Fukushima Engineer Says He Covered Up Flaw at Shut Reactor

[bananas]

Source: Bloomberg

One of the reactors in the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant may have been relying on flawed steel to hold the radiation in its core, according to an engineer who helped build its containment vessel four decades ago.

Mitsuhiko Tanaka says he helped conceal a manufacturing defect in the $250 million steel vessel installed at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 4 reactor while working for a unit of Hitachi Ltd. (6501) in 1974. The reactor, which Tanaka has called a “time bomb,” was shut for maintenance when the March 11 earthquake triggered a 7-meter (23-foot) tsunami that disabled cooling systems at the plant, leading to explosions and radiation leaks.

“Who knows what would have happened if that reactor had been running?” Tanaka, who turned his back on the nuclear industry after the Chernobyl disaster, said in an interview last week. “I have no idea if it could withstand an earthquake like this. It’s got a faulty reactor inside.”

Tanaka’s allegations, which he says he brought to the attention of Japan’s Trade Ministry in 1988 and chronicled in a book two years later called “Why Nuclear Power is Dangerous,” have resurfaced after Japan’s worst nuclear accident on record. The No. 4 reactor was hit by explosions and a fire that spread from adjacent units as the crisis deepened.

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Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-23/fukushima-engineer-says-he-covered-up-flaw-at-shut-reactor.html

[Citizen Worker]

1. Just when we think it couldn't possibly get any worse, it does. What will the next revelation be?

It's about the money. It has always been about the money and it will always be about the money. People are simply expendable resources.

[FiveGoodMen]

17. Socialism is the only answer to that one

When no one CAN accumulate that much money, it'll have to be about something else.

[readmoreoften]

21. +1

[JJW]

2. When a disaster is paid by the tax payer

it is obvious the industry is a fraud.

[LiberalEsto]

5. They're all for privatization and deregulation, except

when it comes to cleaning up the resulting mess. That becomes OUR problem.

[nenagh]

14. I so agree with you...

and you stated it so well..

[WatsonT]

12. I don't know about Japan

but here they have a 10 billion dollar insurance plan paid for by the nuclear plants themselves in case something like this occurs.

[cui bono]

24. Can you please provide a source/link for this info?

All I've ever heard (from Thom Hartmann for one) is that there is no private insurance available to cover nuclear power insurance and the only way it exists is through tax payer dollars, subsidies etc...

When I google my brain goes buggy as I have not gotten anything that is simple to understand. I saw something about a government pool insurance...

Would like to get to the bottom of this with clear info.

[WatsonT]

27. Sure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price-Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act

[cui bono]

29. Can you point out where it shows that the coverage is actually paid by the plants owners?

Here is what I see...

Power reactor licensees are required by the act to obtain the maximum amount of insurance against nuclear related incidents which is available in the insurance market (as of 2011, $375 million per plant). Any monetary claims that fall within this maximum amount are paid by the insurer(s). The Price-Anderson fund, which is financed by the reactor companies themselves, is then used to make up the difference. Each reactor company is obliged to contribute up to $111.9 million per reactor in the event of an accident with claims that exceed the $375 million insurance limit. As of 2011, the maximum amount of the fund is approximately $12.22 billion ($111.9m X 104 reactors) if all of the reactor companies were required to pay their full obligation to the fund. This fund is not paid into unless an accident occurs. However, fund administrators are required to have contingency plans in place to raise funds using loans to the fund, so that claimants may be paid as soon as possible. Actual payments by companies in the event of an accident are capped at $17.5 million per year until either a claim has been met, or their maximum individual liability (the $111.9 million maximum) has been reached.

Who are the "licensees"? When I license software for my use, I am the licensee, not the software owner/manufacturer. So it seems that the government is the licensee. In which case the government is taking out the insurance.

Reactor companies don't pay until claims exceed the $375mn insurance limit, insurance that it seems is paid for by taxpayers.

And the reactor companies don't have to pay into the Price-Anderson fund until an accident occurs and even then, only $17.5mn/year. That's not going to cover a catastrophe.

So I do not think your statement is correct.



Also stated later in the criticisms:

The free government-granted insurance given to for-profit nuclear plant operators in the Price-Anderson Act....

And:

Price-Anderson has been criticized by many of these groups due to a portion of the Act that indemnifies Department of Energy and private contractors from nuclear incidents even in cases of gross negligence and willful misconduct (although criminal penalties would still apply). "No other government agency provides this level of taxpayer indemnification to non-government personnel".

