The Yomiuri Shimbun
This is the second installment in a series focusing on delays in implementing emergency steps by the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. to deal with the unprecedented nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
It took TEPCO about 15 hours to vent steam from the nuclear reactor vessel at the Fukushima facility's No. 1 reactor, despite having recognized the need to do so by the evening of March 11.
A major reason for the delay is believed to have been the malfunction of an automatic switch for a pressure-regulating valve on the containment vessel due to the loss of power, compounded by a delay in opening the valve after switching the device to manual operation.
According to some observers, Prime Minister Naoto Kan's on-site inspection of disaster-stricken areas on the morning of March 12 may also have contributed to the delay. "TEPCO might've held off the venting so the prime minister wouldn't be exposed to radiation," one observer said.
At a press conference Thursday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano hinted at his distrust in the power utility. "[TEPCO] didn't explain why it hadn't started [the venting] yet. We'd already issued an order [to do so]," he said.
Edano's remark has aroused speculation that the absence of top TEPCO officials from the company early on in the crisis might have adversely affected the company's decision-making process regarding the venting of steam from the reactor.
At the time of the earthquake, Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata was in Beijing, while President Masataka Shimizu was in Kansai, both of them on business trips. Lacking their top two executives, the utility's head office in Tokyo launched a disaster management headquarters with Vice President Takashi Fujimoto as its acting chief.
According to sources, Katsumata received a phone call from his secretary at 2:52 p.m. on March 11--immediately after the earthquake. Katsumata was visiting China as the head of a Japan-China economic exchange group. He reportedly told the secretary he would cancel the rest of his trip and "return to Japan right away."
But since Narita Airport was closed due to the quake, Katsumata did not arrive in Japan until March 12. He landed at about 12:50 p.m. but only arrived at the office a little before 4 p.m. due to traffic congestion.
Shimizu, meanwhile, found out about the earthquake via TEPCO's independent alert system on his mobile phone. Shimizu called Fujimoto and tried to return to Tokyo, but was not able to find a train, plane or helicopter to take him to the capital. He decided to head by train to Nagoya where he hired a helicopter and arrived in Tokyo at about 10 a.m. on March 12.
The firm's top two executives did not arrive at its Tokyo headquarters until about 20 hours after the earthquake.
"There was no problem with the chain of command since we kept in touch by cell phone," according to one TEPCO official. But during that time, the firm faced a series of major decisions.
From the evening of March 11, the Prime Minister's Office and other authorities had asked TEPCO repeatedly to vent the reactor, but the operation did not take place until 10:17 a.m. after Shimizu had arrived at the main office.
The decision to inject seawater to cool the reactor cores was another big call, but did not begin until past 8 p.m. on March 12 after Katsumata returned to Japan.
Venting a reactor heightens the risk of radioactive contamination. This decision could place enormous social responsibility on the company and also make it liable for substantial damages. And injecting water into a reactor core essentially destroys it. One reactor costs about 100 billion yen to replace.
A company's shareholders generally are informed before such major actions are taken, and they are not the type of orders that can easily be conveyed over a mobile phone from the Kansai region or China.
(Apr. 13, 2011)
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