NISA officials first to flee after disaster

 June 3, 2014

Nuclear safety inspectors first to flee stricken Fukushima plant

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201406030026 

By SHINICHI SEKINE/ Staff Writer

Safety inspectors with the government's nuclear watchdog body were the first to flee when disaster struck the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March 2011.

The exodus of Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) officials compromised communications between the government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. at a critical juncture.

This unexpected turn of events shows that the government itself was not sure what role it should play in the nuclear crisis.

The plant manager, Masao Yoshida, who died last year of esophageal cancer, was questioned by the government's Investigation Committee on the Accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations several months after the accident. The Asahi Shimbun obtained a copy of his testimony.

According to his testimony, on March 15, 2011, four days after the Fukushima plant was hit by the magnitude-9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, 90 percent of the workers in the plant withdrew to the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power plant some 10 kilometers away, ignoring Yoshida's order to remain in and around the compound of the No. 1 facility.

Before that, however, NISA inspectors fled the site immediately after the accident even though they should have stayed to assess what steps were needed to deal with the accident. They went to makeshift government headquarters set up about five kilometers from the No. 1 plant.

On March 15, the makeshift facility was transferred to Fukushima city, some 50 kilometers away.

With all government safety inspectors absent from the No. 1 nuclear power plant, the government had no direct means to grasp what was happening there. As a result, it was forced to depend entirely on TEPCO for information.

But channels of communication between the government and TEPCO did not go smoothly. This chaotic situation prompted the prime minister, Naoto Kan, to go to TEPCO's head office in Tokyo. That was the catalyst for the government and TEPCO to jointly set up headquarters in Tokyo, 230 kilometers away, to deal with the nuclear accident.

The government’s investigation committee’s reports based on Yoshida's recall of the events highlight the withdrawal of the No. 1 plant’s workers to the No. 2 plant even though the government’s safety inspectors were the first to flee.

After the accident, the government reviewed its manual to deal with nuclear disasters. In a future nuclear emergency, it was decided that safety inspectors of the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), the successor to NISA, must stay in an “emergency office” set up in the command center of a nuclear power plant and gather information.

However, the standards are not clear about how long safety inspectors or other government officials should remain in the event of a major accident like the one at the Fukushima No. 1 plant or what roles they should play. Also left unsaid is precisely the kinds of information they would be expected to gather.

The National Personnel Authority stipulates that the amount of radiation a public servant is exposed to at the time of a nuclear accident must not exceed 100 millisieverts. After the Fukushima accident, the limit was temporarily raised to 250 millisieverts. However, it was abolished in December 2011. No new limit has been decided.

When a nuclear accident occurs, the prime minister is expected to order the Self-Defense Forces or other government organizations to leap into action.

“In effect, it only means that the government supports the operator of a plant where the accident took place,” said Hideka Morimoto, deputy secretary-general of the NRA Secretariat.

The government’s stance that the operator of the plant is the main player to deal with an accident remains unchanged even after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima facility.

“We are not assuming that an accident the operator cannot control will take place,” said NRA chairman Shunichi Tanaka.