News

Authorities are trying to gather information about foreign victims of the March 11 earthquake-tsunami catastrophe, but the unprecedented damage is hampering relief work.

Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto pledged to do his utmost to determine the whereabouts of foreigners, both alive and missing, but 10 days after the disaster the government remains unready to release even an estimate of those affected.

“We must (try to ascertain) the whereabouts of people from foreign countries in the same way we are doing for Japanese people,” Matsumoto told a press conference Friday.

According to the Justice Ministry, there were about 95,000 foreigners in the four Pacific coast prefectures slammed by the tsunami — Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima and Ibaraki.

The Foreign Ministry has received hundreds of inquiries from about 80 countries about citizens who were or could have been in the region at the time the historic 9-magnitude quake triggered the monster waves.

The National Police Agency said the number of people unaccounted for hit about 13,000 Sunday and that about 8,500 had been identified or confirmed dead.

But the figures for the missing are based only on registrations by their relatives.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110322a7.html

The unfolding disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant follows decades of falsified safety reports, fatal accidents and underestimated earthquake risk in Japan’s atomic power industry.

The destruction caused by last week’s 9.0 earthquake and tsunami comes less than four years after a 6.8 quake shut the world’s biggest atomic plant, also run by Tokyo Electric Power Co. In 2002 and 2007, revelations the utility had faked repair records forced the resignation of the company’s chairman and president, and a three-week shutdown of all 17 of its reactors.

With almost no oil or gas reserves of its own, nuclear power has been a national priority for Japan since the end of World War II, a conflict the country fought partly to secure oil supplies. Japan has 54 operating nuclear reactors — more than any other country except the U.S. and France — to power its industries, pitting economic demands against safety concerns in the world’s most earthquake-prone country.

Nuclear engineers and academics who have worked in Japan’s atomic power industry spoke in interviews of a history of accidents, faked reports and inaction by a succession of Liberal Democratic Party governments that ran Japan for nearly all of the postwar period.

Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a seismology professor at Kobe University, has said Japan’s history of nuclear accidents stems from an overconfidence in plant engineering. In 2006, he resigned from a government panel on reactor safety, saying the review process was rigged and “unscientific.”
Nuclear Earthquake

In an interview in 2007 after Tokyo Electric’s Kashiwazaki nuclear plant was struck by an earthquake, Ishibashi said fundamental improvements were needed in engineering standards for atomic power stations, without which Japan could suffer a catastrophic disaster.

“We didn’t learn anything,” Ishibashi said in a phone interview this week. “Nuclear power is national policy and there’s a real reluctance to scrutinize it.”

To be sure, Japan’s record isn’t the worst. The International Atomic Energy Agency rates nuclear accidents on a scale of zero to seven, with Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union rated seven, the most dangerous. Fukushima, where the steel vessels at the heart of the reactors have so far not ruptured, is currently a class five, the same category as the 1979 partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island in the U.S.
‘No Chernobyl’

“The key thing here is that this is not another Chernobyl,” said Ken Brockman, a former director of nuclear installation safety at the IAEA in Vienna. “Containment engineering has been vindicated. What has not been vindicated is the site engineering that put us on a path to accident.”

The 40-year-old Fukushima plant, built in the 1970s when Japan’s first wave of nuclear construction began, stood up to the country’s worst earthquake on record March 11 only to have its power and back-up generators knocked out by the 7-meter tsunami that followed.

Lacking electricity to pump water needed to cool the atomic core, engineers vented radioactive steam into the atmosphere to release pressure, leading to a series of explosions that blew out concrete walls around the reactors.

Radiation readings spiked around Fukushima as the disaster widened, forcing the evacuation of 200,000 people and causing radiation levels to rise on the outskirts of Tokyo, 135 miles (210 kilometers) to the south, with a population of 30 million.
Basement Generator

Back-up diesel generators that might have averted the disaster were positioned in a basement, where they were overwhelmed by waves.

“This in the country that invented the word Tsunami,” said Brockman, who also worked at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “Japan is going to have a look again at its regulatory process and whether it’s intrusive enough.”