[cui bono]

30. Hmmm....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4791966&mesg_id=4791966

[no_hypocrisy]

3. I'm not surprised at all.

Three decades ago, I dated a man who worked at a nuclear plant. He told me about defective parts, etc. were installed. They of course shouldn't have been, but money was paid and nothing said thereafter. And this was done regularly.

[JohnyCanuck]

4. Who could have guessed.......

Homer Simpson, Mr. Burns, Lenny and Karl and the rest of the dolts running the Springfield nuclear plant should be thought of as a reality show, not a cartoon.

I remember reading once that the nuclear industry was really ticked off at the Simpsons because they thought it unfairly portrayed the nuclear industry and made it an object of ridicule, but investigative journalist Greg Palast said when he worked as a government investigator investigating wrongdoing in the nuclear industry he also found multiple examples of malfeasance on the part of operators at nuclear plants. See this Greg Palast interview with Tom Hartmann: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j_wwkyvLb30 .

[reformist2]

6. Human error and dishonesty - something the scientists never consider.

It always amazes me how much we listen to scientists when they tell us how low the risks are - in theory. They never consider the human factor.

[JohnyCanuck]

8. "They never consider the human factor."

Certainly not when their paycheck depends on them ignoring or discounting it.

[LiberalFighter]

9. One more factor. MONEY

If it will cost them money to fix something. They will hide it. Because they will have less profit.

[Hubert Flottz]

7. K&R

[Marblehead]

10. there was a movie

made about just this kind of thing, it was a warning to us all. When there is this kind of money involved you can't trust the players.

[FailureToCommunicate]

11. Ask the guy on the left about flawed steel...

...Bad welds

(What was even more frightening to many at the time of this movie -"The China Syndrome" was released just awhile BEFORE the accident at Three Mile Island - was not the accident at the nuclear plant, but the ending of the movie where the owners were deftly able to make the whistleblower out to be a nut case and flip the story in the media coverage: 'Nothing to see here, just a disgruntled, unstable employee' )

?v=0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PJ-BzXAN1c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLPAigMuBk0&feature=related

[WatsonT]

13. So corruption and ineptitude is the problem

rather than the energy source itself.

[daleo]

20. Simple solution

Abolish all corruption and ineptitude. While we are at it, let's abolish greed and stupidity too.

And spelilng mistakes.

[WatsonT]

23. You're right, we'll never get rid of either of those things entirely

so let's ban anything that they might interfere with.

I guess we can sit around quietly and starve to death and be relatively safe from either of them.

[daleo]

25. No, let's be selective

Carefully weigh the pros and cons, remembering the results of incompetence and corruption vary greatly, from the minor inconvenience of a collapsed windmill to the tremendous loss of life and money intrinsic to a nuclear disaster.

[WatsonT]

26. Be sure to include in that assesment

the cost per kilowatt differences, the amount of land use, various requirements on where they can be located, ability to adapt to daily and seasonal fluctuations in energy use, and of course their ability to actually supply us with steady power.

Safety isn't the only factor. No windmills or any other kind of power production would be the safest.

And in terms of historic death toll directly attributable to it's use dams should be banned outright. Those things are death traps.

[daleo]

28. The cost of nuclear power in Japan is bound to go up astronomically

Once the costs of the melted down reactors, immediate cleanup costs, the deaths and disability from radiation and cancer, the birth defects, the contaminated land, the contaminated food, the contaminated water, the security costs of guarding dangerous material, and sundry other costs are factored in.

I agree that full cost accounting is needed for all decisions about energy. Money can't be the only factor to consider, though clearly it is important.

[felix_numinous]

15. In a culture when few people

take responsibility for anything, I am in awe of the people in Japan who admit their mistakes in public. Can you imagine anyone doing that here, how many course corrections we could make?

No matter what, that took character for this man to admit he concealed a defect at a time like this.

[subterranean]

16. To his credit, he says he told the authorities about the problem before.

But the company denied anything was wrong, so nothing was done.

[Aerows]

18. That's not good

I hope we don't have any "secret" problems at our nuclear plants.

[Melissa G]

19. Count on it. n/t

[defendandprotect]

22. Sad -- but good of him to have told the truth. Imagine something like that on your conscience -- !!