Читать книгу Meltdown - Yoichi Funabashi - Страница 27

They were forced to give up manually opening the AO “small valve.”

Looking at the blueprints, the operators thought that they might be able to connect up the compressor that fed air into the narrow pipe near the big, equipment-loading entrance of Unit 1 (RB) where the AO valve was. So, they were setting out on operations for using a portable compressor to blow air remotely to the AO valve.

However, Fukushima Daiichi NPS was not equipped with an adapter for connecting the pipe to a portable compressor. The ERC asked the associate companies to locate an adapter and portable air compressor, which they had finally found.³²

Around two p.m., they got the portable compressor working and pumped air into the pipes. As a result, pressure in the drywell at Unit 1 fell. NHK footage showed white smoke billowing out of the Unit 1 exhaust stack.

Immediately prior to this, Izawa had sent another team, put together ad hoc, to the reactor building. He had requested that the Head Office think of means to get the small valve open from the outside; however, it was impossible. There was nothing to do but try once more to open it manually. He had heard that the two operators who had just arrived to support belonged to the athletics club.

This could be the last chance. Let’s bet on these two.

A third team, which had been organized beforehand, were already wearing rescue suits and were getting ready to go. They said something along the lines of “we will go, it is our job.”

“Do you know how things are out there onsite?” Izawa asked. Although they shook their heads and resisted, Izawa persuaded the third team not to go. The two athletic club members went instead.

After a few minutes, Izawa’s phone rang. It was the Head Office.

“White smoke is coming out of the exhaust pipe of Units 1 and 2! Any updates from the Central Control Room?”

Izawa shouted, “Stop them!”

Another team on duty immediately ran after the one that just left, to tell them to come back. They were just about to open the double doors of the nuclear reactor building when they were intercepted. The two of them, who intended to enter the building, seemed to object to being stopped. They were not even carrying a dosimeter. Izawa only found out about this act of bravado later on.³³

APPROXIMATELY 2:30 P.M. A report came up to Kaieda that “the second valve is open.”

Around 3:18 p.m., Yoshida judged that “radioactive material was being released” from the venting at Unit 1.³⁴

The staff members of NISA at the offsite center reported to the cabinet headquarters visual confirmation of “vapor-like substance coming out.” Madarame was relieved to hear it.

Vapor rushing out with the venting proves that the containment vessel is still alive. The containment vessel is still alive. ³⁵

The venting of Unit 1 had finally been successful. It was fourteen and a half hours after the decision had been made, seven and a half hours after the government’s order to vent, and more than four hours since the venting operation had started.

Why did the venting take so long?

Masataka Shimizu, TEPCO president, was asked this at a later press conference.

Reporter: You say that there was a delay from the government order, but President Shimizu, do you yourself deem that it was delayed?

Shimizu: As you have already been told, the site had lost all external power and was forced to work under extremely difficult conditions, and it is a fact that it took some time before starting actual operations.

Reporter: Who was in charge on March 11? That was when pressure in the reactor’s pressure vessel started to climb. At around five a.m. on March 12, radioactive material was discharged outside. Who was in charge at the time?

Shimizu: In my absence, it is, of course, the deputy head of the ERC who acts in my place, so he was in charge.

Reporter: Who’s that?

Shimizu: That’s Vice President Muto, sitting here.³⁶

However, in this decisively critical situation, Muto had flown off to the site of the accident and was not in control at Head Office command.

There was a deep-rooted sense of mistrust between TEPCO and the Kantei. There was no proper communication between them, let alone a relationship of trust. Kan suspected TEPCO’s failure to make a swift decision on the venting was because their top two managers were both out of Head Office from the evening of March 11 until noon on March 12, and they were unable to make an important management call.

Why did Takekuro turn up [at the Kantei]? First of all, the top two [in TEPCO] weren’t here. They weren’t even at [TEPCO’s] Head Office until noon on March 12. Was TEPCO reluctant to vent for technical reasons or because the top two weren’t there?

Kan continued to harbor this suspicion. He felt that TEPCO as a company, and especially its Head Office, was “more bureaucratic than the bureaucracy, with no one willing to take a risk. That’s why they can’t make the big decisions.”

Kaieda shared the same doubts and distrust. It was only after he had repeatedly warned Takekuro and the other TEPCO representatives in the mezzanine office of the crisis management center, “If you are going to keep on hesitating and not venting, I’ll make it an order. Do you hear? An order!” that he switched to an order based on the Act on the Regulation of Nuclear Source Material, Nuclear Fuel Material, and Reactors. He was afraid that, given TEPCO’s corporate culture, they would never vent unless ordered to do so.

