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24th July, 2012
TOKYO: Japanese authorities and Tokyo Electric Power ignored the risk of an atomic accident because they believed in the “myth of nuclear safety”, a government-backed report on the Fukushima crisis said Monday.
The study, compiled by a panel of scholars, journalists, lawyers and engineers, also said officials were poorly trained to deal with the crisis after the plant’s reactors went into meltdown last year.
“The fundamental problem lies in the fact that utilities, including TEPCO and the government, have failed to see the danger as reality as they were bound by a myth of nuclear safety and the notion that severe accidents do not happen at nuclear plants in our country,” it said.
The 450-page report is the fourth inquiry into the worst nuclear accident in a generation which occurred after the huge tsunami of March 2011 crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.
A damning parliamentary study that said the disaster was “man-made” was released earlier this month, following a private report by a group of journalists and scholars.
An investigation by Tokyo Electric Power, or TEPCO, the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant, largely cleared itself of blame, saying the size of the earthquake and tsunami was beyond all expectations and could not reasonably have been foreseen.
The latest report said however that TEPCO and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) were ill-prepared to cope with a tsunami or severe accidents, and that the government bungled the evacuation.
The report also took a swipe at former Japanese premier Naoto Kan and his government, saying there was a swirl of bureaucratic confusion in the days following the natural disasters and reactor meltdowns.
Kan’s bid to wrestle the crisis from incompetent nuclear officials did not help, it added.
The plant’s operator did not adequately train employees “to think independently and to act, and lacked flexible and proactive thinking required for crisis response,” the report added.
It also focused on a key question about what caused the disaster, backing the government and TEPCO’s findings that the plant’s cooling systems were knocked out by giant waves that slammed into the plant.
Many scientists and activists have disputed this finding, suggesting it was the initial earthquake that damaged the reactors.
A parliamentary report released earlier this month charged that ingrained collusion between TEPCO, the government and regulators—combined with a lack of any effective oversight—led directly to crisis.
“They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents. Therefore, we conclude that the accident was clearly ‘man-made’,” said the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission’s report released on July 5.
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