Читать книгу Meltdown - Yoichi Funabashi - Страница 13

The quake hit just after Yokota had finished an interview for the periodic inspection report in an office in the Training Building at Fukushima Daiichi NPS. Although he could barely stand, he made his way to the door, opened it, then hid under a desk. Someone had taught him that “the first thing to do in an earthquake is to open the door.”

Yokota was the designated disaster expert. Under the Act on Special Measures Concerning Nuclear Emergency Preparedness, during the time of a nuclear emergency, it was a legal requirement to establish an offsite center (emergency response facility) to act as a base for measuring radiation levels and a collection point for all nuclear disaster information.⁵⁶

The offsite center idea was born from the 1999 JCO criticality accident in Tokaimura, Naka District, Ibaraki Prefecture. This accident took place in the uranium reprocessing facility of JCO, a subsidiary of Sumitomo Metal Mining, and resulted in two deaths and one serious injury. Residents within a 350-meter radius from the conversion building were evacuated, an evacuation warning released for those within a 500-meter radius, and residents within a ten-kilometer radius were asked to remain indoors. The accident was classed as a Level 4 event (accident with local consequences) on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES).

It was the need in hindsight for a government-wide, coordinated response, including resident evacuation and local accident response, which led to the promulgation of the Act on Special Measures Concerning Nuclear Emergency Preparedness (NEPA) and the requirement to establish an offsite center.

The offsite center had its own communications system, radiation measuring equipment, and a support system to respond to nuclear accidents, as well as a decontamination room in the case of radiation exposure. The joint offsite center for Fukushima Daiichi and Daini stations was set up in Okuma, Futaba District, Fukushima Prefecture. It was some five kilometers from Daiichi and twelve kilometers from Daini.⁵⁷

At the time of the earthquake, all seven inspectors from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Safety Inspectors’ Office and one chief inspector from NISA in Tokyo were onsite, conducting their periodic inspection. After reporting an article 10 event, Yokota and three other inspectors headed to the offsite center. The remaining inspectors stayed behind in the Anti-Seismic Building to collect information and report to NISA.⁵⁸

When Yokota and the others arrived at the offsite center, the local part-time worker minding the facility opened the doors for them. They were double doors.

“Are you all right?”

“Are you all right, too?”

After this kind of exchange with the woman, and learning that she had children, Yokota sent her home.

The entire building was in a blackout. Even the emergency power was not working. Communications were in a state of paralysis as well. There was one phone/fax line working, but nothing else. The mobile phone connections were down. There was no way to contact NISA in Tokyo. They could not videoconference, there was no water, and the toilets were out of order.

The first workers to arrive were from Kandenko, a TEPCO-affiliated company, and they immediately started trying to restore the emergency power. It had been decided with TEPCO that these workers should gather at the offsite center in case of an emergency. That night, the only people who had made it to the offsite center were six NISA inspectors, including Yokota (three from Daiichi, three from Daini), eight TEPCO employees, and a public servant from Okuma Town. (It was stipulated in the disaster plan that forty workers from thirteen ministries and agencies should gather there, but in reality only twenty-one from three ministries and agencies turned up.)⁵⁹

A telephone and fax were connected to the Fukushima Prefectural Office, but it took an hour to send a fax over the line.

The four inspectors left behind onsite at Fukushima Daiichi were growing increasingly nervous. Radiation levels started climbing onsite in the early hours of March 12, and going in or out of the Anti-Seismic Building was becoming more restricted. At the time, they did not have any Tyvek suits or full-face masks. They were able to contact NISA in Tokyo via the satellite phone in the safety inspection’s disaster vehicle parked outside, but it was becoming more difficult to exit the building, as radiation levels grew. At around five p.m. on March 12, they decided to evacuate from Fukushima Daiichi to the offsite center.⁶⁰

Their reasoning was, “They gave us a room in the Anti-Seismic Building, but it was impossible to work with everyone coming and going.”

