Discussion on:

Fukushima utility: We could have prevented nuclear meltdowns

What a novel approach - a major corporation admits to faults and promises to correct them.

I live 2-3 miles from San Onnefre in California.The NRC held a local meeting about restarting this old and fatally flawed reactor. Con Edison had the meeting stacked with appx. 550 workers who shouted down local anti nuke and concerned local folks, at was totally frustrating...people so worried about their job, and not about the lives of hundreds of thousands of peoples lives. The greed of a few is distroying the entire country.

First off, the name of the plant is "San Onofre", and it is not owned by "Con Edison" but is jointly owned by Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, and the city of Riverside, CA.

I seriously doubt you were at any such meeting, or even live within 2000 miles of California.

It's hardly the greed of those who provide the power that permits you to post such silliness online that is our nation's problem. Without them, there'd be no where to run the extension cord to power your "occupy" camp.

You Occupy people are so tiresome. While the greed of a few is destructive to society, not educating yourself on the facts is far more dangerous, since you broadcast your misrepresented chants without accountability.

I read that the results of that catastrophe will stay with us for 25.000 years.
Now the responsible people for that accident admit they weren't careful
enough. Will somebody be legally blamed for such unbelievable sloppiness?

They've admitted incompetence in attempting to keep bad publicity at bay. However, there are so many things that could have been done. Like "earthquake" shut down the reactor. The Self Defense forces have large portable generators, they could have been helicoptered in. A Naval Self Defense ship could have provided power. The US forces could have helped. The problem is that no one is really in charge, or no one is willing to step up, hide and the problem will go away.

When I lived in Japan, I saw this kind of thing, a lot because no one is in charge. No one steps up, everything has to be decided by committee. No one is wiling to seek help, because it would be embarrassing. I'm not blasting the Japanese culture (I am Japanese) but the agreement by a bunch of people is not conducive to immediate emergency response.

Cases in point:
1. 1985 JAL 123, crashed in Gunma. US pilot saw the crash site and said that there were people running or milling around the airplane. Called US base and said they need aircraft to rescue the survivors. US checked with the Japanese government. Japanese said, no, they could take care of it. Japan Self Defense Force helicopter said visibility was too, low, said there were no signs of survivors. Directly contradicting what a US Air Force plane had seen. It took so long to get to the plane, only 4 survived, but one of those rescued were told to keep quite about the event, turns out there were more survivors, however, delay and attempting to hide bad publicity, others died from exposure and shock. US pilot later reveals that he was appalled to see the rescue, had not yet started, when he woke up next morning and turned on the TV. Was ordered to keep quite and not reveal anything. This was learned after he quit the Air Force.

2. Great Hanshin or Kobe earthquake. Bureaucrats, decide that 5:46 A.M. is a bit too early to wake the Prime Minister. Takes 4 days of poor leadership to finally let the Self Defense forces into the area. This of course after denying US Naval, US Air Force, US Army and US Marines (all stationed in Japan) aid or logistics support. US, Swedish and later UK aircraft carriers arrive, denied docking at Kobe (major Japanese port). No need to help and then the aircraft carriers asked if they could at least evacuate their citizens, that was denied.

3. Tunnel collapses, trapping a bus, Hokkaido, February, 1996, (February is the coldest month, and Hokkaido is Northern most major island). After various attempts, all which failed. News asked one of the people there, and asked who was in charge. Those people in charge said no one was, it was a committee. A week later, yes, a week, they seemed surprise there were no survivors. But there was, because they heard the yells for help. See: http://www.debito.org/furubira.html

I would expect there to be video footage taken if this happened again. The threat that this sort of evidence could be leaked should chill this sort of inaction. In 1985 you would not expect every pilot to have access to a cell phone camera but in 2012 you would.

I read a bit more about the accident and found that the actual behaviour by the Japanese was worse than you said. USAF controllers at Yokuta AB were monitoring the emergency and tasked a C-130 to search for the crash site after loss of radar contact. The site was located and a UH-1 Huey was directed to the site. The Japanese then chased the Americans off and basically left the survivors to the elements. The four survivors reported hearing cries for help through the night that gradually faded out towards daylight.

They didn't ignore just one pilot, they ignored the whole US AIr Force.

Wow, you are describing MY country (Argentina)!! I always thought Japan was Paradise on Earth..., well, as they said in that old movie: Nobody is perfect!

So basically TEPCO are saying Nuclear Powered Electricity generation is fundamentally safe, unless you are a dumbass moron who ignores best practice safety??

Sounds pretty much the same indictment as Big Oil (BP Gulf Spill).

TEPCO - D'oh. Some jail-time sounds is in order for (I imagine) flagrant breach of Japanese/International Nuclear Safety regulations.

before you toss someone into jail. If you can't do that, Dick Cheney is looking for a new job.

The fact that the anti-nuclear movement didn't twig to the dangers is a pretty brutal indictment of their level of sophistication.This suggests that they might be basing their criticism on ideology rather than reasonable criteria. The events that followed the tsunami should have been obvious to anyone who read the plans critically. The low sea-wall might have been missed but the vulnerability of the back-up power supply and the elevated location of the spent fuel storage would have alarmed many safety professionals with professional engineering* credentials.

You can give all the money in the world to your favourite celebrity-endorsed causes but there is something wrong when it all goes on fundraising, executive compensation and pensions. Shouldn't someone occasionally pay real Professional Engineers to critically examine plans that are in the public record? There are tens of thousands of qualified people who have been pensioned off by operating utilities. Some of them would be interested in a bit of part-time work that came with expenses paid trips abroad.

* In North America a Professional Engineer is a licensed professional with a university degree, Bachelor of Applied Science (or equivalent) and a minimum period of experience. In the UK, an engineer is anyone with overalls and at least one opposable thumb.