The Yomiuri Shimbun
Prime Minister Naoto Kan's visit to the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant a day after the March 11 earthquake is being criticized for allegedly delaying efforts to control the nuclear crisis.
The prime minister had expressed a strong wish to see the accident site, and a Ground Self-Defense Force helicopter carrying Kan left the Prime Minister's Office in Tokyo's Nagatacho district early on the morning of March 12.
Kan's visit to the plant lasted for 50 minutes.
At that time, pressure inside the containment vessel at the No. 1 reactor was very high. Three hours before Kan's departure, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda instructed plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. to open a valve and release high-pressure steam into the air.
However, the utility did not implement this measure until one hour after the prime minister finished his visit.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the prime minister's visit had nothing to do with the delay. According to a ranking official of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, however, many believe TEPCO intentionally waited so that Kan would not be at risk from the radioactive materials that would be released from the containment vessel with the steam.
Meanwhile, the situation has been further complicated by the distrust among the Prime Minister's Office, TEPCO and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency affiliated with the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry.
It was the prime minister himself who developed the strongest distrust against TEPCO. He made a high-profile visit to the utility's head office in Uchisaiwaicho, Tokyo, in the early morning of March 15, a day after a hydrogen explosion at the No. 3 reactor.
Kan severely chastised TEPCO officials there, saying the incident had been reported on television shortly after it happened but that TEPCO took about one hour to report it to the Prime Minister's Office.
The establishment of a joint government-TEPCO headquarters to deal with the nuclear crisis, which has no legal basis, is widely considered to be a government measure to monitor the power company.
The distrust on the prime minister's side was amplified after the utility changed its explanation a few times on whether it knew of the danger of the March 24 accident in which three plant workers were exposed to high-level radiation in the No. 3 reactor's turbine building.
Economy, Trade and Industry Vice Minister Kazuo Matsunaga, whose ministry supervises the electric power industry, took the brunt of criticism Monday at a meeting of senior officials from government ministries to discuss measures to support disaster victims.
At the meeting, Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Yoshihiro Katayama asked Matsunaga if the ministry's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency provided disaster-hit municipalities with sufficient information on the nuclear crisis, but he replied that the ministry would need two weeks to do that.
Katayama was infuriated and asked why the ministry needed such a long time.
Matsunaga also angered Ryu Matsumoto, state minister in charge of disaster management. When Matsumoto said TEPCO employees should support people evacuated to the Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Matsunaga replied he did not know what TEPCO employees were doing.
Matsumoto angrily told him that he should know, because TEPCO was responsible for seriously disrupting evacuees' lives.
When Kan met Japanese Communist Party Chairman Kazuo Shii on Thursday, Shii proposed dividing the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry, which promotes nuclear power generation, and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which supervises safety regulations at nuclear plants.
"Yes, they're like a guild dubbed the 'nuclear power village,'" Kan agreed. "We must consider it very seriously."
Kan's reference to an exclusive union in the Middle Ages of Europe apparently reflected his deep distrust in the ministry.
Some observers have said Kan and his close aides are particularly critical of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry because of their feelings toward such people as Kaieda and Yoshikatsu Nakayama, senior economy, trade and industry vice minister. Kaieda and Nakayama supported former Democratic Party of Japan President Ichiro Ozawa in last year's presidential election for the party.
Meanwhile, agency and TEPCO officials are said to be very frustrated with the prime minister's side, because Kan has kept his distance from ministry bureaucrats and paid more attention to the opinions of private-sector nuclear experts he appointed as Cabinet consultants.
A member of TEPCO's office in Fukushima said he felt more pressure from the Prime Minister's Office than from his own company headquarters.
(Apr. 2, 2011)
No comments:
Post a Comment