Читать книгу Meltdown - Yoichi Funabashi - Страница 24

6:14 A.M. The Super Puma took off from the Kantei helipad. It carried Kan, Terada, Madarame, and Shimomura. Also aboard were Kenji Okamoto and Koichi Masuda, staff members of the prime minister’s secretariat; Kazufumi Tsumura, a Kyodo News Agency reporter chosen to represent the Kantei press corps; a medical official; and the security police. With a maximum capacity of ten passengers, the helicopter was full to overflowing.

They were to fly to Matsushima on the Super Puma. From there, they would transfer to a CH47 Chinook, a large transporter helicopter. On the flight, Kan sat next to Madarame. Madarame had been told by a Kantei staffer only an hour before departure that he was to come along. He unintentionally queried the staffer back.

“Why? Why me?”

“The prime minister says he wishes to use the flight time to learn in more detail.”

Madarame boarded the flight thinking along the lines, So, I’m to be the prime minister’s study partner.⁸

Whenever Madarame started to explain something, Kan would cut him off.

“I understand the basics. Just answer my questions.”

Kan peppered Madarame with questions.

“How do Units 1, 2, and 3 differ?”

Madarame gave various answers, including the difference in output, and added, “Unit 1 was cooled with an emergency condenser called the IC, but Units 2 and 3 were cooled by RCIC water injection.”

Upon which, Kan pressed on, “Why, if Unit 1 has IC, does Unit 2 have RCIC?”

“I think it’s because when the output gets larger, natural circulation like an IC doesn’t sufficiently cool it, so it was changed to injecting the water via turbines.”

One of Kan’s questions really got Madarame’s back up.

“Isn’t there a professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology who knows about this?”

Madarame thought to himself, What do school rivalries mean at a time like this?

Kan was a graduate of the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Madarame had a degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Tokyo. Although sensing a certain discomfort, Madarame replied, “There are Professors Aritomi and Ninokata.”

He was referring to Professor Masanori Aritomi, director of the Research Laboratory for Nuclear Reactors (RLNR) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and Professor Hisashi Ninokata of the Energy Science and Engineering department of the same institute.⁹ (On March 22, Kan appointed Professor Masanori Aritomi and Professor Masaki Saito from RLNR as cabinet advisers.)

The helicopter landed in the middle of the sports ground to the west of the Anti-Seismic Building at Fukushima Daiichi NPS at 7:11 a.m. A blustery wind was caught up in the helicopter’s propellers, and it was freezing cold. They were met by Motohisa Ikeda, head of the local NERHQ; Masao Uchibori, vice governor of Fukushima Prefecture; and Sakae Muto, vice president of TEPCO (and director of the Nuclear Power and Plant Siting Division), among others.

Uchibori had reached the offsite center around eleven p.m. on March 11, and Ikeda got there in the middle of the night. Muto had left the Tokyo Head Office at 3:30 a.m. on March 11 to head to Fukushima by helicopter. There was a tremendous traffic jam, however, on the way to the heliport at Shin-Kiba. Walking and hitching rides from passing cars, he finally made it there and had landed at the sports ground at Fukushima Daini NPS around six a.m.

Since the offsite center was without power and not functioning yet, that night he did the rounds, visiting the mayors of Okuma and Futaba to explain the situation. In the morning, he heard that Kan would be coming by helicopter to the Fukushima Daiichi sports ground. He had wanted to meet with Yoshida in the Anti-Seismic Building prior to that, but there was a long line of people waiting to be checked for radiation at the entrance to the building. Thinking he would not make it in time, he hurried to the sports ground and was waiting for Kan.

The party headed to the Anti-Seismic Building in a minibus. Kan sat in a window seat on the right-hand side of the bus, Muto seated beside him. Madarame sat behind Kan, and Ikeda across the aisle. All of a sudden, Kan thundered, “Why haven’t you started venting?”¹⁰

The party arrived at the Anti-Seismic Building. The entrance had double doors. The moment they opened the outer door, someone yelled at them, “Get inside quickly!” Apparently, they had arrived at the seven a.m. shift switch. Almost everyone was in Tyvek suits. Kan was wearing his light blue disaster gear and sneakers. People in bulky disaster gear were being screened. Others were asleep in the hallway. Kan thought it looked just like a field hospital.

Their guide was trying to get Kan and his party to the far end of the hallway. They had to be checked for radiation by the monitoring staff. They lined up there for a time, but something did not seem right. Still, it was a narrow hallway, and there was no way you could move sideways. The survey meter was held up to Kan’s body. It buzzed.

Ah, so this is the line for the workers to be checked for radiation.

Kan shouted out, “What’s going on?! Why do I have to undergo this? You haven’t got the time to be doing this! I’ve come to see the site superintendent.”

The guide had the party change their shoes and forced his way through the workers heading to the second floor by the left staircase. They could hear someone nearby saying in a high-pitched voice, “Oh, the radiation level is high around here.”

“Get them into the meeting room quickly!”

The party climbed the stairs with a bristling Kan in the lead.

There were people slumped in exhaustion against the walls all the way up the stairs to the second floor. Nobody was aware that the prime minister of Japan was visiting. Shimomura thought to himself, These people are working their guts out.

Seeing everyone in their white Tyvek suits, Madarame was quite convinced that the venting had been successful. That was why his shock was so great when he learned that they still had not vented.

Why was I thinking that they’d vented?! If they had, the site would be contaminated and I’d have to be wearing protective gear, too.

Madarame had arrived wearing the NSC work garb. He had not taken into account at all the risk of radioactive material discharge accompanying the venting, or the wind direction risk factor. Kan was the same. (His staff, however, had confirmed that the wind was blowing out to the Pacific in and around Fukushima Daiichi NPS.)¹¹