 1 plant and “eventually withdraw” from the Fukushima No. 2 plant.
The Response
Shuya Nomura, a lawyer and member of the Diet investigative panel, asked Shimizu if government officials misunderstood the meaning of “evacuation of all.”“I am afraid so,” Shimizu said.
Published: June 9th, 2012 at 2:23 pm ET
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Plant operators can't deal with a meltdown, which is the problem with each and every nuclear radiation plant. In the world.
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So they just hoped they could walk away from any responsibility. After all, it is an act of nature (they claimed).
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This says the "company" was ready to evacuate the plant, operators at the plant would never have a lot of say in that decision. But from the information we have been given neutron and gamma dose rates were at extreme and lethal levels. Gamma dose rates were 10 milliseverts at the front gate, and that gate is far away from the reactors, as I have been there. Neutron dose rates were detectable a mile away. Some workers got doses of 250 milliseverts, way beyond what anyone ever received at a commercial nuclear plant.
My point is to blame management, they make all major decisions, a lot of the workers sacrificed a lot. But TEPCO was in no way prepared for this. The idea to evacuate might have been considered for a short time but then someone with a brain told them they would lose Japan if that was done. They would have lost all reactors and all fuel pools, with no chance of ever getting any control back.
No one was ever prepared for anything like this. No one would have ever built a plant if they thought this was possible. TEPCO will not survive this in the end, So call this stupid or a lack of imagination but TEPCO never dreamed this was possible. Nor did 99.9$ of nuclear engineers. This is not a defense of TEPCO,they operate like most other large corporations and utilities. They know how to make money, but that is all they care about.
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News flash…
They were warned about this very threat taking place in 2001 (tsunami hitting plant).
They had several years to shut this plant down…
Jokes on them…
[REMOVED]
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They may have minimized the threat of a tsunami because upgrading the harbor would cost money. Just as they might have done with other safety choices they had. Money vs safety choices will almost always result in bypassing safety.
Are you saying they knew that the plant would fail, knew that they would lose all their reactors, their company would go bankrupt, Japan would be ruined, and their country and the world would hate them forever on purpose??
"Jokes? HaHA-Eat it? Moderator???
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The ordinary workers never returned to the plant.
They met at a funeral they had after one of the fellow workers that died from the earthquake, and said no one of the ordinary staff had gone back to the plant.
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On 3/11; 15 Nuclear Reactors In Japan Were Damaged, Not 3 or 4 http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/03/14-nuclear-reactors-at-4-japan-sites.html
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12 reasons why all nuclear power plants must be shut down; via A Green Road Blog http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/03/12-reasons-why-all-nuclear-power-plants.html
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sure they weren't just knocking off for the weekend, like now?
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