Sunday, August 5, 2012

(UPDATED WITH EMBEDDED VIDEOS) TEPCO's Video of Teleconferencing in the Early Days of the #Fukushima Accident in March 2011


(UPDATE) From Sankei Shinbun's Youtube channel, when Reactor 3 exploded:


When they were trying to operate SR valve in Reactor 2 to reduce pressure:


==========================================

Live now at Nico Nico Video, but it is set to be over in less than 10 minutes...

Link is here: http://live.nicovideo.jp/watch/lv102784801?ref=top&zroute=index

Screen shot:


I'm watching it, but there is no sound. Comments from people who have been watching this (2 hours 30 minutes into the video) are interesting. Some examples:

I now think better of Dr. Madarame. In the video, he was not what I thought he was.

TEPCO HQ is so incompetent.


There was a clip right now with sound:

"1F (Fukushima I), there is a tsunami warning in Hamadori right now, 3 meter high they say. Please pay attention and be careful."


That must have been from the afternoon of March 11, 2011... (CORRECTION: It was on March 14, 2011, after one of the aftershocks that happened between 10AM and 11AM. From Japan Meteorological Agency data, 3/14/2011.)

TEPCO should just disclose everything, with sound. Even NHK says so.

Here's the link to Nikkei Shinbun's article, which has a video when Reactor 3 blew up:
http://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXNASDG0401X_W2A800C1000000/?dg=1

It was more like Plant Manager Yoshida was calling "mayday, mayday" when Reactor 3 blew up. The people at TEPCO HQ didn't seem to comprehend what Yoshida was saying for several seconds, and started to respond as if Yoshida had just said he was going out to lunch.

They started to say "hai", "hai" - OK, yes -, then "Uh... so it's the same as Reactor 1? OK it's an emergency. I will issue emergency communication then..."

In the background at Fukushima I Nuke Plant, you can hear frantic workers scrambling to figure out what happened and what to do.

13 comments:

Apolline said...

Woke up too late !

And it is difficult to know where to click :-)

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

For Nikkei's article, scroll down in the article, there are two screen captures from the video. Click on the left one (Yoshida's mayday call), then a video player will pop up, and the video will start.

Anonymous said...

About this:

>"1F (Fukushima I), there is a tsunami warning in Hamadori right now, 3 meter high they say. Please pay attention and be careful."

This is not from March 11, this is the fake tsunami warning issued almost simultaneously to the explosion at No 3. The guys from JMA had to give a press conference to deny that there was any tsunami warning at all.

I presume that the fake tsunami warning was an attempt to hide the explosion at number 3, since almost all TV channels started calling for evacuation in the coastal areas at that point. Nippon TV broadcast the explosion almost live, however, so finally they couldn't do it.

Moulin said...

That would be awesome for the anti-nuclear movement to have it subtitled in English and other languages ... so show how it looks like when one of those little toys get out of control, and to show how specialists of the field are shitting in their pants when this happen.

A great informational moment !

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

@anon 2:37AM, the text is corrected. But I don't think it was a "fake" announcement to hide the explosion. Warning was before the explosion, and it was after one of the strong aftershocks.

Anonymous said...

@laprimavera, someone from JMA had to give a press conference to deny the existence of a tsunami warning. They are the ones in charge of issuing tsunami warnings, so you tell me. I remember announcers on TV (in all the channels but Nippon TV) commenting on how it seemed to be one of those "tsunami without earthquake" which are rare but not unheard of, blah, blah.

Anyway, check the earthquake database, there was a M:4.5 off the coast of Ibaraki around 11:15, but that's nothing when we were having 5s and 6s every day: http://www.seisvol.kishou.go.jp/cgi-bin/shindo_db.cgi?pref=0&START_DATE=%8E%C0%8Ds

Anonymous said...

They issue tsunami warnings as a matter of fact at every earthquake, and they cancel it when there is no tsunami. Anon, you're reading too much into it.

It was "5-weak" earthquake on the Japan's seismic intensity scale.

Florian said...

Can someone add subtitles ?

Anonymous said...

@anon 4:27:

The "5-weak" earthquake was more than one hour before the explosion at No. 3, at 10:02am to be exact. And they don't issue a tsunami warnings after each earthquake or we would have tsunami warnings every day.

And I'm not reading too much into it. I saw it happening live. How Nippon TV was the only one to show the explosion, how they suddenly cut mid-sentence while people was running amok in their Fukushima studios to go to commercials (those awful AC messages, sayonara lion, etc.) and how they restarted their broadcast with one guy off camera giving the announcer a paper to read.

Anonymous said...

(Cont.)

It's difficult to find comments on this, even in articles written by people critical of the media treatment of the nuclear disaster, but in comments to blog articles and things like that you can see people talking about it. One example is comment No. 28 on this blog article:

"3号機が爆発した瞬間、各局が一斉にありもしない巨大津波が接近中と警報を出して
爆発から国民の気を反らせようとした事実こそ追求するべきだ。
だけどあの大問題を追求した言論は、テレビにも論壇にもただの一つもない。"
http://www.asyura2.com/12/genpatu23/msg/857.html

"When Reactor No. 3 exploded, all channels at once started warning about an imaginary tsunami which was approaching.
The fact that they tried to divert the attention of the population from the explosion must be examined.
However, there is no discussion about this big problem or any debate on TV about it."

Sorry for the clumsy translation.

Anonymous said...

Anon above, how would that advance our understanding of what happened? That person claims tsunami warning was issued to divert attention from the explosion. For what? From other news, blogs, and comments, many people were aware of both explosion of Unit 3 and the tsunami warning.

After having observed this disaster for the past 17 months, I've come to the conclusion that both TEPCO and the Japanese government are totally incompetent to come up with a plot, any plot. You are giving too much credit to their ability which doesn't exist.

Anonymous said...

Anon, it does not advance our understanding of the accident, since only closer inspections of the reactors years and decades from now would do that, but it did happen.

I just think the Government, not Tepco, tried to pull off a textbook example of information control, specially on the transition from weekend (March 12-13) to Monday (March 14), but it backfired because we are not in the 80s and people have the internet to share information. Just an example of elite panic, I guess. It's shocking that nobody is talking about it, though, specially for me because I saw it happening in front of my eyes.

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't be surprised a bit if JMA was so incompetent that it thought a tsunami was coming when it was not. This was the agency who initially said it was a Magnitude 7.9 earthquake when the big one happened on March 11. All it was that their equipment went overscale at 7.9.

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