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© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.Released records of nuclear crisis meetings show chaos, confusion over lack of info
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Riffraff
Started lying….continued to lye….still lying…… sounds pretty organized to me…..
Maria
What's the Japanese version of No point closing the stable door after the horse has bolted ?
And
"human failings"?? That hardly covers the life-threatening incompetence that went on! What utter nonsense.
kurisupisu
There have already been meltdowns at the plant.
There is a substantial amount of material that has breached containment ie the fuel rods became liquid dropped down to the bottom of their containment vessels.
Why is there still measurable radioactive discharge from Fukushima one year after the tsunami?
Why are estimates of a 40 year cleanup postulated UNLESS there had been meltdowns?
The article's unfactual information really is misleading.....
borscht
Chernonyl was a few decades ago and what did Japan learn from that?
Don't tell your citizens the truth? No, Russia got their people out very quickly.
Don't tell the rest of the world in a timely manner? Yes, Russia didn't do that, nor did Japan.
TEPCO wanted to pull all their people out immediately, but Kan said no. The Russians literally killed themselves fighting the disaster.
And whatever happened to 'Japan is unique country?'
smithinjapan
"...the day the earthquake and tsunami struck—until late December were not recorded and had to be reconstructed retroactively."
Yep, so they're completely reliable and unquestionable.
Sherman
I sometimes regret bringing my family back to Japan
peanut666
Do people realize what Fukushima looked like after the Tsunami hit? http://news.asiaone.com/a1media/news/04Apr11/20110410.150223_19738266---09_04_2011---japan-quake-disaster-accident.jpg No electricity, no water, no roads, for 7850 square miles. How do you get heavy equipment and communications to get to the nuclear reactor? Of course there was chaos and confusion. How do you get accurate data? How do you verify? You can't - you can only make choices from best estimates.
minello7
“We humans learn from our mistakes.”but japanese don't make mistakes?? Sorry,I have no intention of offending the people of japan,but thats how I was taught,its okay to make mistakes,if you don't make mistakes,how are you to learn. You have to let the people think out of the box,then maybe this confusion wouldn't have happened.maybe, someone would have stuck their neck out and taken responsibility to deal with the problem. The person who should have led was the CEO of Tepco, so what really happened , I don't suppose the truth will ever come out.
hoserfella
So much can be read into this quote. Amano is probably one of the Japanese "elite" who see themselves as the chosen race. But what happens when utter incompetence is exposed? "Hey, everybody makes mistakes".
cactusJack
The Japanese are HORRIBLE in basically all aspects of crisis management. No one wants to take responsibility.
hot_dog_dynasty
Just more proof that humanity is nowhere near compentent enough to properly handle nuclear power. All the potential dangers were known decades before hand, but proper measures against those dangers were not taken. And if the media propaganda drive by the nuclear establishment is any proof, they never will be. They are spending a lot of time and money to calm our fears with words rather than actions. All they care about is their bank accounts.
I might have a more positive opinion if they pledged to go 100 percent thorium and damn the cost. But all they do is talk and flood the media with talk. The only proper response is to be anti-nuke, because humanity just can't get it right when profit is paramount to all.
DoLittleBeLate
Soviet Union kept Chernobyl as secret for just two weeks. This is a historical fact and it is pointless to refute it. Anyway, Tepco represents worse communist dictatorship than any produce of Lenin.
Break Tepco to pieces, release the markets! Capitalism helps people more than they ever did!
gaijinTechie
"Humanity" has operated nuclear power plants for decades with less casualties than coal or oil, and especially road traffic. Are you saying "humanity is not competent to drive cars" as well?
Please put the blame where the blame belongs. Tepco has show no humanity and continues to do so even today. Tepco and only Tepco is to blame, alone.
nath
Does anyone know how my family and I can check the radioactivity in our tsp water? We live in the Western part of Chiba...
edojin
Okay already. We now have an idea of what happened a year ago. How about what's happening today at those destroyed nuclear reactors ... right now. Bygones are bygones, but this story is now an ongoing thing. Hope somebody is taking notes at this moment concerning the Fukushima disaster.
Yubaru
Japan is still a unique country, human's learn from their mistakes, Japanese politicians don't!
hot_dog_dynasty
In terms of lives lost from traumatic injury, that may true. In terms of cancer deaths that could have been avoided, no one knows for sure. In terms of birth defects that could have been avoided, no one knows for sure. In terms of square kilometers of land that became dangerous or unihabitable, I am going to bet on nukes.
That is just plain silly. Might as bring up the number of electrocutions each year, and factor in the number of nuke, coal and other plants.
Other energies also have problems, but the dangers are smaller scale, visible, otherwise more readily detectable, and more easy to clean or fix.
