Fukushima Fukushima Management and Government Performance

[swl]

Is there anything he could've done after the earthquake and tsunami to save his reactors? I don't think so. They were doomed because of construction flaws.
They could either make it worse or delay the inevitable. It looks as if he's done the latter.

He made the situation far worse with his failure to ventilate the reactors before they were damaged by overpressure. Had containment and mechanical systems been spared the damage caused by explosions, then the cooling and contamination issues they are dealing with now would be much more manageable.

And as plant manager, he should have understood the steps required to maintain control over system pressure. Unless I've missed something, his failure to do so must be attributed to willful negligence, or negligence due to incompetence.

 

[swl]

And the TEPCO president requesting permission to evacuate all TEPCO personal from the plant due to radiation danger; now that was priceless. This same team of fearful nuclear experts will be soon waving the "nuclear power is safe" banners in an effort to get more projects going.

 

[NUCENG]

And the TEPCO president requesting permission to evacuate all TEPCO personal from the plant due to radiation danger; now that was priceless. This same team of fearful nuclear experts will be soon waving the "nuclear power is safe" banners in an effort to get more projects going.

Perhaps, but what credibility will they have? Are we so short of things to worry about that we have to worry about what MIGHT happen for future construction? The United States learned many of these lessons in 1979. Russia learned these lessons in 1986. In 2011 Japan is faced with these same lessons about credibility and trust. Or do you think you are the only one that sees it yet?

 

[NUCENG]

He made the situation far worse with his failure to ventilate the reactors before they were damaged by overpressure. Had containment and mechanical systems been spared the damage caused by explosions, then the cooling and contamination issues they are dealing with now would be much more manageable.

And as plant manager, he should have understood the steps required to maintain control over system pressure. Unless I've missed something, his failure to do so must be attributed to willful negligence, or negligence due to incompetence.

Skip the trial. Off with his head!

I also wish they had vented earlier. But I cannot say for certain that would have done more than delay what happened. Neither you nor I have enough information to conclude the plant staff did anything that we wouldn't have also done given their procedures,, training, and information that was available at the time.

Let's put the thumbscrews and irons back into the box for a while and be fair, okay

 

[Calvadosser]

He made the situation far worse with his failure to ventilate the reactors before they were damaged by overpressure. Had containment and mechanical systems been spared the damage caused by explosions, then the cooling and contamination issues they are dealing with now would be much more manageable.

And as plant manager, he should have understood the steps required to maintain control over system pressure. Unless I've missed something, his failure to do so must be attributed to willful negligence, or negligence due to incompetence.

Or to contradictory instructions from his superiors.

My recollection was that the TEPCO top management could not bring themselves to order the depressurisation of the reactors (?). In the end the prime minister's office gave them a direct instruction to depressurise. Even then, TEPCO spent hours in discussion amongst themselves before finally ordering depressurisation. Shortly after, the first of the explosions occurred.

My limited understanding is that depressurisation is one of the very first (and urgent) steps in the guidelines for managing a severe reactor accident. But at that stage, TEPCO top management seemed (to me) to be in denial that a serious accident had already occurred - there was even talk about how injecting seawater was not a good idea because it would render the reactors unusable in the future. Yet, by then, the reactors were already damaged beyond repair.

 

[swl]

Skip the trial. Off with his head!

I also wish they had vented earlier. But I cannot say for certain that would have done more than delay what happened. Neither you nor I have enough information to conclude the plant staff did anything...

And I'm sure you see the irony of withholding judgement as a result of TEPCO's determination to hide the evidence from us.

I will reiterate that the plant manager should have an intimate understanding of how the plant operates, along with a legal and moral obligation to execute operation in the safest manner possible. Whether or not he coluded with upper management is only an opportunity for increased culpability.

But, as you pointed, he should be given due process and be presumed innocent until he can be convicted.

 

[MikeIt]

I am not going to criticize Mr. Yoshida because I was not there to see what he was faced with. Neither will I call him a hero for the same reasons. Mr. Sugaoka the "whistle blower" is also being called a hero, and I'm not sure about that because of the time lapse between when he was aware of the cover up of the shroud cracks to when he went public. The press is always looking for heroes and demons. Most people are neither.

However, if Mr. Yoshida was going to disobey orders, I wish it would have been venting the containments earlier - before they reached pressures that could have released hydrogen gases through leaks into the buildings. Had he been able to keep containment and the buildings from catastrophic failure, they would be dealining with a much more localized disaster and fewer exposures to the public.

Right on, NUCENG. Japan has admittedly stated they assessed severe accident management studies from other nations in the early 1990s, U.S. BWRs included, and thought they took the best guidance combined with their own studies. My observation is their emergency operating procedure and severe accident guideline strategies based (on the meager reporting of information) do not align with U.S. EOPs/SAGs. Of particular note, is the timing of the decision to vent the PC which, if done early in the event while the PC atmosphere was relatively clean, could have minimized radioactivity release offsite and potentially preserved the PC to be a...containment after fuel damage occurred. This is speculation on my part but I cannot imagine any plant manager or licensed operator who did not know where this accident was going as soon as AC power was lost. The only hope was for a fortuitous change of events (like heloing in many portable generators to restore some AC to charge batteries, etc.) Lacking such luck, I suspect most plant operators understood the serious need to preserve PC by venting.

So, why did not early venting occur? Obviously, the operators had to work in terrible conditions. But, venting has the likelihood of releasing radioactivity in excess of allowed limits. Unlike in the U.S., authority to do so in Japan requires authorization and concurrence from higher management beyond the site. This adversely affected the timeliness of the vent action.

 

[NUCENG]

Right on, NUCENG. Japan has admittedly stated they assessed severe accident management studies from other nations in the early 1990s, U.S. BWRs included, and thought they took the best guidance combined with their own studies. My observation is their emergency operating procedure and severe accident guideline strategies based (on the meager reporting of information) do not align with U.S. EOPs/SAGs. Of particular note, is the timing of the decision to vent the PC which, if done early in the event while the PC atmosphere was relatively clean, could have minimized radioactivity release offsite and potentially preserved the PC to be a...containment after fuel damage occurred. This is speculation on my part but I cannot imagine any plant manager or licensed operator who did not know where this accident was going as soon as AC power was lost. The only hope was for a fortuitous change of events (like heloing in many portable generators to restore some AC to charge batteries, etc.) Lacking such luck, I suspect most plant operators understood the serious need to preserve PC by venting.

So, why did not early venting occur? Obviously, the operators had to work in terrible conditions. But, venting has the likelihood of releasing radioactivity in excess of allowed limits. Unlike in the U.S., authority to do so in Japan requires authorization and concurrence from higher management beyond the site. This adversely affected the timeliness of the vent action.

Information I have seen says that Containment Venting by procedure is not initiated until twice design pressure for containment PSUBa. Further it requires operators to tell management and management to get government approval. That approval delayed venting at least in unit 1 until the pressure was well over double the limit. In addition there may have been problems with remote actuation due to battery depletion. In one case valves were operated manually and in another the apparently had to use drywell venting because they couldn't operate the wetwell vent valves. I am still working through the NISA report to IAEA and hope I may find additional details. WHY? For a short word that is a big question.

 

[joewein]

I have half a mind to buy a plane ticket to Tokyo and start picketing TEPCO headquarters with a sign saying "release contamination data" on one side and something really insulting about their mothers on the other. That's how angry I am. I know it's not even my country, but...

My favourite was this protester at an event in Tokyo in April:

[PLAIN]http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/1889/asaharatoden.png

The poster reads: "Mukashi Asahara, ima Touden", in English:

Then it was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoko_Asahara"
now it is TEPCO

 

[zapperzero]

My favourite was this protester at an event in Tokyo in April:

[PLAIN]http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/1889/asaharatoden.png

The poster reads: "Mukashi Asahara, ima Touden", in English:

He's also found a partial solution to the "social pressure to conform" problem - the mask anonymizes him pretty effectively.

 

[Astronuc]

New report shows early chaos at Japan nuke plant
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110619/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_earthquake

TOKYO – A new report says Japan's tsunami-ravaged nuclear plant was so unprepared for the disaster that workers had to bring protective gear and an emergency manual from distant buildings and borrow equipment from a contractor.

