Close TEPCO Down

Ruler of water rules the nation. That is an old saying in Heian era (A.D.794-1192) in Japan, when frequent flood of rivers had been a great threat to the society. Tokyo Electric Power Company could not do that.

TEPCO on Tuesday confirmed three hundred metric tons of leakage of radioactively contaminated water used for cooling broken reactors in First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant from a tank established alongside of the site. Following the failure of stopping underground water flowing out to the Pacific Ocean, TEPCO exposed its incompetence in controlling the contaminated water. This is the time for the government of Japan to take over the administration in the plant and close TEPCO down as a corporation.

According to TEPCO, the contaminated water has been leaking out at least for a month and still keep on doing that. The point of leaking is not determined. It is supposed that water comes out from a seam of one of thousand tanks, which had been built for temporary use without welding in joints. No appropriate measure has been done. It is possible the same thing happens, because other tanks are made in the same way. Nobody believes TEPCO’s words that the water has not leaked to the sea.

Tokyo Shimbun reported that the government considered raising International Nuclear Event Scale from 1 (anomaly) to 2 (incident). It is unclear why Nuclear Regulation Authority decided to raise the level this time, despite other major incidents had been reported in the past. The newspaper introduced the view of Masaru Kaneko, Professor of Keio University, who asserted the need of putting TEPCO under bankruptcy. “It has been obvious that the recovery process would be broken up. This is a simple result that politicians and bureaucrats postponed the final solution, trying to avoid responsibility on their own,” said Kaneko.

The incident is causing greater international concern. Reuters introduced the words of a spokesman of South Korean Foreign Ministry. “They also need to make the information available to the public, all over the world, given this is the first case in history where contaminated water from a nuclear plant is flowing into the ocean at this magnitude,” he said. This spokesman is right when he took this issue in a historical context.

Bankruptcy of TEPCO was considered in the past. The reason why it had not been applied was unbelievably simple: because the impact of TEPCO stockholders were too big. Remind this is about life of residents, environment, international reputation of this country, and fundamental basis of this nation. As long as taking this issue from the viewpoint of balance sheet of income and spending, there will be no answer found.