Читать книгу Meltdown - Yoichi Funabashi - Страница 25

As guided, they entered the meeting room adjacent to the second-floor Emergency Response Center. There was just a monitor on the wall. It was as stark and unwelcoming as a room could be. No one was there. Kan was shouting again.

“Why isn’t someone here?!”

The country’s prime minister was visiting, but no one greeted him ceremoniously. They did not even let people know he was there. And then, they kept him waiting.

A little later, Yoshida made an appearance. He had mixed feelings about the prime minister visiting.

“Can’t Head Office take care of it? I’ve got to be in the field! … If I’m out attending to the prime minister, who’s going to replace me?”

This was the kind of exchange Yoshida had with Head Office. People at the site watching via videoconference were heard saying, “He’s right” and “Don’t come, don’t come.”

Yoshida spat out at the end, “I can’t put up with this!”

One of the NISA staff members who witnessed the videoconference thought to himself, What nerve Head Office has to ask such an unreasonable thing at a time like this, and good for Yoshida-san for saying that.

“Good for him for saying that” was imbued with a sense of awe.¹²

Across the table, Yoshida sat with Muto, while Kan was flanked by Madarame and Terada on the other side. Muto started explaining that it was taking time to organize the compressor and power supply needed to pump in the compressed air to open the vent valve. After a minute or two, Kan snapped.

“I haven’t come to listen to excuses like that! Why do you think I’m here?!”

Without responding directly to this, Yoshida spread out a chart on the table and started to explain.

“We are currently readying an electric vent.”

“How long will that take?”

“It will take four hours.”

“We can’t wait four hours anymore. TEPCO has been saying ‘four hours’ for hours. All they ever say is in so many hours’ time.”

Kan was annoyed, thinking, Wasn’t the venting to take place at three a.m.? It’s already four hours after that. Is he telling me we have to wait four more hours? Yoshida, however, did not move a muscle.

“We will vent. We are even considering a manual vent. It will be decided in one hour’s time if we go ahead with a manual vent or not.”

“You don’t have the time. I want you to do it quickly.”

“Radiation levels are extremely high. So, the operators can only go in for fifteen minutes at a time.”

So Yoshida replied to Kan, but looking him directly in the eye, he added, “In the end, we will have to send people in. We’ll do it with a suicide squad.”

Kan nodded at the words “suicide squad.” Although his aggressive tone was still in evidence, they finally seemed to be getting on the same page. Listening to the exchange, Shimomura thought, Finally, someone who can talk to Kan without wetting himself.

Yoshida explained the situation inside the reactor.

“I think there’s a very strong possibility that vapor is leaking out of the reactor. Pressure is at seven times the normal level.”

Up until this point, he had been talking about Unit 1. He then turned to Unit 2.

“This has also been flooded with seawater, and there is no power. But Unit 2 can hold out for another four hours. We’ll try to hook up a power supply during that time.”

The tsunami had hit the building at thirteen meters above sea level. The basement power room was flooded. Yoshida said a tsunami of five meters had been assumed.

Would the local residents be all right if they vented?

“The current ten-kilometer indoor evacuation is okay.”

Yoshida reiterated that he thought the ten-kilometer evacuation radius was sufficient.

“There will be a lot of noble gas, but at present I think ten kilometers is enough.”

“We can’t have people up and taking iodine on their own. Some people will suffer an adverse reaction. But it’s all right if a medical practitioner okays it.”

“We will measure the radiation when we have the go-ahead for Unit 1. Based on that value, we will decide whether to administer iodine or not.”

Yoshida also said, “There’s no choice but to vent Units 2 and 3 as well … Radiation is low there, so we can send people in to do the venting.”

Kan pressed the point.

“I want you to learn from Unit 1 and do it as quickly as possible.”

Masuda, the prime ministerial secretary, told Terada, “The medical official says we shouldn’t stay here too long.” Terada was thinking the same thing, but could not find an opening to mention it. Kan got to his feet. The meeting had lasted some twenty minutes.

Watching Kan descend the stairs, Ikeda whispered to Terada, “Get him to calm down a bit.”

Terada whispered back, “He’s better than usual.”

As they were about to board the minibus, a staff member of NISA asked for his autograph. Kan signed, saying, “Is here all right?”

The site Kan had visited was Fukushima Daiichi. The crux of the visit was the venting of Unit 1. He did not go on to Fukushima Daini NPS.¹³

Muto briefly explained the situation at Fukushima Daini, however, in his meeting with Yoshida.

“Units 1, 2, and 4 at Daini have power, but they can’t exchange heat … The temperature in the suppression chamber is over 100 degrees.”

In short, he was saying that the tsunami had broken the cooling system and the pumps were not working. Daini was in a precarious state as well.

Shinichi Kuroki, a deputy director general of NISA accompanying Ikeda, had been asked by the NISA ERC in Tokyo “to directly appeal to the prime minister on his inspection visit to extend the resident evacuation line to ten kilometers from Fukushima Daini NPS.”

Kuroki had heard that Kan was “someone who would not approve something if he was hemmed in too much.” So, he decided that his best option was to say, “I’ll contact them to say we have your approval.” Kuroki had the documentation on evacuation area specifications sent to the Anti-Seismic Building and sorted it out in his mind while Kan was meeting with the TEPCO side. The moment the meeting with TEPCO was over, he reported to Kan. With a sour look on his face, Kan mumbled, “Fukushima Daini, too?”—but Kuroki successfully gained his approval. The time of approval and evacuation directive was 7:45 a.m. on March 12.¹⁴

At 7:30 p.m. on the same day, NHK went to air with the news that a state of emergency had been declared at Fukushima Daini Station as well, due to “an inability to cool Units 1, 2, and 4.”¹⁵

The party traveled back to the sports ground to the west of the Anti-Seismic Building and boarded the helicopter. The piercing cold air chilled them to the bone. Ikeda, Uchibori, and Kuroki lined up to see them off. The propellers refused to turn. Perhaps it was because the engines had gone cold, but the helicopter did not take off immediately. Ikeda was experiencing a deep emotion.

Political leaders need to see the big picture. Japan is not just confronted with the Fukushima nuclear accident, but with earthquakes and tsunami. Seventy-two hours will make or break us all. At a time like that, the prime minister should maintain a dignified presence and act as the commander-in-chief. Those serving as prime minister need to conduct themselves, to speak and to act with a certain air. I don’t feel that about him.

Ikeda had once been a member of the Social Democrats of Japan. He did not think very highly of the politician Yasuhiro Nakasone, who served as prime minister from 1982 to 1987. Every time he met elder statesmen Etsusaburo Shiina, Shigesaburo Maeo, and Hirokichi Nadao, he was scathing about Nakasone.

“Still, it was a different Nakasone after he became prime minister. Sometimes he would do zen meditation. Not that it was important to do zen, but a prime minister needed to have some time to think quietly every day, even if only for a few minutes. You couldn’t do the job if you were always running around like a headless chicken.”

“In the first place, Kan was terrified that day that he would be cornered and finished off. The quake hit during the audit committee of the Upper House. He thought his response to the Fukushima nuclear accident would give him a new lease on life. He wasn’t his normal self.”

8:11 A.M. Circling over Fukushima Daiichi NPS, the helicopter took off. Ikeda bowed his head to Kuroki and the others, saying, “I’m ashamed to be a politician myself. I’m sorry.”¹⁶

“Hey Terada! Something’s ringing!”

Kan, on board the helicopter, was speaking. It was the dosimeter beeping. Terada pushed the button on Kan’s disaster jacket and turned it off. It seemed that Kan was only aware that Ikeda had come to see him off after Terada pointed it out to him on board. Not only that, he did not appear to be aware that Ikeda had come to meet the helicopter and had sat in on the meeting with Yoshida.

Kan was hungry. He chomped on a rice ball held in his bare hands. Hands that he had not washed.¹⁷

The party changed helicopters at Matsushima Airport and inspected the disaster area. Kan was glued to the sight below.

“It’s so different from the Hanshin-Awaji earthquake.”

Kan had experience with disaster areas, being one of the first on the ground at the time of the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji earthquake. Most of the damage at that time was concentrated in Kobe. Osaka next door was safe. Here it was a different story, however. No matter how far they went, it was all flooded. You could not tell where the sea ended and the tsunami waters started.

It’s the sinking of Japan.

Shimomura shared the same thought. Down below, there was something that looked like a huge sheet of corrugated iron adrift. What could something of that size be? On closer inspection, he saw that it was the roof of the Sendai Airport. It just looked like it was drifting, because everything around it was under water.¹⁸

The Super Puma touched down on the rooftop of the Kantei at 10:47 a.m. The inspection had lasted some four and a half hours. The moment Kan entered his office, he told Fukuyama, who was waiting for him there:

“Site Superintendent Yoshida is okay. We can trust him. We can talk with him.”¹⁹