The report, released Saturday by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., is based on interviews of workers and plant data. It portrays chaos amid the desperate and ultimately unsuccessful battle to protect the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant from meltdown, and shows that workers struggled with unfamiliar equipment and fear of radiation exposure.

. . . .

 

[etudiant]

The lack of preparation and clarity of thought within the Japanese government is equally striking.
When the disaster hit, there was no clarity as to who was in charge, the government or TEPCO. That ambiguity persists to this day, even though TEPCO is clearly entirely unable to bear the financial and technical burdens of the accident.
For example, the government on the one hand points the people who have been displaced from their homes towards TEPCO for compensation, thereby minimizing any payout, as TEPCO has nothing like enough resources. Simultaneously the Industry Minister Mr Kaieda wants people to believe that the other nuclear plants are safe and that people should vote to allow them to reopen. Given that people see the reality of disastrous loss without fair compensation, why would they agree?
So a logical policy would have recognized that this disasters victims should be treated generously, because everybody near a nuclear plant could envisage the same happening to them. Instead, the penny wise policy pursued risks sealing the fate of the Japanese nuclear industry.

 

[zapperzero]

The lack of preparation and clarity of thought within the Japanese government is equally striking.
When the disaster hit, there was no clarity as to who was in charge, the government or TEPCO. That ambiguity persists to this day, even though TEPCO is clearly entirely unable to bear the financial and technical burdens of the accident.
For example, the government on the one hand points the people who have been displaced from their homes towards TEPCO for compensation, thereby minimizing any payout, as TEPCO has nothing like enough resources. Simultaneously the Industry Minister Mr Kaieda wants people to believe that the other nuclear plants are safe and that people should vote to allow them to reopen. Given that people see the reality of disastrous loss without fair compensation, why would they agree?
So a logical policy would have recognized that this disasters victims should be treated generously, because everybody near a nuclear plant could envisage the same happening to them. Instead, the penny wise policy pursued risks sealing the fate of the Japanese nuclear industry.

It's double bind. The gov't can't take responsibility, because it would then be blamed for every earless rabbit, forever. So it prefers to wash its hands in public, let TEPCO take the fall then maybe resurrect it through public receivership or some stupid deal like that. But TEPCO must fail, and fail hard, first. They are the sacrificial goat.

The rest of the Japanese nuclear plant operators may get in economic trouble too? So electricity will be somewhat more expensive in Japan? So what? How does that affect the chances of the current governing party to remain in power?

 

[NUCENG]

It's double bind. The gov't can't take responsibility, because it would then be blamed for every earless rabbit, forever. So it prefers to wash its hands in public, let TEPCO take the fall then maybe resurrect it through public receivership or some stupid deal like that. But TEPCO must fail, and fail hard, first. They are the sacrificial goat.

The rest of the Japanese nuclear plant operators may get in economic trouble too? So electricity will be somewhat more expensive in Japan? So what? How does that affect the chances of the current governing party to remain in power?

Interesting speculation. So pull out the crystal balls. Based on what we know about TEPCO Mangement and Government Performance take a stab at predicting the furure:

1. Will the government fall? Within 6 months? Or Longer than 6 months?
   
2. Will Japan vote to phase out nuclear power?
   
3. Will Nuclear Power plants in Japan be ordered to be shutdown without a phaseout?
   
4. Will TEPCO default on compensation Claims?
   
5. Will other Nuclear Utilities bail out TEPCO?
   
6. Will TEPCO be nationalized with the Government taking over compensation?

1. Yes within 6 months
2. Maybe, but I don't believe it will happen.
3. No
4. Yes
5. Yes
6. No

 

[etudiant]

Interesting speculation. So pull out the crystal balls. Based on what we know about TEPCO Mangement and Government Performance take a stab at predicting the furure:

