- Title: JAPAN: Tepco footage reveals panic after Fukushima disaster
- Date: 7th March 2013
- Summary: FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI NUCLEAR PLANT, FUKUSHIMA PREFECTURE, JAPAN (MARCH 6, 2013) (REUTERS) WORKER IN PROTECTIVE CLOTHING STANDING BY TANKS STORING RADIOACTIVE WATER TANKS VARIOUS OF DAMAGED BUILDINGS AT PLANT
- Embargoed: 22nd March 2013 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Japan
- Country: Japan
- Topics: Accidents,Environment
- Reuters ID: LVA8VCQQS28WUGBZLFKJ9NTVSTCH
- Story Text: Footage released by Tokyo Electric Power Company on Wednesday (March 6) showed panic and frustration at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant as workers battled to stop a radioactive water leak following the nuclear disaster two years ago.
The video from Tepco's internal crisis meetings records Daiichi plant manager Masao Yoshida's anger with officials at the company's Tokyo headquarters.
After a Magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami struck the plant on March 11, 2011, three reactors melted down and radiation forced tens of thousands of residents to evacuate the area near the plant.
"People are risking life and limb over here -- and from the way I see it, head office doesn't have the faintest idea what we're dealing with, how urgent all this is," Yoshida told the crisis liaison team in Tokyo during a video conference on March 30, 2011.
In the weeks following Japan's March 11 tsunami, workers and emergency personnel fought to avert catastrophe, cooling damaged reactors with water from hoses and helicopters to prevent further meltdowns.
Japan's leaders worried that a chain reaction could spew radiation as far as Tokyo, 240 kilometres (150 miles) away, forcing an evacuation of its 35 million residents.
Towards the end of March, officials began to worry that seawater being pumped in to cool the reactors, now highly radioactive, was leaking back into the ocean.
"The water is leaking out of the reactors, we're keeping it down to a trickle but what we're going to do from now on is an urgent problem. Just thinking about the leak almost stops my heart beating," Yoshida is recorded telling the Tepco crisis team.
On April 2, the company discovered a crack between the sea and a reactor building, with radioactive water flowing back into the sea at 1000 millisieverts per hour.
A single dose at that level causes acute radiation sickness, while the global average exposure from natural background radiation is 2.4 millisieverts across an entire year.
"Hello, hello, we've got a really serious problem on our hands. We're rechecking the data here, but it looks like highly radioactive sea water is now leaking out from the damaged buildings. It's the worst case scenario," Yoshida said.
By December 2011 Tepco had stabilised Daiichi's damaged reactors and spent fuel pools by pumping in water, much of it from the sea.
While Tepco says all leaks have now stopped, on Friday (March 1) a radioactive fish more than 5000 times higher than government limits was caught near the plant, which some experts say may indicate a continued source of radiation seeping into the sea.
However, Tepco says high levels of radiation detected in fish are the result of previous contamination. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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