The depth of the distrust here was not merely a question of whether the top two managers were missing or not.³⁷ A member of the Kantei staff revealed that he suspected TEPCO of intentionally delaying the venting.

“There was a high risk that workers would suffer radiation exposure if they went ahead with venting. TEPCO didn’t want to make such a momentous decision on its own. It wanted to share responsibility with the government. That’s probably why they didn’t step up on their own, but believed it was a better choice to do it under government orders, as in, ‘We humbly await the prime minister’s decision.’ ”³⁸

Kan’s visit to Fukushima Daiichi was later questioned by the opposition parties as “a fatal mistake in the initial response.” His visit to the power plant was blamed for delaying the venting operation.³⁹

There was significant worry that Kan’s visit had taken up Yoshida’s time and obstructed the onsite crisis management. Yoshida himself let slip some critical remarks about Kan’s visit:

“It may sound like an excuse, but I was distracted by the prime minister’s visit to F1 (Fukushima Daiichi), and wasn’t able to give the order to ‘vent’ for about two hours. At the time, nothing moved except on my command. Since there were no commands being issued, work came to a halt.”⁴⁰

According to the daily operational reports for Unit 1 subsequently released by TEPCO, no notes were written on the whiteboard for approximately two and a half hours in the Central Control Room between 6:29 a.m., after Kan had left the Kantei by helicopter, and 9:04 a.m., after he had left the plant and headed to his next stop.⁴¹

Abetted by rumors that Kan’s Fukushima visit was just a performance aimed at distracting national interest from the question of his illegal donations, these criticisms smoldered for a long time. It had also been observed that it was the “political initiative” of the DPJ administration that had brought about excessive meddling in the field, which, in turn, had upset the chain of command. A middle-ranking official at METI said, “It’s because they interfere in everything with their ‘political initiative’ that the lines of authority and responsibility become blurred.”⁴²

Regarding this point, however, TEPCO stated in their report, “In the process of implementing the containment vessel venting, and given the gravity of releasing radioactive material, in addition to the site superintendent’s judgment, we sought the confirmation and approval of the company president as well as contacted the government.”⁴³

So, while criticizing intervention from the Kantei on the one hand, the report recognizes that TEPCO asked for government engagement as a consequence of the “gravity” of the situation on the other.

Let us return to the “delay in venting.” What was the biggest cause of the delay onsite? What was their greatest miscalculation and limitation?

The government investigation commission found that while Yoshida’s sense of crisis for Unit 2 was mounting on the night of March 11 because he believed the RCIC cooling system to have failed in Unit 2, he mistakenly thought that the IC was working in Unit 1, and “did not feel an imminent necessity for the containment venting based on his misunderstanding of the operating condition of the IC of Unit 1,” thereby demonstrating “the reason for the delay of the containment venting was not of their hesitation but of their misunderstanding of the plant condition at Unit 1.”⁴⁴

In other words, the investigation commission believed the decisive error was a misreading of the crux of the crisis; that the delay had been caused by pressing the wrong button.

Another factor was that the mounting levels of radiation inside Unit 1 (RB) were becoming an obstacle to operations. From four to five a.m. on March 12, there was an abnormal jump in radiation levels inside Unit 1 (RB), and it was already becoming difficult to stay on the Unit 1 side of the Central Control Room. When venting Unit 1, they had to confront a deadly environment of 300 millisieverts/hour. Even the U.S. manuals for responding to nuclear terrorism require counter-actors to abstain from taking action if the radiation level in the environment exceeds 100 millisieverts/hour.⁴⁵

Entering the reactor building meant laying your life on the line. The continuing aftershocks also made the job more difficult. The lack of an effective and coordinated plan between onsite and offsite, which would have comprehensively linked the venting operation and resident evacuation, was another serious drawback. A disaster action plan for resident evacuation that assumed the possibility of venting couldn’t have been drawn up under a nuclear safety regulatory environment that was beholden to the “safety myth.”

Mari Sato later said, “It is because it is awful. By that, I mean venting. You can’t just implement venting as you wish. It could become an issue of responsibility for the people at the top. So, that decision couldn’t be made simply by Yoshida. I think responsibility wasn’t taken.”⁴⁶

In the early hours of the morning, it was learned that the evacuation of local residents in Okuma had not been completed, and so it was decided jointly by TEPCO and Fukushima Prefecture that the venting of the reactor containment vessel should wait until the residents had been evacuated.

It was after nine a.m. when Yoshida acknowledged that the evacuation of Okuma residents had been completed. The shift team carried out preparations for implementing the containment venting after that.⁴⁷ (Hospital patients in Okuma, however, were still there. See chapter 7.)