More than three weeks after an earthquake and tsunami set off one of the world's most serious nuclear accidents at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, experts are intensifying their scrutiny to look more critically at how the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., has handled the crisis.
Some events TEPCO couldn't have foreseen — such as the massive size of the tsunami that swamped the coastal facility — experts say. But in the days following the initial series of explosions and fires inside the reactors, which caused fuel rods to melt and subsequent large releases of radiation, TEPCO made very costly — and avoidable — mistakes, experts increasingly say.
The company, they say, was ultimately surprised and overwhelmed by the chaos created by the tsunami. And its poor coordination of the response may have helped prolong the crisis.
"We're three weeks into this and this thing should be more under control than it is," said Matthew Bunn, a professor and the co-principal investigator of the Managing the Atom Project at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. "It seems that everyone at TEPCO is running around as fast as they can, trying to do what they can, but there it doesn't seem there were the tests and exercises of emergency plans that there should have been."
NATSUKI SAKAI / Nippon News / ABACAUSA.COM
Two samples of tiny konago, young lance fish used in Japan as a pungent side dish, have been found carrying high levels of radioactive materials in the Pacific waters off the country's coast. The samples were found before Tokyo Electric Power Company 11,500 tons of low-contaminated radioactive water into the sea from the site of the stricken Fukushima nuclear reactor, which has the potential to make matters worse. TEPCO officials have repeatedly assured that water radiation levels, though high in the immediate vicinity of the plant, do not threaten human or marine safety. But the konago were apprehended 50 miles south of the reactors and far outside of the 12.5-mile evacuation zone. Since then, Tokyo has announced for fish.
Just how contaminated were the little swimmers? The Wall Street Journal that the first sample, caught last Friday, contained twice the permissible level of radioactive iodine-131, which, in humans, is linked to thyroid cancer. The second, caught on Monday, contained just over the permissible level of cesium, with an effect on people that is undetermined.
The wall of water that struck Japan post-earthquake obliterated fishing villages all along its northeast coast. In some areas, 90% of the seafood industry was destroyed, an enormous blow to a country in which fish and other underwater delicacies account for nearly half of its $3 billion in annual food exports. The contaminated konago will certainly not help the weakened market. The fish were found south of Fukushima, in Ibaraki prefecture, which had just decided to resume fishing after the string of disasters. The prefecture's local government has put a hold on konago fishing since the incident. And now, all ports looking to begin casting their lines again will have to conduct radioactive contamination tests first
It's unclear how serious the situation is. Japanese officials have pointed out that this particular species of fish usually comes to Ibaraki from northern parts, and could easily have passed through the waters by the damaged nuclear plant. Fishery cooperatives have tested ten other types of fish, but none were deemed abnormal. Countries around the world are heavily monitoring their Japanese imports for radiation, India for the next three months.
As Japan's nuclear crises rages on, there have been reports of other contaminated foodstuffs—things like milk and spinach. But news of the konago has sparked greater concern. Not only is the fish market the center of Japan's coastal economy, but sea creatures, radioactive or not, are capable of traveling in unpredictable ways
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