tagged w/ Naoto Kan
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The New York Times...
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February 27, 2012
Japan Weighed Evacuating Tokyo in Nuclear Crisis
By MARTIN FACKLER
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TOKYO — In the darkest moments of last year’s nuclear accident, Japanese leaders did not know the actual extent of damage at the plant and secretly considered the possibility of evacuating Tokyo, even as they tried to play down the risks in public, an independent investigation into the accident disclosed on Monday.
The investigation by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, a new private policy organization, offers one of the most vivid accounts yet of how Japan teetered on the edge of an even larger nuclear crisis than the one that engulfed the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. A team of 30 university professors, lawyers and journalists spent more than six months on the inquiry into Japan’s response to the triple meltdown at the plant, which followed a powerful earthquake and tsunami on March 11 that shut down the plant’s cooling systems.
The team interviewed more than 300 people, including top nuclear regulators and government officials, as well as the prime minister during the crisis, Naoto Kan. They were granted extraordinary access, in part because of a strong public demand for greater accountability and because the organization’s founder, Yoichi Funabashi, a former editor in chief of the daily newspaper Asahi Shimbun, is one of Japan’s most respected public intellectuals.
An advance copy of the report describes how Japan’s response was hindered at times by a debilitating breakdown in trust between the major actors: Mr. Kan; the Tokyo headquarters of the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power, known as Tepco; and the manager at the stricken plant. The conflicts produced confused flows of sometimes contradictory information in the early days of the crisis, the report said.
It describes frantic phone calls by the manager, Masao Yoshida, to top officials in the Kan government arguing that he could get the plant under control if he could keep his staff in place, while at the same time ignoring orders from Tepco’s headquarters not to use sea water to cool the overheating reactors. By contrast, Mr. Funabashi said in an interview, Tepco’s president, Masataka Shimizu, was making competing calls to the prime minister’s office saying that the company should evacuate all of its staff, a step that could have been catastrophic.
The 400-page report, due to be released later this week, also describes a darkening mood at the prime minister’s residence as a series of hydrogen explosions rocked the plant on March 14 and 15. It says Mr. Kan and other officials began discussing a worst-case outcome if workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant were evacuated. This would have allowed the plant to spiral out of control, releasing even larger amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere that would in turn force the evacuation of other nearby nuclear plants, causing further meltdowns.
The report quotes the chief cabinet secretary at the time, Yukio Edano, as having warned that such a “demonic chain reaction” of plant meltdowns could result in the evacuation of Tokyo, 150 miles to the south.
“We would lose Fukushima Daini, then we would lose Tokai,” Mr. Edano is quoted as saying, naming two other nuclear plants. “If that happened, it was only logical to conclude that we would also lose Tokyo itself.”
The report also describes the panic within the Kan administration at the prospect of large radiation releases from the more than 10,000 spent fuel rods that were stored in relatively unprotected pools near the damaged reactors. The report says it was not until five days after the earthquake that a Japanese military helicopter was finally able to confirm that the pool deemed at highest risk, near the No. 4 reactor, was still safely filled with water.
“We barely avoided the worst-case scenario, though the public didn’t know it at the time,” Mr. Funabashi, the foundation founder, said.
Mr. Funabashi blamed the Kan administration’s fear of setting off a panic for its decision to understate the true dangers of the accident. He said the Japanese government hid its most alarming assessments not just from its own public but also from allies like the United States. Mr. Funabashi said the investigation revealed “how precarious the U.S.-Japan relationship was” in the early days of the crisis, until the two nations began daily informational meetings at the prime minister’s residence on March 22.
The report seems to confirm the suspicions of nuclear experts in the United States — inside and outside the government — that the Japanese government was not being forthcoming about the full dangers posed by the stricken Fukushima plant. But it also shows that the United States government occasionally overreacted and inflated the risks, such as when American officials mistakenly warned that the spent fuel rods in the pool near unit No. 4 were exposed to the air and vulnerable to melting down and releasing huge amounts of radiation.
Still, Mr. Funabashi said, it was the Japanese government’s failure to warn its people of the dangers and the widespread distrust it bred in the government that spurred him to undertake an independent investigation. Such outside investigations have been rare in Japan, where the public has tended to accept official versions of events.
He said his group’s findings conflicted with those of the government’s own investigation into the accident, which were released in an interim report in December. A big difference involved one of the most crucial moments of the nuclear crisis, when the prime minister, Mr. Kan, marched into Tepco’s headquarters early on the morning of March 15 upon hearing that the company wanted to withdraw its employees from the wrecked nuclear plant.
