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Japanese governor calls out TEPCO for ‘institutionalized lying’

Oct 29, 2013 Features, National 3

Japanese governor calls out TEPCO for ‘institutionalized lying’

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) – operator of the disaster stricken Fukushima nuclear power facility – must give a more detailed account of the Fukushima disaster and address the long string of incidents where critical information was manipulated and mishandled before it will be permitted to restart the Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant, according the governor of the area. Niigata Prefecture Governor Hirohiko Izumida calls TEPCO’s process “institutionalized lying”, and he would like to see the company handle these issues before restarting from its mothballed state what is the world’s biggest nuclear complex, located on the Japan Sea coast, north-west of Tokyo.

“If they don’t do what needs to be done, if they keep skimping on costs and manipulating information, they can never be trusted,” Izumida said on Monday. The approval to restart the reactor at the TEPCO-run Kashiwazaki Kariwa is in Izumida’s hands, and his personal commission would like to make sure that the disaster at Fukushima would not be repeated in their area. The commission will look at the failed safety precautions at Fukushima and lay them alongside existing regulatory safeguards to ensure a similar crisis could not reoccur. “If they cooperate with us, we will be able to proceed smoothly. If not, we won’t,” he said.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority – Japanese nuclear safety regulators – must lend their approval to the restart plans, but Izumida remains able to essentially block TEPCO’s plans for the plant as the facility requires the backing of local officials, giving Izumida and his office some leverage. “Safety is our utmost priority and we are not acting on an assumption of nuclear restarts,” said Yoshimi Hitotsugi, spokesperson for the embattled operator. “We want to work on this issue while gaining the understanding of the local population and related parties.” Izumida is one of those who are of the opinion that TEPCO should be stripped of responsibility for decommissioning the destroyed Fukushima reactors, and the company subjected to a taxpayer-funded bankruptcy program. “Unless we create a situation where 80-90 percent of their thinking is devoted to nuclear safety, I don’t think we can say they have prioritized safety,” he said.

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[via RT]

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  • CaptD

    Promote Solar Energy Freedom

    N☢T Utility Energy Slavery!

  • CaptD

    Case in Point, Japan is now suffering with a Trillion Dollar Nuclear Eco-Disaster, yet many commenting consider that it, in effect, is “no big deal”:

    Polluted Ocean, N☢ Problem, it will get better after a while….

    Polluted Fields, N☢ Problem, they can remove the upper layer

    Polluted Air, N☢ Problem, they can wear paper masks for a while

    Polluted Food, N☢ Problem, they can mix the good to dilute the bad

    Polluted Homes, N☢ Problem, they can power wash them clean

    Polluted Schools. N☢ Problem, they can clean them

    Polluted Cities, N☢ Problem, they can return soon…

    With answers like these from too many Leaders and/or Nuclear Professionals, perhaps SmartPlanet would consider asking this question:

    “What exactly would it take for you to STOP supporting­, all land based Nuclear Reactors (like Germany is now doing) and end this nuclear nightmare ASAP?”

  • Whirled Peas

    Nuclear power plants pose an unacceptable risk to the world..

    The fact that the risk hasn’t shown up often in the 55 years of nuclear energy leads some people to naively believe that all that is required to make it safe is just a little more research, better buildings, air-tight systems, and well-trained personnel, more support for university nuclear engineering departments. But no matter how many improvements and fail-safes are built into a reactor, there will always be a risk of failure — there are always material and human limitations. And when the failure does show up, the results have widespread disastrous consequences.

    The Japanese people have great patience, perseverance, and drive. Their country has always been prone to natural disasters and yet they have quickly recovered from them in the past. If the Fukushima residents had experienced “only” an earthquake and tsunami, they’d be well on their way to rebuilding their cities and re-establishing their businesses. I have no doubt about that. It is the threat of radiation, the problems with clean up, and the quarantine of entire areas that have made life a living nightmare for the population. The nuclear disaster has made people powerless to get on with their lives. And just think of the amount of money it’s taken to evacuate people long term and to do the clean up? The risk has shown up, and it is unacceptable.