Internationally Endorsed Man-made Disaster

International Atomic Energy Agency delivered the final report on the accident in First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. It listed up a number of reasons why the accident could not be avoided, most of which were caused by human error. It also urged Japan to take measures against future accident. However, Japanese government and power companies are too enthusiastic in reconstructing nuclear business by persuading safety of nuclear power plant to the people in Japan and the world.

In the preface of the report, IAEA defined that Fukushima accident, brought by great tsunami, had been the worst nuclear accident after Chernobyldisaster in 1986. It also warned that the world needed to remember the effect of Fukushima accident, which caused evacuation of over one hundred thousand residents around the plant most of whom are still in evacuation.

As a major reason of the accident, the report raised a mindset that nuclear generation was safe and there would be no severe accident. Power companies firmly believed in that notion and regulatory organization in the government was not skeptical on it. Lost of all power supply and simultaneous crises in multiple reactors in one plant could not be imagined. No responsible governmental organization did not existed before the accident.

In the investigation in Japan in 2007, IAEA found that there was no legal regulation to consider accident that would exceed architectural standard and required Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency to play a major role for regulation. In spite of that, Tokyo Electric Power Company refused implementing it.

According to the report, TEPCO did not take necessary measures, while they had an assessment that 15 meters high tsunami wave would arrive, if M8.8 level earthquake had happened in offshore Fukushima. The calculation for damage by earthquake and tsunami did not abide by international standard that would assume the bigger earthquake than the biggest ever might happen. The IAEA standard for safety assessment was not applied and the workers were not trained well for disaster management.

No indication of major damage on structure, system or tools for safety was found, which indicated the accident was overwhelmingly the man-made disaster. “In Japan, a mindset, that nuclear power plant was technologically designed to be firm and sufficiently protected, had been reinforced thorough decades,” told the report. That was a main reason of “unpredictable disaster.”

Nuclear power companies are still seeking the profit by resumption of halted plants, while TEPCO cannot control contaminated water leaking to the Pacific Ocean. Japan is ignoring a warning from IAEA again.