Monday, January 2, 2012

Yomiuri: The Government Knew It Would Be 170-Km Radius Forced Evacuation if Fukushima Had Another Explosion

Old news that Yomiuri Shinbun snuck in on December 31, 2011 says it would have been a forced evacuation in the areas within the 170-kilometer radius from the plant if another hydrogen explosion had taken place at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

It was in the report submitted by the Japan Atomic Energy Commission under the Cabinet Office on March 25, 2011. And what did the PM and his ministers do? They sat on it, lest the information might cause panic.

The explosion didn't happen. Is it OK therefore? No. A tiny group of politicians and government experts gambled the lives of people living in the entire Tohoku and Kanto areas in exchange for appearing as if they were in control and the situation was under control. They weren't, and it wasn't'.

But at that time, there was a full-on media campaign to discredit any and everyone in any country who dare reported things were not going well in Japan on the Fukushima accident. The Japanese government particularly attacked the foreign press, alleging the foreigners were spreading "baseless rumors" on the accident.

(Ah, those bad old days, when the first trolls started to appear on my little blog telling me I was lying about the accident and radiation contamination.)

From Yomiuri Shinbun (12/31/2011):

内閣府原子力委員会が今年3月の東京電力福島第一原子力発電所事故の発生直後に、「福島第一原子力発電所の不測事態シナリオの素描」と題した報告書をまとめ、同事故発生から2週間後の3月25日に当時の菅首相に提出していたことが分かった。

It has been revealed that the Japan Atomic Energy Commission under the Cabinet Office compiled a report titled "A rough sketch (outline) of an unforseen accident scenario at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant" right after the accident started in March 2011, and submitted the report on March 25, two weeks after the start of the accident, to the then-prime minister Kan.

 報告書によると、同原発で新たな水素爆発などが起こり最悪の事態に発展した場合には、〈1〉同原発から半径170キロ・メートル圏内で強制移住〈2〉同250キロ・メートル圏内で避難―――の必要があると指摘。170キロ・メートル圏内には南東北や新潟県の一部、北関東の一部が、250キロ・メートル圏内には東京都や埼玉県の大半、横浜市の一部がそれぞれ含まれる。

According to the report, if another explosion, such as hydrogen explosion, happened, the worst-case scenario would require: (1) forcibly moving the residents within the 170-kilometer radius areas; (2) evacuation within the 250-kilometer radius. The 170-kilometer radius would include southern Tohoku, part of Niigata Prefecture and part of northern Kanto. The 250-kilometer radius would include most of Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture, and part of Yokohama City.

 政府は、同報告書を踏まえ、最も核燃料の溶融が懸念された4号機について耐震補強工事を施すなどし、こうした事態は回避された。政府関係者は、「最悪の事態が起きても避難する時間的余裕はあり、パニックを防ぐため報告書は公表しなかった」としている。

Based on the report, the government ordered the anti-seismic reinforcement work in Reactor 4, where a meltdown of the nuclear fuel was most feared, and the worst-case scenario was averted. The government source says, "Even if the worst-case scenario had come to pass, we would have ample time to evacuate people. So, in order to avoid panic among citizens we didn't make the report public."

Looking at the Atomic Energy Commission's website, the report hasn't been disclosed to the public. Probably never will be.

Just like in the full-on global banking and financial crisis that finally hit in 2008 fall, no one with good connection with TPTB has gone to jail over the accident, and probably never will.

The Hayakawa map (version 5) below gives you an idea of the areas that would have had to be evacuated. The faint, outer-most ring is 250 kilometer, and the area includes almost all of Tokyo and Saitama, 3/4 of Chiba, tiny part of Nagano, almost all of Niigata, all of Yamagata and Miyagi, half of Iwate and Akita.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

170-kilometer radius which is currently safe, correct?
John from Fukushima Diary

Anonymous said...

Define "safe".

And tell your site admin to try not to "mistranslate".

Anonymous said...

I don't know, I remember the foreign press were falling over themselves trying to create ever more dire scenarios, and claiming Tokyo had turned into a ghost town, etc... There was a lot of pointless chatter going on. Call it baseless rumors or whatever, the foreign press was dying to paint the tragedy in the most catastrophic way possible, that is, until Elizabeth Taylor died. Then their attention was focused elsewhere.

Atomfritz said...

@ anon 6:17

Yes, it could have come way worse.
Didn't you also fear the possibility of three Chernobyl-style eruptions and the wind turning land towards Tokyo?

Come on, it was a dire, but real looming scenario.
It was "Glueck im Unglueck" that this didn't happen, as the Germans say and decided to exit from nuclear energy.

Anonymous said...