Nuclear problems have the potential for larger scale, with invisible but dangerous results that last for thousands of years. There is reason why people can name the two biggest nuke disasters of the world, but have more trouble naming oil disasters. I doubt most young people ever heard of Exxon Valdez for example, and Deepwater Horizon memories are already fading. But Chernobyl and Fukushima will live on and on. A much bigger disaster is entirely possible and it will dwarf them all, and even your great great grandchildren could affected along with their great great grandchildren.
Meanwhile, there annual protests in Germany over risky nuclear waste storage and ever changing storage plans in the U.S.. Nuke plants continue to use the much more dangerous plutonium and uranium instead of the safer thorium that we all know about, and that is all over the world. But what is being done?
Sorry, but your plea that the nuclear industry can afford to rest on its laurels of an up to now low provable bodycount is wrong-headed and dangerous. I say again, humanity is not competent. So far, we have been lucky and our luck will run out like this, just as it ran out in Chernobyl and Fukushima.
edojin
Perhaps the only one taking notes is "zichi" down there in Kobe. He covers this situation as well as onyone ...
Moderator
Back on topic please.
nath
Really? amazing!! Are these minutes or recollections? And how was this done, if it could not be done in the meeting room? how reliable are these minutes? this seems another pr stunt aimed at showing people that despite the panic, government was in control, which may not have been totally true. Minutes are taken during meetings and approved by all people who were in the meetings before they become records. This cannot be done 1 year after!!! The fact is that minutes were not taken and anything concocted (sorry written) after cannot be called minutes......they are called recollections of what happened.
nath
They made mistakes and did and are doing the best they can. Give them a break.
One thing good that happened from this mess is that America on the West Coast is frantically revamping all nuclear plant protections and backing up everything.
Good things always come from bad.
I am sure glad I did not have to evacuate South with another 30 million people. I do not like using public facilities.
Acjama
Not from Fukushima? Not even from Japan?!? Hmm...
Amano is building smoke and mirrors. There is no foreign nuclear power plant operator that would recognize themselves from how Tepco and NISA caused and handled the situation. There is no lesson to be learned, other than of type "Told you so". When looking for the reasons to the meltdown, there is no "we".
Amano took the reputation of IAEA down to his level.
Disillusioned
Yeah, a good lesson for the rest of the world, but NOT in Japan cos they have done bugger all besides talk about increased safety. They ignored all the warnings before the March 11 quake and are still dithering around. They were warned several times over the last twenty years about the dangers of having the electrics and generators at ground level and were told to get them up off the ground, but they did nothing and now the whole country is paying the price. And, they have done nothing about the other 50 reactors' safety. Taking them offline means nothing! They still risk a meltdown if the cooling fails. Nuclear power is only as safe as the people operating it.
kurisupisu
The Japanese have been afflicted by nuclear disasters to a larger extent than any other country in history yet the official line is that nuclear power is necessary . Locating nuclear reactors in an earthquake prone country is not intelligent. The next time that an earthquake destroys a nuclear power plant, what excuse will be give to the victims?
Harry_Gatto
From Wikipedia:
The reactor's emergency diesel generators and DC batteries, crucial components in helping keep the reactors cool in the event of a power loss, were located in the basements of the reactor turbine buildings. The reactor design plans provided by General Electric specified placing the generators and batteries in that location, but mid-level engineers working on the construction of the plant were concerned that this made the back up power systems vulnerable to flooding. TEPCO elected to strictly follow General Electric's design in the construction of the reactors.[20].
The location of the plant was on a bluff which was originally 35-meters above sea level. During construction, however, TEPCO lowered the height of the bluff by 25-meters. One reason the bluff was lowered was so that the base of the reactors could be constructed on solid bedrock to mitigate the threat posed by earthquakes. Another reason was the lowered height would keep the running costs of the seawater pumps low. TEPCO did not factor in the tsunami risk when planning the site's construction. Therefore, the lowered height would result in the plant being more vulnerable to tsunami.
Ranger_Miffy2
Where will you be Sunday at 2:45pm? Not anywhere near Daiichi, I warrant.
Star-viking
zichi Mar. 10, 2012 - 01:24PM JST
Not just TEPCO - the regulators, the overarching bureaucracy, the governments that came and went.
Scrote
Let's be clear: these "minutes" were made up almost one year after the event. The government broke the law by not keeping minutes, yet nobody is held responsible and nobody is punished for breaking the law.
