Читать книгу Meltdown - Yoichi Funabashi - Страница 37

11:00 A.M., MARCH 14. Videoconference.

Naohiro Masuda, site superintendent of Fukushima Daini NPS, spoke.

“Three tsunami alerts have just been given for Hamadori. One-F, can you hear? Three tsunami alerts have just been given for Hamadori. Please be careful.”

Immediately after that, Yoshida’s voice rang out in the TEPCO Head Office operations center. He was yelling.

“Head Office! Head Office!”

“Yes, Head Office here.”

“Head Office! Head Office! It’s bad, it’s really bad! Unit 3. If that is steam, then perhaps we’ve just had an explosion.”

“Yes, emergency contact.”

“It’s 11:01.”

“The same as Unit 1?”

“There was a sideways shaking that was distinctly different from a quake. There haven’t been any aftershocks like there are when there is an earthquake, so I think it’s an explosion like the one in Unit 1.”

Yoshida’s voice was high-pitched. Akio Komori, at the Head Office, spoke.

“Onsite people, evacuate, evacuate!”

Yoshida directed his subordinates in a firm voice.

“Please evacuate and check people’s safety. I want detailed readings and reports on exposure.”³⁸

Among those remaining, Yoshida called on everyone to write their name down on a whiteboard. These recorded names later came to be known as “the Fukushima 50.”³⁹

AFTER ELEVEN A.M. The prime minister’s office.

Kan was holding a meeting with Natsuo Yamaguchi, leader of the Komeito Party, and Tetsuo Saito, the party’s acting secretary-general. Manabu Terada, special adviser to the prime minister, burst into the room.

“It’s an explosion. Turn on NTV. Channel 4, channel 4!”

The television was showing footage of the explosion at Unit 3. Smoke was billowing out. Kan whispered, “It’s black, isn’t it?”

“Judging from the way the smoke is rising, I reckon the pressure vessel had blown.”

With Unit 1, the smoke had been white and went sideways, but this was black smoke rising up. There was a tremendous bang, and explosion preceded momentarily by a flash of orange. Dust and debris were spread far and wide. The dust shot up some five hundred meters in the air.⁴⁰

Edano was in the middle of a press conference at the time. He passed a memo halfway through. He glanced at it.

“As you can see, I have just received a memo and it seems that there has either been an explosion at Unit 3 or there is a fear of explosion. We are currently checking the facts.”

That was the best he could say. Both the reporters and the chief cabinet secretary were asking and answering questions relying only on the footage from NTV.

Kan ordered Terada to “call all the relevant parties.” The key members of NERHQ assembled: Kaieda, Edano, Fukuyama, and Madarame.

Kan asked, “What’s happening?” but no one could reply.

What had exploded in Unit 3? Where was the explosion? What was it? They had none of the crucial information.

After a short time, Maekawa received a call from Sasaki on his mobile.

“It’s on TV.”

Sasaki was telling Maekawa that footage of the Unit 3 explosion was being broadcast. Staff from TEPCO and NISA were watching TV in a large room on the second floor of the Kantei.

Someone said in a hoarse voice, “Oh, it’s all gone.”

The moment Maekawa saw the footage, he thought to himself, Uh oh, this time the containment vessel had it, too.

A terrible thing had happened. And at the same time, he found himself regretting, Damn! We should have done it earlier. He was thinking about the “high-pressure water jet operation.”

Toshiba had even carried out an operational rehearsal, but their turn had not come. The reactor had blown before they could make a formal proposal to TEPCO. Even if their turn had come, however, how much would they have been able to do …?

Even if they had brought the jets in, someone would have had to operate it. And that meant shouldering an enormous risk. Nonetheless, Sasaki did not doubt that if it fell to Toshiba employees, they would be sure to do it.

On hearing that there was a shortage of engineers who excelled in radiation control in 1999 at the time of the JOC accident in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture, Toshiba had loaded several dozens of workers from the Fukushima stations onto a bus and sent them in as support.

Sasaki had often proudly recounted this episode. Was it possible, however, for a single company to take such a risk …?

One of the Toshiba engineers, present onsite to deal with the emergency, later reflected that, even if top management at Toshiba had given the go-ahead, he was doubtful as to whether top management at TEPCO would have been able to do the same.

Takekuro also considered the work onsite to be virtually impossible when he heard Toshiba’s proposal. So much so that he thought, It has to be done remotely or not at all. Perhaps the only way to do it is to blow the roof off with a missile.

Maekawa was seized by a deep sense of regret.

Unit 3 was also my plant, which I cared for. It didn’t belong to us, but we fixed it.

At the time of the Unit 1 explosion, Hosono thought, No way, but at the time of Unit 3, he felt, At last. Voices had called out to each other to prevent a hydrogen explosion at Unit 3 at any cost. For that reason alone, it was devastating.⁴¹

11:30 A.M., MARCH 14. The following exchange took place on the videoconference between TEPCO Head Office and the Fukushima site. It was Takahashi who spoke. Seated next to him was CEO Masataka Shimizu.

“Well, the point is, isn’t it, that we’ve just turned from Unit 1 to Unit 3. And I don’t know if it was a hydrogen explosion or not, but NISA is saying it’s a hydrogen explosion, so I guess that’ll do, won’t it, saying it’s a hydrogen explosion? NISA was just on TV saying it was a hydrogen explosion. I think it’s better if we stay in step with that.”

Somebody made a noise in agreement.

“The Kantei is also already using the term ‘a hydrogen explosion.’ Don’t you think we’d better say the same thing, too?”

Shimizu agreed.

“Yes, fine. That’s okay … Time is of the essence.”

A little later, it was reported that Yuhei Sato, governor of Fukushima Prefecture, had made a request to TEPCO’s Fukushima office.

“He wants us to include in our press release the phrase ‘The wind is blowing in a northwesterly direction, so there is no worry of adverse effects on health.’ ”

Apparently, the governor wanted to reassure the prefecture’s residents that they need not worry, because the wind was northwesterly—that is, it was blowing out to the Pacific Ocean, not inland.

Deciding it was “risky to make an assertion,” TEPCO refused his request.⁴²