Fukushima plant operator admits late meltdown announcement
The operator of Japan’s tsunami-stricken nuclear plant says its staff failed to report a reactor meltdown immediately as was required by internal guidelines.
Yukako Handa, a TEPCO spokesperson which operated Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), said people should have been informed of the meltdown within days of the devastating tsunami that hit the plant in 2011.
Under the company’s regulations, a reactor must be declared “in meltdown” if 5 percent or more of its fuel rods are determined to be “damaged.”
Damage to one of the reactor cores surpassed 50 percent within three days of the tsunami and the company was aware of that early on. However, TEPCO did not report a meltdown for about two months.
Handa said a meltdown would have been announced if the guidelines had been properly followed.
TEPCO apologized for “the great inconvenience.”
Back in 2012, TEPCO admitted that it played down safety risks at the plant as it feared additional action would have led to the closure of the plant and further fuel public anxiety and anti-nuclear movements.
Koichiro Nakamura, a senior official at the now-defunct Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency (NISA), said a day after the disaster that a “meltdown of the reactor’s core” may be happening at Fukushima.
He was removed from a public relations position at the agency after making the remarks, triggering speculation that some kind of cover-up was underway.
On March 11, 2011, a nine-magnitude earthquake triggered a devastating tsunami that inflicted heavy damage on the six-reactor Fukushima nuclear plant.
The cooling systems of the plant’s reactors were knocked out, leading to meltdowns and the release of radioactive radiation into the air, soil and sea.
The incident, considered the world’s worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, also led to the evacuation of 160,000 people from areas near the power plant.
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