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Japan nuclear power plant neglected safety measures

“Clearly they were not taking responsibility for the accident initially, and that has now changed,” he said. He added, however, that he still thinks TEPCO is underestimating how difficult it would be to transform.

The reform plans apparently aim to use Fukushima’s lessons at TEPCO’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in northern Japan. The cash-strapped utility wants to restart that plant.

TEPCO was bitterly criticised for allegedly covering up or holding key information about meltdowns and radiation data.

3:52 PM Saturday Dec 15, 2012

The New Zealand Herald

The operator of the disaster-struck Japanese nuclear power plant has acknowledged that the company long neglected safety measures intended to avoid and manage severe accidents while it was obsessed with fixing minor safety problems to improve operational records.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. is struggling to reform itself, and earlier this year launched an internal reform task force, led by company president Naomi Hirose, to find out what caused the disasters and compile improvement plans.

Last year’s powerful earthquake and tsunami caused multiple meltdowns and massive radiation leaks at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. TEPCO continues efforts to keep the plant stable until it’s decommissioned, a process expected to take decades.

The task force said that TEPCO just didn’t think disasters beyond their anticipation would occur, and failed to follow international standards and recommendations that could have mitigated the impact of the accident. The utility could have done more to back up its power and cooling systems, was short on emergency equipment such as fire engines and had treated crisis management drills as a formality, the group said.

At the same time, TEPCO focused on small safety concerns to avoid minor troubles that could have triggered inspections or reactor stoppages, the task force said.

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December 15, 2012 Posted by arclight2011 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment