Tokyo Electric Power Co. and a nuclear regulator failed to handle the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant because they did not plan for a disaster like the one that occurred on March 11, according to a government investigation panel's interim report on Dec. 26.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. and a nuclear regulator failed to handle the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant because they did not plan for a disaster like the one that occurred on March 11, according to a government investigation panel's interim report on Dec. 26.
The panel placed the blame squarely on TEPCO, the plant operator, and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency for being ill-prepared for a catastrophe stemming from a temblor or tsunami that were beyond the design of the plant.
TEPCO and NISA were unable to deal with the nuclear disaster, and their arguments that tsunami "beyond their expectations" crippled the plant will not exonerate them from blame, according to the report.
The two only envisaged mechanical glitches and errors during operations within the plant, placing little emphasis on an accident unfolding after a natural disaster, it said.
The report also said that the accident was possibly compounded by operators' errors in trying to cool the reactors after the plant was swamped by tsunami following the devastating Great East Japan Earthquake.
The report was compiled by the government investigation panel headed by Yotaro Hatamura, a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, noted for his work on the "science of failure."
The panel, set up in June, has looked into what went wrong with TEPCO's No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear plants in Fukushima Prefecture and whether the evacuation of residents in nearby areas were appropriate.
The No. 2 plant has also been out of operation since the quake and tsunami damaged the facility.
The interim report is largely based on interviews with operators at the No. 1 plant and others.
The panel is expected to release its final report in the summer after interviewing Naoto Kan, who was spearheading efforts to deal with the crisis as prime minister, and other officials.
In the report, the panel also pointed out that the government and TEPCO didn't grasp the larger picture of the accident as it worsened and the damage spread to local communities.
The report also found fault with the way they dealt with the accident after the tsunami.
At the No. 1 reactor, operators as well as senior members of the task force at the plant and TEPCO's main office failed to recognize that an isolation condenser, which should have been activated for emergency cooling, was not working and mistakenly believed that the reactor was being cooled.
As a result, they were late in taking emergency measures to cool the reactor.
To further compound the problem, operators did not know how to handle the isolation condenser, and the task force at the plant and TEPCO headquarters did not have sufficient working knowledge of it, either.
"As the nuclear plant operator, it was highly inappropriate," the report said.
As for the No. 3 reactor, the report said that TEPCO manually halted the high-pressure coolant injection system, used in an emergency, without coming up with alternative steps to cool the reactor.
After that, poor communication among them delayed work and they ended up not being able to cool the reactor for nearly seven hours, which the report called a situation that was highly regrettable.
It also said that the decision by some operators to manually halt the system without consulting with senior officials of the task force posed problems in terms of crisis management.
On whether hydrogen explosions at the buildings housing the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors could have been averted if the injection of water by fire engines had occurred in the early stages of the crisis, the report said, "It could have delayed the core damage and lessened the volume of radioactive materials released."
Touching on the off-site center that was supposed to serve as the front-line base to respond to a nuclear disaster, the report said the facility was not usable because of the lack of air purifying equipment.
The facility was not designed to deal with radioactive contamination.
How to transmit information between the government and TEPCO was also not established, hampering their communication to jointly respond to the crisis, the report said.
A blackout and other problems made it impossible to measure radioactive levels surrounding the plant.
The report also said that the government's System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI) was not utilized to predict the spread of contamination from the plant.
Because the release of information to the public was not sufficient, local governments were hindered in being able to adequately evacuate their residents.
Some governments instructed citizens to flee to areas where radioactive materials were already spreading to.
The government panel was set up with Cabinet approval in May as an independent entity to investigate the cause of the nuclear accident.
A similar panel was established in the Diet, which has more power since it has the authority to summon officials as sworn witnesses.
A private panel and a TEPCO in-house panel were also formed to look into the country's worst nuclear accident.