Читать книгу Meltdown - Yoichi Funabashi - Страница 28

3:36 P.M., MARCH 12. The roof of Unit 1 blew off with a thunderous clap. The Central Control Room (Units 1 and 2) shook up and down with a crash. The ceiling shutters and fluorescent lights hung down. White dust covered the room. Right after that, even the dim light of the fluorescent lamp went out and it became pitch-black.

Ah! The containment vessel has exploded!

Is this where I’m going to die?

These were the thoughts running through all the operators’ minds. At the time, Izawa was sitting in the duty manager’s chair. It felt like they’d been directly hit by a bomb.

I wonder if the control room itself has been damaged.

While thinking that, he was yelling, “Masks! Get your masks on.”

On hearing this, everyone checked that their masks were on. Someone instinctively took out a dosimeter and checked the number.

“That’s strange. It’s not rising.”

“Is it all right?”

“The Central Control Room’s ceiling isn’t built that solidly.”

“Quick! Shut the emergency doors so the outside air can’t get in.”

The hotline to the Anti-Seismic Building was still working.⁴⁸

There had been a tremendous rumbling at the Anti-Seismic Building. The people sitting down slid sideways some 30 centimeters. Voices were raised.

“Is it another quake?”

Suddenly it hit Yoshida, the site superintendent of the Fukushima Daiichi NPS. “I reckon Unit 1 has exploded.”

The inside door of the Anti-Seismic Building had been blown out of kilter, which put the double doors out of action. There was panic inside the building. Workers from TEPCO associate companies shouted, “Let us go home.” Conversely, people trying to escape into the building started running to and fro, because they couldn’t get in. The door was fixed by using a crowbar to put the door back on its rails. At that point, a white substance started floating down from above.

One of the workers outside the turbine building later said, “When I looked up, there was debris all over the sky and it was drifting down.”⁴⁹

There was widespread concern among the young operators in the control room, who were now working in complete darkness. One of them was Ryuta Idogawa. He was twenty-seven years old.

Idogawa joined TEPCO eight years prior to this. He was from Futaba-cho. He had just been promoted in July of the previous year. As a member of Team D, he was in the same group as Izawa, and came to the plant in the morning hours of March 11.

When the earthquake hit, Idogawa was at his parents’ home in Futaba-cho. His father and mother were both at work. He heard the earth thunder. Sensing that it was dangerous to remain at home, he left his room and watched TV from his car navigation system. The tsunami alert was then announced.

The control room must be going through chaos. I could be of some help if I go, he thought.

He read a summary report on the challenges that workers onsite at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant went through when the Chuetsu earthquake happened.

I will go no matter what. However, I need to figure out if my parents are all right.

After visiting both parents’ offices to confirm that they were not hurt, he went back home.

I need to make sure nothing happens to John.

John was his beagle. Worrying that something might happen while he was gone, Idogawa unleashed him and let him go. After that, he drove to the single workers’ dormitory close to Fukushima Daiichi. After stopping by his own room, as he was leaving, he saw some junior workers hanging out.

“I’m going to the office now. Do you guys want to come with me?”

“I will go,” one of the workers replied.

Together they drove along the beach, following the road toward the power plant. As soon as they arrived, they were told the tsunami had hit.

“The tsunami came. I could see the bottom of the ocean from where the water had receded.”

Idogawa started to become worried about John when he heard this.

Which way did he run? I hope he’s doing okay.

From the evening of that day onward, Idogawa started working as the operator for Unit 2. However, one of his colleagues, who was an operator for the main reactor, sat in the operator’s seat that day, while Idogawa stuck to measuring the pressure and level of the water.

In the afternoon of the following day, he promptly stood up upon hearing a loud bang from an explosion, followed by the screams of the operators. When he looked at his side, one of the senior operators was fast asleep.

This guy is a bit different, he thought.

At the same time, Idogawa was seized by fear.

I will die here if I don’t do anything. I need to get away. After doing the vent, there’s not much else I can do here. The reactor is definitely going to melt.

