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Auditors say billions of yen wasted in Fukushima cleanup

49 Comments
By MARI YAMAGUCHI

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49 Comments
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And the yaks got how much?

14 ( +16 / -2 )

Who are the bigger clowns? TEPCO, the government, or joe public for putting up with this and footing the bill? I dispair.

20 ( +21 / -1 )

Lol, is anyone surprised really?

11 ( +12 / -1 )

Ah, yes! Is it the clowns or the monkeys running this circus? This article only mentions the money wasted on untested and stop-gap measures that have all failed. The ice wall was destined to fail from it conception. It seems that nearly every idea these clowns (or monkeys) come up with is just a stop-gap fix with no real crisis or project management. After four years they still do not have any kind of solid plan as to how they are gonna store all their radioactive crap nor do they have any idea how to stop it leaking into the pacific at a rate of hundreds of tons every day. I haven't surfed the east coast of Japan since the meltdowns and I won't until there is some kind of fix for the leaking radioactive water streaming from the plant. I wonder how I'd go seeking compensation for lifestyle changes from TEPCO? And, the government, who owns 51% of TEPCO, is just keeping out of it and doing bugger all! But, the all-mighty leader 'Abe' has proclaimed, "It's under control!"

13 ( +15 / -2 )

FRENCH IMPORT: Among the costliest failures was a 32 billion yen machine made by French nuclear giant Areva SA

All the expats who vociferously argued that Japan needs help from the West should know this consequence.

-14 ( +4 / -18 )

Pretty obvious, Japan didn't ask for any help and just spent spent spent, almost they didn't want things to work so they could get more money.

Why can't the government sue some of these companies to get the money back!?

7 ( +9 / -2 )

gogogo... the government KNEW.

9 ( +10 / -1 )

or joe public for putting up with this and footing the bill? I dispair.

And how is joe public here supposed to do anything about it? Suggestions please.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Brilliant

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

gogogoMar. 25, 2015 - 04:13PM JST

Pretty obvious, Japan didn't ask for any help and just spent spent spent, almost they didn't want things to work so they could get more money.

Are you serious? Would you rather believe such unbelievable story than much more believable story that the French company simplely did not have an equipment that worked in severe accident? What difference, do you think, the French company made if Japan "asked help," rather than "spend money"?

Why can't the government sue some of these companies to get the money back!?

It is not unusual in nuclear industry that manufacturers like Areva and GE get indemnity in the contract.

-8 ( +2 / -10 )

FRENCH IMPORT: Among the costliest failures was a 32 billion yen machine made by French nuclear giant Areva SA to remove radioactive cesium from water leaking from the three wrecked reactors. The trouble-plagued machine lasted just three months and treated only 77,000 tons of water

Did someone throw away the receipt so that it couldn't be returned? I suspect there is more to this part of the story.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

The French haven't built anything worth buying except for my dyson vacuum I love it

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

すごいショック!(not at all shocked)

-2 ( +3 / -5 )

Billions of dollars are wasted in any large scale endeavor like FEMA after Hurrican Katrina or the past Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Whenever there are so many outside agencies involved and so many moving parts and so many variables, those people at the very top of the mountain can't see what everyone is doing at the base. Mismanagement happens when those have underestimated the situation are in charge.

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

Good to know that disaster capitalism is alive and well in Fukushima.

6 ( +8 / -2 )

warispeaceMar. 25, 2015 - 06:27PM JST

Good to know that disaster capitalism is alive and well in Fukushima.

As a taxpayer and electricity bill payer, I am seriously angry with the waste of money and the Westerners who pressured TEPCO into buying good for nothing gadgets from France.

-12 ( +2 / -14 )

SURPRISE!

oh... yeah. no its not.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

The only surprise here is that the auditors didn't rate more of the budget wasted. The gov't, Yakuza and TEPCO saw the Fukushima disaster as nothing more than a chance to fill their pockets from the start. Thats how Japan works.