1. Will the government fall? Within 6 months? Or Longer than 6 months?
   
2. Will Japan vote to phase out nuclear power?
   
3. Will Nuclear Power plants in Japan be ordered to be shutdown without a phaseout?
   
4. Will TEPCO default on compensation Claims?
   
5. Will other Nuclear Utilities bail out TEPCO?
   
6. Will TEPCO be nationalized with the Government taking over compensation?

1. Yes within 6 months
2. Maybe, but I don't believe it will happen.
3. No
4. Yes
5. Yes
6. No

Seems too cute by half.
Kan is going, but will not say when because he is dead the moment he gives a date.
The government looks safe though, because the opposition is even more in disarray.
Likewise, a vote to shut down or phase out nuclear power seems quite un Japanese. However, refusing approval for restarting shut down plants is already a fact. Industry will have to make serious concessions to win back the local governments approval.
A TEPCO default is quite unlikely, imho, simply because the firm is so closely intertwined with the balance of Japan Inc. It would be Lehman on an industrial scale. Instead, there will be both government as well as industry support, because everyone knows that all are in the same boat.
My $0.02.

 

[zapperzero]

Interesting speculation. So pull out the crystal balls. Based on what we know about TEPCO Mangement and Government Performance take a stab at predicting the furure:

1. Will the government fall? Within 6 months? Or Longer than 6 months?
   
2. Will Japan vote to phase out nuclear power?
   
3. Will Nuclear Power plants in Japan be ordered to be shutdown without a phaseout?
   
4. Will TEPCO default on compensation Claims?
   
5. Will other Nuclear Utilities bail out TEPCO?
   
6. Will TEPCO be nationalized with the Government taking over compensation?

1. Kan will go the minute the accident phase at Fukushima is over. His party stays in power.
2. No. Japan will do the Japanese thing and set so many conditions that it will be politically impossible to restart some/most reactors. No new builds in the next twenty years either.
3. No.
4. Yes.
5. Yes, in the sense that they will be paying "solidarity money" to the gov't.
6. Those are two questions to which I reply:

6.1 Yes (but it will be catch-and-release, it will get a cash injection (the aforementioned solidarity funds) and be sent back into private ownership, perhaps via an IPO after some nasty investor compensation scheme, dimes to the dollar etc etc).

6.2 No, the Government will NOT compensate anyone. The way they see it, it's not the Government's fault, so why take the blame and make the amends? Money will be given, but only via TEPCO.

When I say "some reactors" I am thinking especially about Monju. What if they fail a second time at removing the fueling machine? The first time around, the plant manager committed suicide (or so I heard). This time, the central gov't will cut and run. They don't need another Fukushima PR disaster on their hands.

 

[SteveElbows]

IAEA Director Generals speech to the ministerial conference is here:

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/statements/2011/amsp2011n013.html

The random checking of nuclear plants is a good idea.

 

[etudiant]

IAEA Director Generals speech to the ministerial conference is here:

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/statements/2011/amsp2011n013.html

The random checking of nuclear plants is a good idea.

My guess is that a random check at Fukushima would have passed the site with flying colors.

Random checks are useful to ensure ongoing adherence to standards, but do not help if the standards are inadequate. I had hoped for greater insight from the IAEA.

 

[joewein]

1. Will the government fall? Within 6 months? Or Longer than 6 months?
   
2. Will Japan vote to phase out nuclear power?
   
3. Will Nuclear Power plants in Japan be ordered to be shutdown without a phaseout?
   
4. Will TEPCO default on compensation Claims?
   
5. Will other Nuclear Utilities bail out TEPCO?
   
6. Will TEPCO be nationalized with the Government taking over compensation?

1. Yes and No. There will be a grand coalition within 6 months. "It is the Democratic Party, Jim, but not as we know it."
2. No. The Japanese voters would, but not yet their elected politicians. It might take another serious accident before that changes.
3. No. It will be more like a game of attrition on existing sites that are refused new units, or won't be allowed to restart after accidents.
4. Effectively yes. I have not actually heard any clear terms what they've promised, other than some deals with farmers' representatives. Whoever expects to be fully compensated will have a rude awakening.
5. They will help, but ultimately the public will bail out TEPCO, through raised electricity prices and new government bonds to make sure TEPCO does OK, whatever happens.
6. TEPCO's shareholders will not be wiped out. They are too politically well connected. Even if the government were to become a shareholder for a while, it will do so only to inject enough borrowed cash to nurture TEPCO back to health. TEPCO going under is not like the Lehman Brothers crash, it would be like Goldman Sachs failing. The system is too corrupt to let that happen.

