Читать книгу Meltdown - Yoichi Funabashi - Страница 14

Motohisa Ikeda, senior vice minister of economy, trade, and industry, left the main building of the ministry at five p.m. on March 11. He got in the car with some disaster gear, hardhat, and boots in hand. He was heading to the offsite center in Okuma.

It was stipulated in article 17 of NEPA that a local nuclear response headquarters (NERHQ) should be set up at the offsite center in the case of a nuclear emergency. The vice minister (or the ministerial secretary) was designated to head NERHQ.

Shinichi Kuroki, NISA deputy director general, and Tetsuya Yamamoto, chief of the NISA inspection unit, were traveling with Ikeda. NISA had initially considered sending a senior management team to the Tohoku Electric Power Company’s Onagawa nuclear station, which seemed to have been hit the hardest, but as the situation in Fukushima escalated, they decided to set up their NERHQ at the Fukushima offsite center and sent Yamamoto there.⁶⁹

Due to traffic congestion, they failed to link up with the patrol car that was to escort them. They were shortly caught up in the whirlpool of Tokyoites trying to get home. It took them two hours to reach Ueno. It would be impossible for them to travel to Fukushima by car.

Ikeda phoned Kazuo Matsunaga, METI permanent secretary, from the car and asked for a Self-Defense Forces helicopter to be readied.

I mean to say, it’s ridiculous to expect the head of a nuclear emergency response team to reach the site by car in the first place. Why did NISA create such an unrealistic rule?

Ikeda was unable to keep his anger under control, but was forced to smile bitterly when he reconsidered: Isn’t it also the responsibility of the politicians who allowed such a rule?

They finally got their police car escort and headed to the Ministry of Defense (MOD) and Self-Defense Forces (SDF) headquarters at Ichigaya. The only way to get to the site was to board the helicopter on the rooftop helipad and fly. It emerged, however, that this was not so easy, with the whole nuclear station area in blackout. He, therefore, flew to the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) Ohtakineyama Sub-Base (a radar base), atop the Abukuma Mountains.

The base was covered in thick snow. Ikeda drove down the mountain. In the town at the foot of the mountains, there were cracks in the road, and some of the houses were leaning. The blackout enveloped the area, with no light to be seen anywhere.⁷⁰

At around eleven p.m., he learned from Tokyo that the wind at the site had changed and was now blowing toward the Pacific Ocean.

If they’re going to vent, now would be the time …

Kuroki thought as much when he heard this. Kuroki was originally a technical official in charge of examining test furnaces at the former Science and Technology Agency (STA). One of NISA’s deputy director general seats was “reserved” for good old STA boys. Kuroki himself was on secondment from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT).

It was the middle of the night when they reached the site. Asked by Ikeda to “check the time of arrival,” Kuroki emphasized to Tokyo that they had “arrived on the night of March 11, at 12:00.” This was his attempt to prevent the press from writing that they arrived the following day, but NISA’s press release said, “They arrived at 00:00 on March 12.”

The government officials who made it to the site during the night were the senior vice minister of economy, trade, and industry; Fukushima Prefecture vice governor Masao Uchibori; NISA inspectors from Fukushima Daiichi and Daini stations; NSA staff members; MEXT staff; and staff from Okuma Town. Ikeda was immediately briefed by Yokota about the situation at the plant. Due to instrument failure, they were unable to measure any key parameters, including the temperature, pressure, or water level inside the reactors. Additionally, of the twenty-four monitoring posts in Fukushima Prefecture, twenty-three were out of action.⁷¹

Ikeda was then briefed by the TEPCO unit chief. In the early hours of the morning, TEPCO vice president Sakae Muto arrived.

By March 12, staff from the SDF, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, and the Nuclear Safety Technology Center had all assembled. However, members from the Nuclear Safety Commission and the Emergency Response Measures Committee, who were to be dispatched to the scene in line with the Basic Disaster Plan, never showed up. The Nuclear Safety Commission had contemplated dispatching a member of the commission and a few staff members, but only dispatched one staff member when told that “the helicopter is full, make it one person.”⁷²

Staff were also to be dispatched to the offsite center from the surrounding towns of Okuma, Futaba, Tomioka, and Namie, but only staff from Okuma made it to the center. The other towns needed all of their staff helping to evacuate their residents.