The cascade of events at Fukushima had been foretold in a report published in the U.S. two decades ago. The 1990 report by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an independent agency responsible for safety at the country’s power plants, identified earthquake-induced diesel generator failure and power outage leading to failure of cooling systems as one of the “most likely causes” of nuclear accidents from an external event.

While the report was cited in a 2004 statement by Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, it seems adequate measures to address the risk were not taken by Tokyo Electric, said Jun Tateno, a former researcher at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency and professor at Chuo University.
Accident Foretold

“It’s questionable whether Tokyo Electric really studied the risks,” Tateno said in an interview. “That they weren’t prepared for a once in a thousand year occurrence will not go over as an acceptable excuse.”

Hajime Motojuku, a utility spokesman, said he couldn’t immediately confirm whether the company was aware of the report.

All six boiling water reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant were designed by General Electric Co. (GE) and the company built the No. 1, 2 and 6 reactors, spokeswoman Emily Caruso said in an e-mail response to questions. The No. 1 reactor went into commercial operation in 1971.

Toshiba Corp. (6502) built 3 and 5. Hitachi Ltd. (6501), which folded its nuclear operations into a venture with GE known as Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy Ltd. in 2007, built No. 4.

All the reactors meet the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements for safe operation during and after an earthquake for the areas where they are licensed and sited, GE said on its website.

Botched Container?

Mitsuhiko Tanaka, 67, working as an engineer at Babcock Hitachi K.K., helped design and supervise the manufacture of a $250 million steel pressure vessel for Tokyo Electric in 1975. Today, that vessel holds the fuel rods in the core of the No. 4 reactor at Fukushima’s Dai-Ichi plant, hit by explosion and fire after the tsunami.

Tanaka says the vessel was damaged in the production process. He says he knows because he orchestrated the cover-up. When he brought his accusations to the government more than a decade later, he was ignored, he says.

The accident occurred when Tanaka and his team were strengthening the steel in the pressure vessel, heating it in a furnace to more than 600 degrees Celsius (1,112 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that melts metal. Braces that should have been inside the vessel during the blasting were either forgotten or fell over. After it cooled, Tanaka found that its walls had warped.
‘Felt Like a Hero’

The law required the flawed vessel be scrapped, a loss that Tanaka said might have bankrupted the company. Rather than sacrifice years of work and risk the company’s survival, Tanaka used computer modeling to devise a way to reshape the vessel so that no one would know it had been damaged. He did that with Hitachi’s blessings, he said.

“I saved the company billions of yen,” Tanaka said in an interview March 12, the day after the earthquake. Tanaka says he got a 3 million yen bonus ($38,000) from Hitachi and a plaque acknowledging his “extraordinary” effort in 1974. “At the time, I felt like a hero.”

That changed with Chernobyl. Two years after the world’s worst nuclear accident, Tanaka went to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to report the cover-up he’d engineered more than a decade earlier. Hitachi denied his accusation and the government refused to investigate.
‘No Safety Problem’

Kenta Takahashi, an official at the NISA’s Power Generation Inspection Division, said he couldn’t confirm whether the agency’s predecessor, the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, conducted an investigation into Tanaka’s claim.

In 1988, Hitachi met with Tanaka to discuss the work he had done to fix the dent in the vessel. They concluded that there was no safety problem, said Hitachi spokesman Yuichi Izumisawa. “We have not revised our view since then,” Izumisawa said.

In 1990, Tanaka wrote a book called “Why Nuclear Power Is Dangerous” that detailed his experiences.

Tokyo Electric in 2002 admitted it had falsified repair reports at nuclear plants for more than two decades. Chairman Hiroshi Araki and President Nobuyama Minami resigned to take responsibility for hundreds of occasions in which the company had submitted false data to the regulator.

Then in 2007, the utility said it hadn’t come entirely clean five years earlier. It had concealed at least six emergency stoppages at its Fukushima Dai-Ichi power station and a “critical” reaction at the plant’s No. 3 unit that lasted for seven hours.

Ignored Warnings?

Tokyo Electric ignored warnings about the tsunami risks that caused the crisis at Fukushima, Tatsuya Ito, who represented Fukushima prefecture in the national parliament from 1991 to 2003, said in a March 16 telephone interview.

The Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant was only designed to withstand a 5.7-meter tsunami, not the 7-meter wall of water generated by last week’s earthquake or the 6.4-meter tsunami that struck neighboring Miyagi prefecture after the Valdiva earthquake in 1960, Ito said.

The dangers posed by a tsunami the size of the one generated by the 9.5-magnitude Valdiva temblor off Chile are described in a 2002 report by the Japan Society of Civil Engineers, Ito said.

“Tokyo Electric brought this upon itself,” said Ito, who now heads the National Center for the Citizens’ Movement Against the Nuclear Threat, based in Tokyo. “This accident unfolded as expected.”
Coming Clean

Ito said he has met Tepco employees to discuss his concerns at least 20 times since 2003 and sent a formal letter to then- president Tsunehisa Katsumata in 2005.

“We are prioritizing the safety of the plant and are not at a point where we can reflect upon and properly assess the root causes,” said Naoki Tsunoda, a Tokyo Electric spokesman in Tokyo. He said he couldn’t immediately confirm the exchanges made between Ito and the company.

Kansai Electric Power Co., the utility that provides Osaka with electricity, said it also faked nuclear safety records. Chubu Electric Power Co., Tohoku Electric Power Co. and Hokuriku Electric Power Co. (9505) said the same.

Only months after that second round of revelations, an earthquake struck a cluster of seven reactors run by Tokyo Electric on Japan’s north coast. The Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant, the world’s biggest, was hit by a 6.8 magnitude temblor that buckled walls and caused a fire at a transformer. About 1.5 liters (half gallon) of radioactive water sloshed out of a container and ran into the sea through drains because sealing plugs hadn’t been installed.
Fault Line

While there were no deaths from the accident and the IAEA said radiation released was within authorized limits for public health and environmental safety, the damage was such that three of the plant’s reactors are still offline.

After the quake, Trade Minister Akira Amari said regulators hadn’t properly reviewed Tokyo Electric’s geological survey when they approved the site in 1974.

The world’s biggest nuclear power plant had been built on an earthquake fault line that generated three times as much seismic acceleration, or 606 gals, as it was designed to withstand, the utility said. One gal, a measure of shock effect, represents acceleration of 1 centimeter (0.4 inch) per square second.
‘Rubber Stamp’

After Hokuriku Electric’s Shika nuclear power plant in Ishikawa prefecture was rocked by a 6.9 magnitude quake in March 2007, government scientists found it had been built near an earthquake fault that was more than twice as long as regulators deemed threatening.

“Regulators just rubber-stamp the utilities’ reports,” Takashi Nakata, a former Hiroshima Institute of Technology seismologist and an anti-nuclear activist, said at the time.

While Japan had never suffered a failure comparable to Chernobyl, the Fukushima disaster caps a decade of fatal accidents.

Two workers at a fuel processing plant were killed by radiation exposure in 1999, when they used buckets, instead of the prescribed containers, to eye-ball a uranium mixture, triggering a chain-reaction that went unchecked for 20 hours.
‘No Possibility’

Regulators failed to ensure that safety alarms were installed at the plant run by Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. because they believed there was “no possibility” of a major accident at the facility, according to an analysis by the NRC in the U.S. The report said there were ‘indications’ the company instructed workers to take shortcuts, without regulatory approval.

In 2004, an eruption of super-heated steam from a burst pipe at a reactor run by Kansai Electric killed five workers and scalded six others. A government investigation showed the burst pipe section had been omitted from safety checklists and had not been inspected for the 28 years the plant had been in operation.

Unlike France and the U.S., which have independent regulators, responsibility for keeping Japan’s reactors safe rests with the same body that oversees the effort to increase nuclear power generation: the Trade Ministry. Critics say that creates a conflict of interest that may hamper safety.
‘Scandals and Lies’

“What is necessary is a qualified, well-funded, independent regulator,” said Seth Grae, chief executive officer of Lightbridge Corp. (LTBR), a nuclear consultant in the U.S. “What happens when you have an independent regulatory agency, you can have a utility that has scandals and lies, but the regulator will yank its licensing approvals,” he said.

