26-Dec-2011 - Panel: Japan Unprepared for Disaster

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By PHRED DVORAK And MITSURU OBE TOKYO–Japanese regulators were so unprepared for a serious accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that the emergency response center they set up nearby didn't have an air filter to remove radioactive particles, according to an interim report by an independent panel charged with investigating Japan's worst nuclear disaster. Meanwhile, key personnel at plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. didn't understand the workings of the emergency cooling system for Unit 1 – the first reactor to go out of control – a situation the report called "extremely improper." Engineers on the ground shut down another system that supplied vital cooling water to Unit NFL jerseys china 3, without making sure an alternative water source was available, leaving the overheating reactor without a water supply for nearly seven hours, the report said. If the cooling had gone properly, "damage to the reactor may have been lessened," the report said. Such problems are among key mistakes singled out by the report, the first official attempt to determine what and who was responsible for the nuclear accident that occurred after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out power at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The 500-page document, based on 900 hours of interviews with 456 people involved in the accident, comes nine months after radioactive releases from meltdowns at the plant made much of the surrounding area uninhabitable. It describes a nuclear regulator and plant operator so unprepared for a serious nuclear disaster that they didn't have the proper systems in place to deal with it, and didn't always know how to use the mechanisms they had. And it stands in stark contrast to Tepco's assertion that it made no major operational errors in its post-accident response. "People have a tendency not to see what they don't want to see, not to hear what they don't want to hear, not to think about things they don't want to think about," said panel chair Yotaro Hatamura, describing Japan's unwillingness to face the risks of a serious nuclear accident, at a press conference after the report's release. "The latest disaster taught us the importance of recognizing such tendencies and incorporating such risks in our disaster responses." The 10-person panel, comprised of experts ranging from a former prosecutor to a specialist in nuclear medicine and a Fukushima mayor, doesn't have the power to compel hearings, and hasn't assigned blame to individuals or suggested any action be taken against them. In contrast, similar investigations in the U.S. are often conducted by bodies with subpoena power, and accompany or are quickly followed by inquiries into criminal or civil liabilities of the companies and people involved. The U.S. government, for instance, had started criminal and civil investigations into the April 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by June of that year. The report notes that the panel's investigation is still incomplete because there hasn't been time to interview many of the government officials involved–including former Prime Minister Naoto Kan. The panel hopes to wrap up its final report by summer of 2012. The panel's report underscores with additional details some critical missteps that Japanese government bodies and Tepco have admitted to already. Both Tepco and the regulator Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency ignored numerous reports suggesting the risk to the Fukushima Daiichi plant from a tsunami was much greater than initially thought, the report said. The NFL jerseys wholesale government and Tepco failed to have sufficiently broad disaster-response plans that envisioned scenarios where multiple things went wrong –like the earthquake, tsunami and power outages that hit Fukushima Daiichi. Tepco had some emergency systems in place–like one for venting pressure built up in overheating reactors–but had not prepared proper manuals or trained employees in how to take those steps, the report noted. After the accident, government response was hampered by poor planning, execution and communication, the report said. The government's emergency-response center near Fukushima Daiichi never functioned properly, and had to be abandoned early because it wasn't equipped to deal with elevated levels of radiation. Communication between various government teams set up to deal with the nuclear accident was so bad that the decision makers on the fifth floor of the prime minister's offices often didn't tell the bureaucrats gathered in the basement what they were doing, the report said. But some of the report's most gripping details describe fumbles Tepco made in the initial few days after the tsunami, when engineers on the ground lost control of all three of Fukushima Daiichi's working reactors. On March 11, for instance, a fail-safe mechanism triggered by the loss of power at Fukushima Daiichi shut the valves of the emergency cooling system through which water was supposed to flow to Unit 1. But Tepco employees on the ground didn't realize that until much later, and when they did they failed to report it right away to their managers in the plant's control center, the report said. Those managers themselves missed important signs that the cooling system wasn't working, the panel found, delaying other actions that could have kept that reactor from deteriorating as fast as it did. Plant manager Masao Yoshida, one of the few people named in the report, told panelists he had "lost the ability to comprehensively assess all the important relevant information" in the flood of reports he was getting. In another incident in the wee hours of March custom nhl jerseys 12, Tepco workers searched in vain for the place to hook up the hose of a fire truck to the Unit 1 reactor. After two hours, during which employees combed through the reactor turbine building and scrambled to find a diagram of the plant, Tepco finally found the man who had set up the reactor's fire-fighting facilities, and knew where the hose connection was, the report said. At Unit 3, an operator on March 13 shut down the system that was supplying cooling water to the reactor, intending to shift the supply to another more reliable system, the report said. But excess pressure had to be vented from the reactor first, and the vent's valves wouldn't open–probably because there wasn't enough power left in the batteries to operate them, the report said. Cooling water wasn't restored to that reactor for nearly seven hours. Write to Phred Dvorak at phred.dvorak@wsj.com and Mitsuru Obe at mitsuru.obe@dowjones.com