At around three a.m. on March 12, power was restored to the offsite center and everyone moved back from their temporary quarters at the Nuclear Power Center. The television was now working.

They received an alert that Minister Banri Kaieda of the METI was about to give a press conference on the implementation of venting. With things as far gone as they were, venting could not be helped. If they did vent, however, it would have a huge impact on the local residents due to the release of radioactive material. Ikeda directed the TEPCO team chief and Yokota to get as accurate data as they could as soon as possible.

4:00 A.M. They were told that Prime Minister Naoto Kan was coming to visit the site. Grouping around Ikeda, the overall coordinators discussed the matter.

“What if the prime minister suffers radiation exposure? Can that be explained externally?”

“Won’t a visit at this busy time slow down the accident response efforts?”

“I expect it’ll be all right since the wind’s blowing out to the Pacific.”⁷³

Ikeda, at this stage, was opposed to a prime ministerial visit.

I understand the PM wants to see the site for himself since it’s an unprecedented nuclear accident. But the quake is not just about the nuclear plants. There have been huge tidal waves and aftershocks. In a disaster like this, the first seventy-two hours, when people still have a good chance of survival, are critical. The leader should stay at the headquarters and do his utmost to save lives, as well as monitor the nuclear accident response … Still, if he really wants to visit the site, we can’t allow anything to happen to our commander-in-chief (the prime minister), so he should visit the offsite center and not Daiichi Station.

Ikeda ordered Kuroki to convey these thoughts to Tokyo. Later, on returning to Tokyo, Ikeda learned that his directive had only gone as far as NISA and did not reach the Kantei.⁷⁴

The local NERHQ comprised seven teams with different areas of responsibility, including a residents’ safety team and a medical team. At 10:30 a.m. on March 12, the first general meeting with all team leaders was held. They decided on a course of action for the offsite center, including preparing for the distribution of stable iodine, assessing the status of resident evacuation, and implementing emergency monitoring. On the basis of this plan of action, orders were issued to the surrounding localities.

Given this ragtag assembly of ministerial, institutional, and regional public servants, as well as private sector workers, job descriptions were unclear. To compound the troubles, the phones were not working, or if they were, what was being said could not be heard.

Kuroki had been in charge of gathering information at the Science and Technology Agency (STA) at the time of the 1986 Chernobyl accident. He subsequently spent two years at the Japanese embassy in Moscow. During that time, he witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and cooperated with the now three separate countries of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia in the use and management of radioactive material. Communication between them was poor; they did not know their counterparts’ names; they could not get through to each other on the phone; if they did, line interference meant they could not hear each other. Kuroki was remembering how tough it had been then.⁷⁵

By noon on March 12, all communications, bar the satellite communication lines, were down. The emergency battery at the telecommunication company’s base station had run out. The government video conference system, the Emergency Response Support System (ERSS), the System for Prediction of Environment Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI), e-mail, the Internet, phones and faxes using landlines—all of them were out. Contact between the offsite center and NISA’s Emergency Response Center (ERC) was limited to external communications via satellite phone lines.⁷⁶

As a result, TEPCO’s video conference system became a key medium. Kuroki had “believed that NISA’s ERC had the same kind of video conference system as TEPCO,” but, having later learned that they did not, thought to himself, Damn it.

From time to time, Ikeda would go over to the TEPCO booth and listen to the exchange between Head Office and the Fukushima Daiichi response team. After a while, the booth became crowded. A little after 3:30 p.m., someone said they had heard a loud noise from the direction of Fukushima Daiichi.

Maybe a hydrogen explosion?

Tension ran through the offsite center.

At 3:41 p.m., the videoconference linking TEPCO Head Office and the site showed everyone in the Fukushima Daiichi ERC and the offsite center jumping to their feet in the same way and staring at something. It was the moment of the explosion that was being broadcast by Fukushima Central Television.

Just before four p.m., the SDF reported an explosion at Fukushima Daiichi NPS. This was reported to NISA’s ERC. After that, everyone was glued to the television screens.