AsiaFile

The tragedy in Japan is horrific, and our hearts go out to the victims
of this disaster.

In fact, the Japanese infrastructure has held quite well. For most of the country the story is of the lives saved, not the bodies lost…

But I worry most deeply about the nuclear situation…because of the nation’s history of mismanagement, arrogance and cover-ups when it comes to nuclear safety. I wrote about the pattern of safety violations at TEPCO way back in 2002.

Here is the original story:

Tuesday, September 3, 2002

BY MICHAEL ZIELENZIGER
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE

TOKYO — Top officials of Japan’s largest electric utility
resigned Monday after admitting that the company had covered up
safety violations and falsified records at three of its largest
nuclear power plants.

Nobuya Minami, the president of the Tokyo Electric Power Co.
(TEPCO) said the utility would immediately shut five nuclear
reactors to allow inspections for cracks and corrosion.

Minami said he would resign in October; TEPCO chairman
Hiroshi Araki and Vice President Toshiaki Enomoto will step down
by the end of September.

Minami told a news conference that TEPCO employees had
demonstrated a “lenient view” of reporting potential safety
problems, but could not explain how or why a series of inspection
reports were falsified. “We apologize for causing any worry,” he
said in a statement.

He admitted for the first time that TEPCO employees had been
involved in the cover-ups and said an internal investigation was
continuing.

The cover-up further clouds the credibility of Japan’s
nuclear industry, three years after an accident at a nuclear
reprocessing facility caused Japan’s first nuclear fatalities and
almost triggered a large leak of nuclear radiation.

Devoid of oil and natural gas, Japan is the world’s third
largest commercial operator of nuclear power facilities and hopes
to reprocess large amounts of spent nuclear fuel to feed its
reactors.

The nation’s 17 nuclear power plants generate 16 percent of
the country’s electric power, making Japan nearly twice as
dependent on nuclear power as the United States.

The latest scandal surfaced late last week when the Ministry
of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) announced that it had found
evidence of falsified records of cracks in three TEPCO nuclear
power plants dating to the 1980s.

The utility allegedly submitted that 29 fabricated reports
did not disclose concealed damage to the core shroud, the steel
cylinder of welded plates that surround a nuclear reactor’s core.
Extensive cracking of the welds that hold these plates together
could make it difficult to control the speed of a nuclear
reaction.

The cover-up emerged after a whistleblower working for
General Electric complained to government regulators.

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