There was nothing much that could be done at that point, and everything they tried failed to work. At this point, everything was up in the air, but Idogawa managed to remain extremely calm. In reality, though, various thoughts on how he could escape were swirling in his mind.

I should let the younger staff evacuate first. First the trainees, and then perhaps we can evacuate after that.

Later, Idogawa confessed: “I was there because there was no way to escape in the first place.”

“What’s going on here? We’re all going to die if we stay here.” Idogawa’s voice echoed as the impact from the blast continued to carry throughout the room.

The deputy director Mitsuru Komemasu was also there. He was ten years older than Idogawa and had experience working as an operator at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant. Idogawa said out loud what was on everyone’s mind.

Idogawa-san has courage, Komemasu thought.

A veteran operator, Shizuo Takahashi realized that the younger operators were having these kinds of anxious thoughts. He had been transferred only in the past month to work as an operator for Units 1 and 2 from Units 6 and 7. Takahashi entered the Anti-Seismic Building just before noon on March 12. He later came to the control room with six other deputy managers.

The younger workers don’t do anything if you leave them alone, Takahashi realized.

He made the respective roles of each operator clear, stating that younger workers without tasks should evacuate to the Anti-Seismic Building.

“Some of the people here should evacuate … at least temporarily. If everyone here dies and we can’t do anything else, then the situation will be really hopeless,” Takahashi argued.

Izawa remained silent, and so did everyone else for a moment. Then Deputy Manager Masanori Kaneyama (age 43) from the Operation Administration Work Management group stood up and called Izawa’s name and directly asked him:

“Izawa-san, does it make sense for us to be here? We can’t even operate, and there’s nothing else we can do. What’s the point in us all remaining here? Surely we can reduce the number of operators remaining?”

Kikuo Otomo raised his voice.

“Even if we leave here, there’s no guarantee that we can safely get to the Anti-Seismic Building. Even though there was an explosion, things are all right in here, so we should remain. We also just vented, so the radiation dose outside will be high. There’s no way it’s safe to go outside now.”

“We can measure the radiation dose as we run, and go through areas only with low figures,” Kaneyama responded.

Kaneyama held the position of auxiliary machine instructor and was in charge of supervising the young operators who were new to the company. He realized that they had not uttered a word since the explosion and were sitting on the floor right in front of the panel. These were his fellow operators, with whom he had spent much more time than even with his own family. They usually never stopped joking. But now those cheerful operators were all shaking.

It’s better to have told Izawa-san directly right here and now, Kaneyama thought, reassuring himself.

Idogawa mentally thanked Kaneyama, thinking, Kaneyama-san, you’re spot on.

Some of the operators who had remained seated gave a slight nod. There was then a moment of silence. Izawa got up from his seat and walked toward the others.

“We …”

Izawa was looking for words, but nothing came out. After taking a deep breath, he could finally speak.

“If we evacuate from here, it means that we’re going to abandon this whole local community. The entire world is watching us. That’s why I can’t leave here. I’m not going to send you anywhere dangerous. If it comes to that, I’ll let you evacuate. Please, until then, stay here.”

Izawa bowed deeply after saying these words. Otomo and Hirano also stood by Izawa and silently bowed. They were all in their fifties, and the three of them proceeded to bow together to the younger workers. Izawa then spoke again.

“The deputy manager and those junior to him, please move to the Anti-Seismic Building and wait there. Is that clear?”

The operators nodded.

Takahashi was moved by Izawa’s words when he said, “the entire world is watching us.” “I was impressed by Izawa-san, who was able to say such inspiring things. Izawa-san is calm and never panics. He acts based on what will happen in the future,” Takahashi recalled.⁵⁰

Kaneyama moved to the Anti-Seismic Building, leading nearly twenty people. He had left the Central Control Room, apologizing to one of the managers who was going to remain. It was still light outside. The Unit 1 building revealed its devastated appearance. Kaneyama instructed one of the younger operators to take a picture of it and share the information with the power generation group once he reached the Anti-Seismic Building. For ten minutes or so, everyone walked quickly up the slope as if they were racing.