8 ( +9 / -1 )

What is sad is that, as a poster above already said, I doubt that even one reader was surprised when they read the headlline.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Nuclear power turns out to be the most expensive and dangerous energy though they used to say it is the cheapest, the cleanest and the safest energy of all. All should be scrapped in turn while they are safe.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

And of you add in the K/B, dango, amakudari, yakuza take, etc etc these figures need to go MUCH higher as corruption isn't even figured into these figures.

What a bloody mess, days like this I dream about having left after 3/11, Japan what a nightmare & its set to continue unabated !!

5 ( +6 / -1 )

This is a great example of why you should never trust a government or corporation. And why things like nuclear energy, GMOs, WMD etc., nobody is taking responsibility when something goes wrong.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Wasted money isn't the issue. It's all that radioactive material they can't seem to find.

1 ( +4 / -3 )

"...assembled by unskilled workers..." Curious minds want to know how much they were paid versus the welders welding the replacement tanks.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

@gaijinfo has put the finger on the problem. Not only was all this money wasted but there also are no solutions. So Japan is doomed to continue to spend massive amounts of money in pursuit of solutions, many of which will fail. Meanwhile Japanese will continue to be endangered by the uncontrolled and only vaguely known scope of the the melted nuclear fuel. And yet nobody is in jail, while many Tohoku people live in limbo. Shame, Japan. From 頑張ろう日本 to 馬鹿ろう日本 for continuing to tolerate this state of affairs.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

CH3CHO: "As a taxpayer and electricity bill payer, I am seriously angry with the waste of money and the Westerners who pressured TEPCO into buying good for nothing gadgets from France."

So you're outraged about the waste of money for ONE machine from a foreign company (and mistake a for-profit company's greed for actual help and expertise offered and refused by foreign workers!), but no comment on: Hitachi, Toshiba Corp,TEPCO itself, and TEPCO subsidiary Tokyo Power Technology?

Seems you're just angry that TEPCO and the government have mismanaged this so badly that the nation is embarrassed, and need to try and deflect by pointing at ONE machine imported at great cost when no one at all is surprised by the usual Japanese money-wasting, monopolizing, and general ineptitude. Sadly, we're about as surprised by your comments as we are by the fact that so much money has been wasted by TEPCO.

7 ( +10 / -3 )

It's obvious to me that the folks running this show have the same mentality as the Japanese government, throw money at the problem and "things" will miraculously happen.

I wonder how many people remember when the discussions started about how to "fix" Fukushima, the government made a number of statements saying that "The technology needed to clean up this mess has not even been developed yet, so the public needs to understand and have patience", or words to that effect.

Little did the public know or realize that this was a coded message for businesses to get their piece of the pie! There is no accountability and until the public gets fed up with the system nothing will change, and everyone will just sit and suck their teeth along with sucking it up!

5 ( +6 / -1 )

The ice wall was destined to fail from it conception.

The ice wall STILL hasn't fail. It hasn't even been built yet.

Pretty obvious, Japan didn't ask for any help

Yeah Japan just took on the problem all alone. Well except for all the non-Japanese companies specifically mentioned by the Board.

My question is why it took the Board of Audit 4 years to start pointing out these specific issues? If proper oversight had been put in place by the Board from the start these issues could have been addressed before they ran into the billions of yen.

0 ( +3 / -3 )

Japanese government auditors say the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has wasted about a fifth of the 350 billion yen it has spent to clean up the plant

It also said the cleanup work has been dominated by one group of Japanese utility, construction and electronics giants despite repeated calls for more transparency and greater access for international bidders.

A poster here on JT last week railed on the folks who left Japan after 3/11, stating that they did not have the "guts" to see the recovery through, or words to that effect. I responded that, speaking for myself, I made the decision to leave because I grasped, based on my years in Japan, that the disaster was something beyond Japan's capabilities, given its poor history of disaster management, and decades-long tradition of being a cesspool of waste and corruption under the LDP. I rest my case.

4 ( +7 / -3 )

Yakuza have literally taken them to the cleaners

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Auditors say billions of yen wasted in Fukushima cleanup

"Don't worry. There's plenty more where that came from."