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26-Dec-2011 - Panel: Japan Unprepared for Disaster

Visted 2 times

By PHRED DVORAK And MITSURU OBE TOKYO–Japanese regulators were so unprepared for a serious accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that the emergency response center they set up nearby didn't have an air filter to remove radioactive particles, according to an interim report by an independent panel charged with investigating Japan's worst nuclear disaster. Meanwhile, key personnel at plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. didn't understand the workings of the emergency cooling system for Unit 1 – the first reactor to go out of control – a situation the report called "extremely improper." Engineers on the ground shut down another system that supplied vital cooling water to Unit 3, without making sure an alternative water source was available, cheap nba jerseys leaving the overheating reactor without a water supply for nearly seven hours, the report said. If the cooling had gone properly, "damage to the reactor may have been lessened," the report said. Such problems are among key mistakes singled out by the report, the first official attempt to determine what and who was responsible for the nuclear accident that occurred after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out power at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The 500-page document, based on 900 hours of interviews with 456 people involved in the accident, comes nine months after radioactive releases from meltdowns at the plant made much of the surrounding area uninhabitable. It describes a nuclear regulator and plant operator so unprepared for a serious nuclear disaster that they didn't have the proper systems in place to deal with it, and didn't always know how to use the mechanisms they had. And it stands in stark contrast to Tepco's assertion that it made no major operational errors in its post-accident response. "People have a tendency not to see what they don't want to see, not to hear what they don't want to hear, not to think about things they don't want to think about," said panel chair Yotaro Hatamura, describing Japan's unwillingness to face the risks of a serious nuclear accident, at a press conference after the report's release. "The latest disaster taught us the importance of recognizing such tendencies and incorporating such risks in our disaster responses." The 10-person panel, comprised of experts ranging from a former prosecutor to a specialist in nuclear medicine and a Fukushima mayor, doesn't have the power to compel hearings, and hasn't assigned blame to individuals or suggested any action be taken against them. In contrast, similar investigations in the U.S. are often conducted by bodies with subpoena power, and accompany or are quickly followed by inquiries into criminal or civil liabilities of the companies and people involved. The U.S. government, for instance, had started criminal and civil investigations into the April 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by June of that year. The report notes that the panel's investigation is still incomplete because there hasn't been time to interview many of the government officials involved–including former Prime Minister Naoto Kan. The panel hopes to wrap up its final report by summer of 2012. The panel's report underscores with additional details some critical missteps that Japanese government bodies and Tepco have admitted to already. Both Tepco and the regulator Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency ignored numerous reports suggesting the risk to the Fukushima Daiichi plant from a tsunami was much greater than initially thought, the report said. The government and Tepco failed to have sufficiently broad disaster-response cheap NFL jerseys plans that envisioned scenarios where multiple things went wrong –like the earthquake, tsunami and power outages that hit Fukushima Daiichi. Tepco had some emergency systems in place–like one for venting pressure built up in overheating reactors–but had not prepared proper manuals or trained employees in how to take those steps, the report noted. After the accident, government response was hampered by poor planning, execution and communication, the report said. The government's emergency-response center near Fukushima Daiichi never functioned properly, and had to be abandoned early because it wasn't equipped to deal with elevated levels of radiation. Communication between various government teams set up to deal with the nuclear accident was so bad that the decision makers on the fifth floor of the prime minister's offices often didn't tell the bureaucrats gathered in the basement what they were doing, the report said. But some of the report's most gripping details describe fumbles Tepco made in the initial few days after the tsunami, when engineers on the ground lost control of all three of Fukushima Daiichi's working reactors. On March 11, for instance, a fail-safe mechanism triggered by the loss of power at Fukushima Daiichi shut the valves of the emergency cooling system through which water was supposed to flow to Unit 1. But Tepco employees on the ground didn't realize that until much later, and when they did they failed to report it right away to their managers in the plant's control center, the report said. Those managers themselves missed important signs that the cooling system wasn't working, the panel found, delaying other actions that could have kept that reactor from deteriorating as fast as it did. Plant manager Masao Yoshida, one of the few people named in the report, told panelists he had "lost the ability to comprehensively assess all the important relevant information" in the flood of reports he was getting. In another incident in the wee hours of March 12, Tepco workers searched in vain for the place to hook up the hose of a fire truck to the Unit 1 reactor. After two hours, during which employees combed through the reactor turbine building and scrambled to find a diagram of the plant, Tepco finally found the man who had set up the reactor's fire-fighting facilities, and knew where the hose connection was, the report said. At Unit 3, an operator on March 13 shut down the system that was supplying cooling water to the reactor, intending to shift the supply to another more reliable system, the report said. But excess pressure had to be vented from the reactor first, and the vent's valves wouldn't open–probably because there wasn't enough power left in the batteries to operate them, the report said. Cooling water wasn't restored to that reactor for nearly seven hours. Write to Phred custom nfl jerseys Dvorak at phred.dvorak@wsj.com and Mitsuru Obe at mitsuru.obe@dowjones.com

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