Tanaka says his book on the experiences he had with the nuclear power industry went out of print in 2000. His publisher called on March 13, two days after the Fukushima earthquake, and said they were starting another print run.

“Maybe this time people will listen,” he said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-17/japan-s-nuclear-disaster-caps-decades-of-faked-safety-reports-accidents.html

On 18 March at 1600hrs, the British Ambassador to Tokyo, David Warren, and the UK’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir John Beddington, held a telephone briefing regarding the situation at Fukushima. Over the past few days, there has been continuing concern about the situation at Fukushima, particularly in light of yesterday’s amendment to British travel advice to “consider leaving” Tokyo.

Sir John Beddington explained: At the beginning of this week, our concerns were mainly about possible meltdowns in the reactors. What the Japanese were doing was entirely proportionate to the situation and, even in our worst case scenarios, such as extreme weather conditions, there was nothing remotely to worry about. There were two main reasons why we changed the British travel advice.

1. Fuel Ponds

If the fuel ponds that hold spent fuel rods were allowed to dry out, especially the pond in reactor number 4, the emissions would be highly radioactive. We worried that radiation would start coming out as a result of fire or minor explosions and this would cause more radiation than that coming from the reactors themselves. This is one of the reasons it was more important to be more precautionary around the Fukushima plant, and that was why the recommendation was adopted to extend the evacuation zone to 80km. We discussed this with our scientific colleagues in America and they agreed. There is STILL no massive danger but we wanted to be precautionary.

2. Worst Case Scenario

The British Prime Minister asked us to look at the plausible “worst case scenario” combined with unfavourable weather conditions, particularly with regards to Tokyo. I repeat that this is HIGHLY UNLIKELY. Even if our plausible worst case scenario happened, the danger to Tokyo would be modest. Although radiation would increase for a short time – no longer than 48 hours – the effects on human health would be mitigated by staying indoors not opening windows. For people living in Tokyo, immediate concerns can be allayed. If the UK were to find any traces of radiation, they would inform Tokyo of when the plume is due in order for people to take precautions. This is NOT the current situation; this is only assuming the worst case scenario. Both of our worst case scenarios (explosions in reactors and extreme weather conditions) are unlikely.

To sum up, regarding the precautionary zone around the plant it was sensible to be precautionary, but even in worst case scenario, we are not worried about the human health risks. The US and France have heard these conclusions and they share our opinion.

Q: Is there any chance of contamination in Tokyo?

Sir John: Implications to people in Tokyo – none.

Question from the BritishSchool: Given that the reactor was contained but then suddently there was an explosion, how long do you foresee a dangerous situation continuing for?

Sir John: The key issue is whether or not the Japanese can get sufficient water into the holding pond on reactor 4 and continue to get water into other holding ponds. In the case of reactors, adequate water is needed to keep them cool. That is critical. In terms of when we can all relax – this is dependent on how successful the Japanese are at cooling the reactors and ponds. When that begins to happen we can relax. In a week or so we will know if we really have to worry or not. In addition, afterwards, there are enourmous problems of clean up and that could take years.

Question from David Warren: Can you clarify about the contamination of food and water?

Sir John: We have been working with our colleagues in DEFRA and the food standards agency in the UK. The message is to avoid food grown around the region of the plant of course. Normal sewage filtration processes take out radioactivity. If this was dangerous to anyone outside of Fukushima, the Japanese authorities would react and advise. In Chernobly the risks were significant – more dramatic and worrying, but even the risks were negliible for water because of filtration. Bottled water is always safe. Any problems related to tap water will not be connected with radiation but rather the sewage coming from broken pipes. In conclusion, microbiology is more of a concern than radiation. As for food in shops – in cartons, tins, bottles or boxes, there is no problem whatsoever. It would be unwise to eat food produced from gardens in the region. Anything left in the open air in Fukushima, dont eat.

Q: You now advise to “consider leaving” – at what stage would you change that to “leave”?