The government’s investigation sided with Tepco by saying that Mr. Kan, a former social activist who often clashed with Japan’s establishment, had simply misunderstood the company, which wanted to withdraw only a portion of its staff. Mr. Funabashi said his foundation’s investigators had interviewed most of the people involved — except executives at Tepco, which refused to cooperate — and found that the company had in fact said it wanted a total pullout.
He credited Mr. Kan with making the right decision in forcing Tepco not to abandon the plant.
“Prime Minister Kan had his minuses and he had his lapses,” Mr. Funabashi said, “but his decision to storm into Tepco and demand that it not give up saved Japan.”
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PHOTO:
Issei Kato/Reuters, via Bloomberg
Journalists, in protective gear, were taken on a tour last week of Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, at the center of the crisis last yea
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.The New York Times...
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February 27, 2012
Japan Weighed Evacuating Tokyo... more
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A large explosion at Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiich nuclear power plant reveals that a meltdown is now underway following the exposure of the core following an 9.1-magnitude earthquake.
The media in Japan is not reporting this fact in order to prevent mass hysteria.
Prior to the explosion today, the media reported the radiation level was 1000 times higher than the permissible level.
Kyodo News agency said radioactive cesium had been detected near the 40 year old facility, citing the nuclear safety agency.
Government spokesman Yukio Edano said radiation levels around the Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan had not risen after the explosion, despite earlier press reports it had.
It is obvious the Japanese are attempting to cover up the deadly seriousness of events unfolding in their country.
The white smoke emitted from the Fukushima plant resembles the smoke emitted at Chernobyl after the Ukrainian nuclear plant blew up and caught fire on April 26, 1986. Here is a documentary on the events at Chernobyl.
Chernobyl has been blamed for thousands of deaths due to radiation-linked illness.
“If the pressure vessel, which is the thing that actually holds all the nuclear fuel … if that was to explode — that’s basically what happened at Chernobyl — you get an enormous release of radioactive material,” said Prof. Paddy Regan, nuclear physicist from Britain’s Surrey University.
Reuters reports this morning that experts examining pictures of “mist above the plant suggested only small amounts of radiation had been expelled as part of measures to ensure its stability, far from the radioactive clouds that Chernobyl spewed out when it exploded in 1986.”
This characterization is at odds with video of the explosion showing large plumes rising high above the crippled plant.
Even though 210,000 people were evacuated from the region, Japanese authorities and the corporate media insist the situation is not serious. Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has said that only a small amount of radiation has been released from one of the reactors.
Wind charts reveal that radiation released from the plant will adversely impact nations surrounding Japan.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/media-coverup-of-massive-chernobyl-event-underway-in-japan.htmlA large explosion at Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiich nuclear power plant... more
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Teen Animal Activist Elora West sent out a call for action -for Dolphins being transported from Taiji, Japan, in a truck that is stuck in a blizzard. Animals are in wooden crates. Truck has been stuck for 7 hours. Cove Guardians, Nicole and Andy, who were following the truck, are on site.
EMERGENCY! Call to Action!
30 JAN 2011
by Elora Malama West in S.O.S Save our Seas, Taiji, Japan
UPDATE: Cove Guardians, Nicole & Andy, are still following the truck with three captive dolphins on it. They began their journey in Taiji yesterday morning & have been on the road for nearly 24 hours. They hit a blizzard & the truck containing the dolphins clipped a guardrail & has been stuck in the snow for over seven hours. Nicole & Andy are on the side of the road with the truck.
Everyone! Hit the phones! We need to bombard the embassies and everything else we can! This is beyond horrible! Start writing and calling! It’s been seven hours… in a blizzard! Dolphin’s lives are on the line here!
Far fast and deep,
Elora Malama West!
PRIME MINISTER OF JAPAN
Prime Minister Naoto Kan
Cabinet Office, Government of Japan
1-6-1 Nagata-cho
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. 100-8914 JAPAN
+81-3-5253-2111
MINISTER OF FISHERIES
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
Masahiko Yamada
1-2-1 Kasumigaseki
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. 100-8950 JAPAN
Tel: +81-3-3502-8111
Fax: +81-3-3502-8220
EMBASSY OF JAPAN IN WASHINGTON D.C.
Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki
2520 Massachusetts Ave., N.W.
Washington D.C. 20008-2869
Tel: (202) 238-6700
Fax: (202) 328-2187
CONTACT YOUR LOCAL MEDIA (TV, NEWSPAPERS AND RADIO): In order to spread the news about what is happening in Japan, we need to get media coverage.
Write letters to the editors of your local newspapers
Call TV and radio stations to ask them to cover this important news
Refer your local broadcast and cable TV stations to Sea Shepherd to get a free copy of our Susan Sarandon "Save the Dolphins" Public Service Announcement (PSA)Teen Animal Activist Elora West sent out a call for action -for Dolphins being... more
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