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Did Tokyo Electric Power Co. ask government officials to allow allcompany workers to evacuate the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plantat a critical stage of last year s accident, or didn t it? That question must be answered clearly and conclusively. If it isnot answered and the contents of the relevant exchanges between thecompany and officials are not fully uncovered, then theinvestigations into the disaster will have been of dubious benefitand Japan s suitability for operating nuclear power plants in thefuture will be brought into question. A serious nuclear accident is fundamentally different from anyother type of plant incident because those in charge have to make achoice between evacuation and abandoning control over a nuclearplant or continuing work at the facility. That boils down to a choice between radioactive contamination overa vast area and the lives of workers. When a major explosion hit the Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986,officials in charge there were faced with just such a hugedecision. As a result, about 30 firefighters who were called on toextinguish the flames died of acute radiation illness and othercauses. In Japan, the central government and electric power companiespreviously avoided discussion of the issue by hiding behind themyth that such a major accident would never occur here. Last year's accident presented just such a choice to Japaneseofficials. The failure to think about the possibility of a major accident cameback to haunt those in charge and contributed to the failuresimmediately after the accident. If the decision had been made to evacuate all TEPCO workers fromthe Fukushima plant site, a much wider area would have beencontaminated with radiation and an even more difficult situationwould have resulted. More than a year after the accident, the full facts of what reallyhappened in those crucial exchanges have yet to emerge. On May 14, Tsunehisa Katsumata, the TEPCO chairman, was calledbefore the Diet's Fukushima Nuclear Accident IndependentInvestigation Commission. He said: "The president is responsiblefor dealing with the accident and the plant manager is the supremecommander at the site." That means that Masataka Shimizu, the TEPCO president at the timeof the accident, and Masao Yoshida, the then Fukushima plantmanager, hold the key to uncovering the truth. TEPCO should cooperate with Diet requests for witnesses and provideinformation such as the exchanges on its teleconferencing systembetween TEPCO headquarters and the Fukushima plant. The trust of the public will be lost if the central government goesahead with resumption of operations at nuclear plants withoutunveiling the truth and allowing the issue of whether TEPCO plannedto pull out of the Fukushima No. 1 plant to degenerate into anargument over whether or not company executives made such arequest. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Cold Rolled Electrical Steel Manufacturer , Galvanized Steel Profile Manufacturer for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Galvanised Steel Sheet.
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