In the evening of the same day, after the Kantei (the prime minister’s office) had decided on seawater injection, Banri Kaieda, minister for the economy, trade, and industry, asked Eiji Hiraoka, deputy director general of NISA, “Doesn’t NISA also need to directly witness the seawater injection onsite?”⁶¹

Kaieda was wondering, “What’s happening on the ground? Aren’t there any NISA inspectors there?” Upon checking with NISA, he learned, “There are none onsite.”

“That’s no good.”

Kaieda had not been informed that the NISA inspectors had evacuated from Fukushima Daiichi. Hiraoka conveyed Kaieda’s criticisms to Tetsuya Yamamoto, head of the NISA Inspection Division, who, as in a game of telephone, relayed the message to Yokota.

“Don’t you think it’s bad that no one is onsite? It’s no good having all the inspectors at the offsite center. We want you to go back, all of you except the disaster expert.”⁶²

Around six a.m. on March 13, Yokota ordered four inspectors “to go to Fukushima Daiichi to observe operations, since they are going to start injecting seawater … I want the four of you to split up into two teams and contact the plant team with changes in the parameters every hour.” Although he said “observe operations,” no specific directives were issued.

“Do you mean go to the site and visually check if they are pumping the water in?”

“Contamination levels are high, so all you have to do is be at the Emergency Response Center checking the situation at the plant regularly and letting us know.”⁶³

The main point of the matter was to get the inspectors back onsite.

7:00 A.M., MARCH 13. Four inspectors left the offsite center and returned to the Anti-Seismic Building some forty minutes later. Their job was to “work twelve-hour shifts and make hourly reports on the plant data such as the reactor water.”⁶⁴ Although they stayed on the job there until five p.m., they did not provide any live observations.

With the loss of power, the building was pitch-black. Instruments had to be read by the light of flashlights. In the end, all they did was receive plant status check sheets from TEPCO employees and convey their content via the in-house wireless phone system to the Local Nuclear Response Headquarters (NERHQ) in the offsite center.⁶⁵

One of the four inspectors was a smoking buddy of Yoshida’s. They were on easy speaking terms, but at this point everything was being dictated by the Kantei. They had a strong sense that “this isn’t a situation for a lowly inspector to butt in.”⁶⁶

In the afternoon of March 14, one of them contacted Yokota via a TEPCO mobile phone.

“There’s been a hydrogen explosion at Unit 3. I feel I’m in danger.”

“I want you to hang in there somehow or other.”

Yokota denied the request to leave, telling the four of them to work from the Emergency Response Center. The conversation by TEPCO workers at the Emergency Response Center roundtable could be overhead.

“If Unit 2 blows, this important [Anti-Seismic] Building won’t escape either.”

A short time later, another report came in.

“Site superintendent, if it does blow, it won’t be safe here. There’s a strong chance of Unit 2 exploding if pressure keeps mounting in the pressure vessel and venting operations don’t make headway.”

“Sir, the situation is critical. We can’t stay here any longer. If there’s trouble with the Unit 4 fuel pool, it’ll undergo recriticality. If that happens, then no one here will be saved.”

A specialist nuclear power engineer from the manufacturing side, who knew a lot about reactors, spoke up. With a quiet voice, he desperately appealed, “Please let us evacuate for the time being to the offsite center. I’ll report the details to you at the offsite center.”

He was ringing via mobile phone, but was probably surrounded by lots of workers from TEPCO and its associates. No doubt, they were all listening hard to what the inspectors were talking about with Yokota. He could not go into specifics. Nor was it easy to clearly say “come back” or “stay.” The inspector at the end of the line said, “Chief, we’re coming back.”⁶⁷

He could not say “fine,” but then again, he could not say “don’t.” Yokota hung up with a simple “understood.” The four inspectors returned to the offsite center in the disaster vehicle on the evening of March 14, 2011.⁶⁸