A U.S. nuclear expert stayed at the Prime Minister's Official Residence last month to speed response to the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, government officials recently acknowledged.
It is unusual for a foreign official to stay at the official residence, the inner circle of the government, observers said.
Washington urged the administration of Prime Minister Naoto Kan to allow the U.S. nuclear power specialist to stay at Kan's official residence when it contacted Tokyo in the immediate aftermath of the March 11 earthquake.
Alarmed by the extent of potential hazards, the U.S. government apparently intended to expedite its response by obtaining information directly from the prime minister.
But the Kan administration initially rejected the request.
Kan insisted that Japanese officials should tackle the crisis first. Some Japanese officials expressed caution about the U.S. overture.
The officials suspected Washington wanted access to data on what was going on at the plant by inserting the U.S. expert into Tokyo's decision-making process, according to staff members at the prime minister's office.
The refusal was received by Washington as a sign that the Kan administration was not serious about fighting the accident, a ranking official said.
The Kan administration finally agreed to the specialist's stay after the government failed to bring the crisis quickly under control. The U.S. specialist stayed from March 22, when the Japan-U.S. task force was formed, until late last month.
Among U.S. officials who attended meetings of the task force were Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Adm. Patrick Walsh, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and John Roos, U.S. ambassador to Japan.
Goshi Hosono, a Lower House member and special adviser to the prime minister, presided as the leader of six teams of the task force.
Akihisa Nagashima, former parliamentary vice defense minister, Tetsuro Fukuyama, deputy chief Cabinet secretary, and other officials attended.
Representatives of the Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the Fukushima plant, and officials from various Japanese ministries were also present.
The meetings were held daily between late March and early April.
In the task force's first meeting March 22, the U.S. side proposed an idea to cool the core pressure vessel at the Fukushima No. 1 plant by pumping water into the outer containment vessel, according to officials who were at the meeting.
But TEPCO, concerned about a possible impact on the core due to the weight of the water, said only that it would "consider" the proposed step.
TEPCO only adopted the U.S. idea when it turned out that it would take a lot longer to restore the reactor's cooling system than initially anticipated.
Hosono called for crisis management review on April 20.
"The government was ill equipped to handle a major crisis because its simulations were based on faulty presumptions," he said.
He also pledged to make data about the nuclear crisis available to other nations.
"The experiences of this accident should be shared internationally," Hosono said. "We will never spare our efforts to cooperate with other countries."
(This article was written by Nanae Kurashige and Kentaro Kawaguchi.)
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