The bureaucrats have never forgiven Kan for how he embarrassed them as Minister of Health, when he forced them to come clear about the HIV blood product scandal. The bureaucrats want someone who will do their bidding, rather than who mistrusts them. As Prime Minister he is now being made to pay for the sins of previous administrations, who left the "nuclear village" to regulating itself. Kan is now talking about breaking up the power monopolies and switching to renewables on a a large scale. I don't see the DPJ push hard for that after they drop him. It's open season on Kan now. We'll probably see one short administration with the LDP as junior partner, then new elections and them back in the driver's seat again.

Hardly anyone has been talking about onshore or offshore wind so far, even though wind power is much closer to competing with coal on a cost basis than any other renewable energy source. The power monopolies don't want to be forced to buy power from independent power investor who could challenge their supply monopolies.

Japan's public policies are controlled by ministerial bureaucracies far more than by politicians and it doesn't have a Green Party. These bureaucracies are a formidable enemy: Look no further than the Monju FBR, which after a major accident and over 15 years of de-factor shutdown and reported idling costs of hundreds of millions of dollars per year still has not been killed off yet, or the nuclear waste factory in Rokkasho that cost $25 billion dollars to build and yet couldn't process 1/10 of the new annual waste. It will still take decades for these 1973 oil shock-era monster plans to gradually wind down.

It's going to be politically very difficult to cut power usage to a level that would be necessary to permanently shut down more nuclear power stations soon, but in the short and medium term we will see more cases like Fukushima Daiichi units 7 and 8 whose construction plans have been cancelled.

Japan's nukes will become like its aging population: Increasingly geriatric, with increasing health problems, difficult to pay for and no young ones to replace them. Meanwhile, conservation, cogeneration, combined cycle gas turbines, on and offshore wind, geothermal and solar will gradually eat into nuclear's share here, not as quickly as I'd like to see, but inevitably anyway.

 

[SteveElbows]

My guess is that a random check at Fukushima would have passed the site with flying colors.

Random checks are useful to ensure ongoing adherence to standards, but do not help if the standards are inadequate. I had hoped for greater insight from the IAEA.

True. On their own random checks don't solve everything, but if they beef up everything else then they should be useful.

Id like to talk about something that was raised on the main thread:

It's good to see the IAEA is as committed to transparency as ever. The 151 IAEA member states will meet this week in Vienna for 5 days.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-20/fukushima-disaster-failures-kept-behind-closed-doors-at-un-atomic-meeting.html

That article does a reasonable job of highlighting some of the big issues.

The Fukushima meetings will be closed “because of the highly detailed and technical nature of the drafting work,” IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said in a June 17 response to e- mailed questions. Summaries of the sessions will be made public, she said.

This is an excuse which attempts to completely avoid other reasons this stuff is private. Generally speaking, these sorts of meetings (and I don't just mean nuclear ones) are conducted in private because it gives participants an opportunity to speak frankly. Unfortunately we live in a world where there are many barriers against speaking frankly in public. Some are complex and somewhat understandable, others are a disgrace and really can be dealt with if the will is there.

The IAEA report is a great example of what you get when you are not free from these pressures. Barriers towards blunt truth telling include the desire to promote the industry, not wishing to upset national governments, a lack of funding & independent investigative capabilities, commercial sensitivities, and people with very different roles within the industry (commercial operator, regulator) being too chummy. I though it was quite ironic that one of the criticisms the IAEA was able to make of Japan was that the regulator there was too close to the industry - the IAEA itself seems to suffer from the very same problem, albeit on a different level.

 

[PLG]

Hi all,

I am not a physicist, but an economic historian with some training in business history, and have been trying to get info on Fuku1 for personal reasons (Japanese friends). I stumbled on your thread in the process, and I was a bit surprised, reading the posts on this forum, at the seemingly widespread notion that the Japanes Govt could have chosen to take over from Tepco -and generally at what seems to me a mistaken view of Gvt possibilites in Japan, so much so that I take the liberty of adding my 2 cents.