S. Abe

3 ( +5 / -2 )

Lets remember that TEPCO was and still is a private company that is 100% responsible for this disaster. All you free market goonies forget that. The government is bailing out TEPCO cause if it did not it was be bankrupt now. This is a classic too big to fail situation. Same thing lead to the Wall Street collapse and the near depression. That is free market capitalism when it fails as it often does. And how does the system get corrected, the taxpayers bail out the banks or in this case the utility. No posts from the nuclear zealots on this article? No, sound of crickets only. This proves completely what a scam nuclear energy is, a total money dump.

5 ( +7 / -2 )

Yakuza have literally taken them to the cleaners

Well, figuratively.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

it's regrettable (lots of bowing)... but it would be better if they sued all the contractors who sub contracted sub contractors and got their money back. It's all their buddies though so that's not going to happen. We all know this

1 ( +1 / -0 )

What a mess Japan has become.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

So which of the 5 major engineering companies in Japan received most of the work??? Kojima Corp maybe?? The ice wall scheme did not work for Chernobyl:

Fire brigade pumps were then used to drain the basement. The operation was not completed until 8 May, after 20,000 metric tons of highly radioactive water were pumped out.

With the bubbler pool gone, a meltdown was less likely to produce a powerful steam explosion. To do so, the molten core would now have to reach the water table below the reactor. To reduce the likelihood of this, it was decided to freeze the earth beneath the reactor, which would also stabilize the foundations. Using oil drilling equipment, the injection of liquid nitrogen began on 4 May. It was estimated that 25 metric tons of liquid nitrogen per day would be required to keep the soil frozen at −100 °C.[25]:59 This idea[77] was soon scrapped and the bottom room where the cooling system would have been installed was filled with concrete.

Why waste the time and money trying it... Learn from past experiences and Entomb All of Daiichi NPP and surrounding areas Land and Sea.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Corruptions and wastes like these will continue in the future as long as those are responsible are not held into account.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

It's not like we humans perfected nuclear disaster clean ups. Radiation is deadly and frightening fortunately we haven't had much practice in such events.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

smithinjapanMar. 25, 2015 - 08:44PM JST

So you're outraged about the waste of money for ONE machine from a foreign company (and mistake a for-profit company's greed for actual help and expertise offered and refused by foreign workers!),

That is because the Areva project is the most expensive waste of money in the list.

The trouble-plagued machine lasted just three months and treated only 77,000 tons of water, a tiny fraction of the volume leaking every day.

Areva's equipment could not de-contaminate even one day amount of water and failed. Other companies and even low wage workers are doing better job than it.

Admit it, Smith. Westerners do not have any more expertise in decontaminating melt down NPP than Japanese. The difference is the eagerness. Look what the people without expertise and without eagerness did. I would rather let people without expertise but with eagerness do the job.

-5 ( +1 / -6 )

The costs of the cleanup and the amount wasted should be shown as a separate item on TEPCO bills,

e.g. Fukushima Cleanup Y1500 (of which Y300 was wasted)

It might lead TEPCO customers to put pressure on the company, or maybe not. Shouganai.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

the more TEPCO and Abe waste the more they get, and yakuza are happy too. and more reasons to have classified government secrets. nuclear power is great like that.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

least surprising headline of the moment

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

"cleanup work has been dominated by one group of Japanese utility, construction and electronics giants" - article

Disaster Capitalism at it's best? TEPCO didn't cause the tsunami, or DID THEY!?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

How can this be a surprise to anyone?

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Of course, if TEPCO hadn't bothered with these failed operations, they would be getting castigated for not trying them.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

And who will pay for it? we will with the 10% tax hike just around the corner.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

News Flash TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Plant Chief admits that there is no technology in existence to Decommission a Melted Nuclear Reactor, so the whole "clean up operation" has been a waste of Yen..

NHK world http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/features/201503312108.html

Okay folks now is the time for JAEA and TEPCO to think about entombment because there maybe a 200 year wait bfre such technology exists to decommission a melted nuclear reactor

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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