Now They Tell Us
From the BBC: Japan ‘unprepared’ for Fukushima nuclear disaster
Japan was unprepared for a nuclear accident on the scale of the one at the Fukushima plant, the government said in a report to be submitted to the IAEA.
The report says poor oversight may also have contributed to the crisis.
The authorities have pledged to make the country’s nuclear regulator (Nisa) independent of the industry ministry, which also promotes nuclear power.
It comes after Nisa doubled its initial estimate of leaked radiation in the first week after the disaster.
The nuclear safety agency now says 770,000 terabecquerels escaped into the atmosphere following the 11 March disaster – more than double its earlier estimate of 370,000 terabecquerels.
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Earlier, Nisa said that in reactor No 1, molten nuclear fuel dropped to the bottom of the pressure vessel within five hours of the quake – 10 hours earlier than initially estimated by operator Tepco.
The safety agency also said a meltdown damaged the No 2 reactor after 80 hours, and the No 3 reactor after 79 hours of the twin natural disasters.
But the government says it is still on track to bring the reactors at Fukushima to a cold shutdown by January at the latest.
So, they allowed all of the theater of TEPCO working to prevent meltdowns, and the busy work of laying new power cables, knowing that things were already out of control, and they set up a 20 kilometer exclusion zone despite knowing the radiation risk mandated the evacuation of a much larger zone. They weren’t protecting people – they were protecting TEPCO.
This is a level 7 incident, and has been one since the fourth day after the tsunami.
2 comments
Living on the West Coast, this event has caused me to worry about our state’s exposure to radioactivity, my family’s health, future cancers, the safety of eating from my vegetable garden….
Nice to know Japan’s TEPCO has lied and obviously has poisoned thousands of people, contaminated a huge chunk of valuable real estate, made Pacific fish uneatable or at least suspect. Makes me feel so safe.
Where in hell is the EPA and NRC monitoring on the West Coast? I expect Japan to hide things, they always have, but the US is “providing for the common defense” when it shuts down monitoring and downplays the risks.
When you can’t operate a nuclear carrier 40 miles off the coast because the alarms won’t stop sounding, there is a problem beyond a minor leak.