Sir John: Only in the worst case scenarios. The reason we said “consider leaving” – there are major disruptions to transportation and supply chain in the whole of Japan. We are NOT advising that people leave due to the risk of radiation. Even IF a plume were to reach Tokyo, it would not pose major health risks.

Q: What does plausible worst case mean? Is there an implausible worst case?

Sir John: Implausible – all reactors and all ponds go up at the same time and extreme weather conditions bring the plume to Tokyo; it’s not sensible to consider this.

Q: How do we know if the Japanese government is telling the whole story?

Sir John: There would be a series of explosions at the reactors – the Japanese government cannot hide that if it were to be the case.

Q: Why is the French giving different advice?

Sir John: Their advice is not based on science.

Q: Any reason for people in Tokyo to take potassium iodide? Children, pregnant mothers?

Sir John: The Health Protection Agency is on the line. If we are looking at the “worst case scenario” it would be sensible for pregnant women, children and nursing mothers to take stabilising drugs as their thyroids are more sensitive radioactive iodine. However there is no need for anyone in Tokyo to take these drugs now. If necessary, there would be plenty of warning for people in Tokyo to take the tablets.

Finally, we are continuing to monitor this situation every day, with nuclear and health experts.

https://www.bccjapan.com/asp/general.asp?contentid=108

Embassies in Tokyo have started emergency steps such as moving their functions to the Kansai region or flying diplomats’ families out of Japan amid concern over radiation from the crisis-hit Fukushima nuclear plant.

While the government expressed understanding over their decisions, officials urged the embassies and foreigners living in Japan to stay calm.

Read more

Other than monitoring radiation levels in the capital amid the failures at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government said Wednesday it had no plans to prepare any radiological countermeasures, such as reserving iodine pills to deal with internal exposure to radioactive substances.

The government instead called for residents to go about their daily lives in a normal manner because only a small amount of radiation, harmless to humans, was detected.

“This (radiation levels detected in Tokyo) has already fallen,” Gov. Shintaro Ishihara said at a news conference. “For now, the usual and normal situation continues.”

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110317a6.html

The U.S. Embassy in Japan has asked American citizens living within an 80-kilometer radius of the quake-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in Japan to evacuate as a precautionary measure.

“We are recommending, as a precaution, that American citizens who live within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant evacuate the area or to take shelter indoors if safe evacuation is not practical,” the embassy said in the advice issued Thursday local time.

The Japanese government currently sets the evacuation zone covering areas within a 20-km radius of the plant and advises those within a 30-km radius to stay indoors.

Meanwhile, Britain on Wednesday advised its nationals living in Tokyo and areas north of the Japanese capital to evacuate in light of an ongoing nuclear crisis at the quake-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in northeastern Japan.

It said the British Embassy in Japan plans to arrange free buses from Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture to Tokyo on Thursday for evacuating British nationals. It also advised against all non-essential travel to Tokyo and northeastern Japan.

“For those outside the exclusion zone set up by the Japanese authorities there is no real human health issue that people should be concerned about,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110317x2.html

About 400 foreigners remained unaccounted for as of noon Wednesday, several dozen embassies told the Foreign Ministry in the wake of Friday’s historic earthquake and tsunami in the Tohoku region.

A ministry official said the missing may not all be caught up in the disaster area and not all embassies have provided information, thus the number will probably change.

An estimated 48,000 foreign nationals are currently registered as living in disaster-stricken Miyagi, Iwate, Fukushima, Yamagata, Akita and Aomori prefectures.

Details of the breakdown of missing foreign nationals were not available, but the official noted many were Chinese and some were from Central and South America.

The Philippine Embassy said it hasn’t been able to confirm the whereabouts of 42 nationals and has listed their names on its website. The embassy is trying to gather information but also has opened hotlines and encourages anyone who has information on the missing to call in.

The Australian Embassy said it hasn’t located 94 people who may have been in the Tohoku region. There are approximately 3,400 Australians residing in Japan, it said.

An official of the Indian Embassy said there are no missing Indians at this point and all those affected by the disaster have already evacuated to a safe area.

The embassies of the United States, Britain and South Korea said they could not confirm the number of those missing at this point.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110317a7.html