No, I didn't fear three Chernobyl-style eruptions. I knew the construction of the plants would make the render the odds of that happening to be very low. I did fear the spent fuel pools going dry and the fuel catching on fire, and those fears were exacerbated by the likes of Arnie Gundersen. I don't blame him for making that prediction - maybe it was a prudent one at the time. I resent the fact that the foreign media rushed to broadcast his (and others') most terrifying predictions, and then dropped the story once it was clear there would be no Armageddon. I would also point out that Germany will have nuclear fission going on in its energy reactors for another decade. We shall see what the price of oil is in ten years' time, and then we can discuss Germany's energy policy. (I think Germany's course is a wise one, and I'm envious, but a lot can happen in ten years).

Anonymous said...

".. then dropped the story once it was clear there would be no Armageddon. "

Did you mind that TEPCO did not test for nuclides boiling off ? That must be what you meant by "no Armageddon".

kintaman said...

> They weren't, and it wasn't'.

They weren't, it wasn't and STILL isn't.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous at 5:39, I'm sure I don't know what you mean. "Test for nuclides boiling off"?

Just as the pro-nuclear faction is trying to minimize the event, I believe the anti-nuclear establishment is trying just as desperately to maximize the event. If we criticize Tepco for keeping people ignorant, we also must criticize the likes of Arnie when he has made egregious errors. Poor Steveo from Hawaii is now convinced he's taken pictures of broken spent fuel rods, and he's spreading this misinformation around to a gullible public who is looking for spectacle. With this kind of nonsense floating around, we will never get to the truth about this accident and the real dangers of nuclear energy.

Anonymous said...

"I don't know what you mean. "Test for nuclides boiling off"? "

You know, fun stuff like plutonium, uranium, neptunium, ad nauseum.
The really nasty long lived stuff that TEPCO forgot to measure for while admitting later the cores melted down.

Poor Steveo and the guy that thinks #3's SFP has been burning fiercely, great theater. Trumped only by the forgetfulness of TEPCO, and the fact that Arne just won't harp on the fact that there is no way TEPCO did not test much more extensively during core meltdown.

Now it's maximizing .. while inherently minimizing??
Tut, tut.

Tut, tut, and 'the commies' trumped the democracy's response without trying.
Tut, tut.

Anonymous said...

Gundersen's fishing for some fat contract on decommissioning or decon, now that the US government is in.

Anonymous said...

I still don't know what you are talking about. Plutonium was found at F1 within a few weeks of the accident. It was found in minuscule amounts in Lithuania (as reported in this blog). I'm reasonably certain I'm not going to die of plutonium ingestion, or uranium ingestion, or neptunium ingestion, but your mileage may vary. I don't find Tepco's "theater" to be any more amusing than the theater of those who claim Fukushima has made the earth uninhabitable.

Anonymous said...

"I still don't know what you are talking about. Plutonium was found .."

You forgot to add an '/bagging' at the end of your comment.

Let's do cesium, Hawaii was one of the first to note it in the milk, and Idaho w/potato growing. Has it disappeared ?

[do not forget the '/bagging' when you reply !]

Anonymous said...

In addition to not knowing what your cryptic and apparently pointlessly argumentative posts are complaining about, I no longer even care. We all know that Tepco was downplaying the dangers, but the radiation levels that they have been reporting can be checked against the radiation levels that private citizens and volunteer groups have been reporting. If you are worried about cesium levels in Idaho, then God bless you.

Anonymous said...

@anon at 1:21PM, since you say you don't care any more, why don't you just tune out of here instead of insulting the site admin? There are many sites with screaming simplistic headlines, or more sites that tells you everything is dandy.

Anonymous said...

"If you are worried about cesium levels in Idaho, then God bless you. "

I seem to recall Idaho Falls getting the highest doses in the contiguous, but what the fuck, if 1:21 says it don't matter if the cesium gamma rages on and will for 30-300 years, it freak-foukin' don't, right ?!

:)

Anonymous said...

Anon at 2:56, the poster at 1:21 hasn't insulted the site admin at all. What makes you think he's trying to insult Primavera? He's said what he wanted to say, and some guy is baiting him with ridiculous comments. You may not agree with him, but he hasn't insulted or even mentioned Primavera.

Anonymous said...

Actually, 5:46, for Idaho Falls to have received the highest counts in the lower states and no mention anywhere for food grown in that state, along with cesium in Hawaiian milk very early on, they just aren't ridiculous comments.

Fronting of TEPCO-type forgetfulness with a supposed veneer of politeness and supposed lack of "baiting", CAN YOU, at this point, guess who is ridiculous ?

Your red crayons are being withheld by the Koch Bros. What are you going to do about it ?

Anonymous said...

And yes, 5:46, I have divined that you are the messenger, and your message is that Charles Koch has a special fondness for aquamarine crayons .. in addition to the red.

Note how the cadence matches yours.

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