- F. Daiichi plant manager during the nuclear accident, Masao Yoshida, has gone public with his view of the early days of crisis. In an interview taped July 10 of last year, Yoshida called the early days of the situation “hellish”. He said the explosions which destroyed the outer walls and roof of three reactor buildings was a surprise and felt “something catastrophic may be happening”. The unit #3 explosion, arguably the most severe of the three, made him feel “I along with my staff might have died in the Seismic-Isolated Building (Emergency Command Center).” As for allegations that Tepco considered complete abandonment of the site, Yoshida stated, “We would never have left the plant. I did not mention withdrawal even once in talks with officials of the head office.” The plant manager also praised the plant workers during those early days, “The staff went to work even though they had reached physical limits due to lack of sleep and insufficient food. The plant has recovered to the current condition thanks to them. The most important task is to stabilize the plant further.” Yoshida said he held back on release of the interview until all official investigative reports on the accident were completed. However, he complained that the plant workers interviewed often did not get their “real voices” entered into the reports. (Yomiuri Shimbun; Mainichi Shimbun)
- More information on IAEA findings at Onagawa NPS. The inspectors told reporters they found no earthquake damage to vital safety equipment, and the harm to non-safety equipment was minimal. Their surprise at the findings was because the 3/11/11 quake was 10% greater than the design criteria for the location. The IAEA findings matched those of a Japanese nuclear agency whose analysis was released earlier this week. IAEA says they will also look at other plants rocked by last year’s huge temblor so they can better understand actual earthquake resiliency. (NHK World) comment – A nuke’s accident-related design criteria sets the minimum specifications that must be met, or exceeded, before the plant can be built. Industry experts have long argued that nuke plants are always built to exceed design criteria to insure the facility will meet all legal requirements for operation. All nukes are necessarily over-built and should survive natural calamities many times worse than the minimum design criteria stipulates.
- The geological cracks found near (or under) five nuclear power stations are not active seismic faults. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) released their expert findings on Friday. The non-seismic conclusions concerned the Kyushu Electric Power Co.’s Sendai plant in Kagoshima Prefecture and Genkai plant in Saga Prefecture; Shikoku Electric Power Co.’s Ikata plant in Ehime Prefecture; Japan Atomic Power Co.’s Tokai No. 2 plant in Ibaraki Prefecture; and Tohoku Electric Power Co.’s Onagawa plant in Miyagi Prefecture. The results covered three criteria; (1) possibly causing a quake immediately under reactor sites, (2) possibly impacted by fault movement near the plant sites, and/or (3) cause ground motion due to a distant earthquake location. All five sites are not susceptible to any of the three possible scenarios. In addition to these five sites, NISA said that the Hamaoka, Mihama, Takahama and Shimane nuclear stations are possibly susceptible to the third criteria, but more analysis needs to be done for both locations. (Yomiuri Shimbun)
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