PT24881
Thoroughly understood these high officials' keen concerns, 12 long months to 'reconstruct' the meetings' minutes aroused GREAT doubts on how much facts left on these presentable versions ! Credibility of the officials took a big dent ! Reason why the PM Noda has prepared the ground " no individual should be held responsible..& assuming the sufferings & pain collectively ! ". Resignation seems the least they should do to assume the responsibility ( both Noda's cabinet & Tepco ) !
BernieK
Mother nature, the mother of all whistleblowers, took care of business. The government of Japan had their chances from past whistleblowers.
No more cover-ups. No more scandals. No more hiding defects. You can not squelch mother nature. This article is about management gone bad and the entire industry got involved in the cover-ups from the government down.
Janis Murniesks
This days of modern technology era you can't hide such crisis and I would won to ask ho was the gay ho order to buld this power plant on the seismic break in front of oaken who the fff was that genius I would like to bet him for hurting may favorite nation I can't stand such idiotismu in first place may own nation has sufferd same thing in 1986 in chernobil many Latvians has ban sand to Chernobil to glen the mass we are with you we now wot it is we Russians Latvians Ukraine Belarussians All postsowyet stats nows this pain hold on and to not surrender you are strong nation good luck and if Russia offers they help accept it pleas accept we have this roof pain to
Shivajirao Tipirneni
Japanese should stop discussing about the rerasons for fukushima accident because they are mostly due to human errors and negligence.To err is human anxd to admit it is Di vine.Japan must close down all reactors aS OTHERWISE,THE OTHER REACTORS ALSO CAN FAIL FOR SOME RERASON OR THE OTHER AND POISON MANKIND AND nNATURE.Germany is seeking alternate sources of Energy and Green Peace has prepared an elaborate report on this subject.Japan has plenty of opportunities to harness geo-thermal,hydro-power,wind power,tidal power,Bio-energy and solar energy by investing more funds and intelligent brains in research to produce better cells to tap solar energy.Japan can import coal,oil and natural gas for thermal power even if if it is costly as the costs of nuclear power will be far higher in the long run and morbidity impacts will continue for decades,making mankind virtually impotent,sick and debilitated and also mentally unhealthy. prof.T.Shivaji Rao,Director,centre for environment,Gitam university,visakhapatnam,India
nath
well these are recollections, not minutes or records of meetings. We now know minutes were not taken and so all these are recollections.
Procedure of minutes/records taking: minutes are taken by secretary during first meeting. When the next meeting takes place, the meeting starts with review of previous minutes, and after ammendments, the munites of the previous meeting are approved/confirmed, etc, etc, etc. Do the records show the dates and all these details? Therefore all the rejudgitations here are just recollections of what happened during the panic when there was nothing planned. Hope they remember I doubt apart from the sweating, shouting, puffing and huffing, anybody remembers anything sensible to share with us....
peanut666
I don't know where you so called experts got their college educations, but you should ask for your money back.
Shutting down all nuclear plants is a incorrect conclusion. France gets all 70% of it's electricity by nuclear power plants. Let's say Japan shifts from nuclear to using bio-energy, solar energy, wind and wave power.
If Japan converts 50% of their current electrical generation plants over to those technologies, they cannot produce the same amount of sustained electrical power as a SINGLE nuclear power plant. Those technologies are inefficient and have NOT been developed sufficiently to provide for electrical DEMAND which is increasing. There's no way to store electricity efficiently either. Batteries technology is way outdated and nothing exists that can hold the amount of electricity needed at night.
Oil, coal, and natural gas IS an alternative, but there are risks. More people are killed by air pollutants generated by coal, oil, and natural gas based electrical generation than by all radiation that was released by the nuclear power plants combined around the world historically AND this includes counting the victims from the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island disasters.
So nuclear is the healthiest, safest, and most efficient way of producing electricity. If Japan builds them now, using newer, safer designs, it will be the most logical and effective way of producing electrical energy. Until something better comes along, Japan shouldn't be foolish enough to abandon nuclear technology.
The only thing Japan needs to fear is fear itself, especially from an ignorant public.
peanut666
California is also considered a very volatile region. In California, we have Diablo Canyon. The Diablo Canyon Power Plant is an electricity-generating nuclear power plant at Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, California. It was built directly over a geological fault line, and is located near a second fault. It went online in 1985
The plant is located in Nuclear Regulatory Commission Region IV. In November 2009, PG&E applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for 20-year license renewals for both reactors.
The plant has two Westinghouse-designed 4-loop pressurized-water nuclear reactors operated by Pacific Gas & Electric. The facility is located on about 750 acres (300 ha) in Avila Beach, California. Together, the twin 1,100 MWe reactors produce about 18,000 GW·h of electricity annually, supplying the electrical needs of more than 2.2 million people, sent along the Path 15 500-kV lines that connect to this plant.
So what?