There was an org chart of the nuclear emergency response earlier on this thread, and it was pointed out that no link pointed to Tepco. Indeed... As far as I understand, the Japanese govt does not have the human resources, know-how, and even legal tools to take over from Tepco. This is a result of the peculiar interplay of the Japanese State apparatus and large Japanese companies since the 1950s, with the State apparatus being purposefully designed as a tool to further the efficiency and profits of the companies, to which it is effectively a servant, even though it may look like a master (I am not being judgemental here, just descriptive -one can be technical about such matters as well, to a certain extent, I think).

The result is that the Govt is absolutely, utterly incapable to take over from Tepco -it has never been ready to do so. When Japanese banks failed in the 1990s, it took almost 8 years for the Ministry of Finance to set up a 2000-persons strong State organ able to take over management of failed bank. There is nothing even close to that in the Japanese "nuclear village" at this point, and such organisations cannot appear magicallly out of thin air. Bottom line: the Japanese Govt is forced to let Tepco manage, with disastrous results.

Why disastrous? Lesson 2: Private firms are fine in a normal market situation, but the free market does not operate well in the midst of Apocalypse. What you want then is indeed the Soviet Union -clear chains of command, masses of disciplined troops ready to give their lives, complete unconcern for costs, stores of expensive equipment designed for nuclear war, etc. Chernobyl was a major mistake, but the response to it, when it finally got under way, was impressive -and on the whole reached its goal, avoiding an even bigger disaster.

Tepco people cannot do that. They have employees, not soldiers; they are cost-conscious, and have to be; they are untrained anyway. The NEW President of Tepco is a finance and marketing guy, who knows about engineering about as much as I do. The result: a nightmare. Large corporations are very bad at managing disasters, not because they are nasty, but because that's not what they are designed to do, and what they are designed to do mostly interferes with the job at hand. Again, I am not being judgemental, just descriptive -saying that fighting a Martian invasion would probably be better done by the U.S. Army than by Blackhawk style mercenaries, or for that matter scrappy Montana minutemen, is not politics, but technical fact. Yes, the 101st Airborne has more firepower.

Nucgen was asking for a root cause. While (full disclosure) I do not believe nuclear energy is a good solution in the long run, for various reasons, there is certainly a basic rule to follow when dealing with such a dangerous industry (and yes, it is true for other industrial branches -just ask the people over at Bhopal): free market operations must be strictly kept within narrow institutional bounds, watched over hawk-like by large bodies of independent, well-paid regulators, and Govts mut be ready to stop them any time, and step in with a fully prepared, Soviet-style central planning, militarized approach (which, by the way, is very costly indeed, and should be factored in when we talk about energy costs). So, possible root cause: lack of a State apparatus strong enough to step in, and prepared to do so (an don't even get me started about the Japanese Defense Forces).

Well, at least that's what some of us tend to think over here on our side of the scientific field; not hard science, more jell-O science, I guess, but still. And by the way, yes I am implying that there are things to learn from the former USSR, and to top it all I am French, so I am fully expecting the stream of abuse us yellabellied commie froggies obviously deserve. Go for it!

Pierre

 

[Calvadosser]

Hi all,
[snip]

Well, at least that's what some of us tend to think over here on our side of the scientific field; not hard science, more jell-O science, I guess, but still. And by the way, yes I am implying that there are things to learn from the former USSR, and to top it all I am French, so I am fully expecting [snip]

Pierre

Pierre,

Maybe this is not the place to discuss the question but I would be interested to know how you think EDF would measure up to handling a major nuclear accident.

Amicalement,
Martin

 

[PLG]

Hi,

Keep in mind that I am no expert. However, I believe EDF would simply not be allowed to rule the show. Prefects would step in right away, and so would the Govt, and probably the Army as well.

In fact a few weeks back AREVA and EDF put out an "emergency" plan of their own which was met with widespread silence, and disappeared from the scene soon after, I believe because disaster management and civil preparednes people over at ASN, IRSN and the Interior Ministry quietly told them to stuff it. These organizations would never even dream of handing out disaster management to EDF or AREVA. I have not researched this, and probably should, but the (inadequate) emergency contingency plans I have heard of are all centered on the Prefects, as far as I know.

So the real question in my view is whether the Prefecture of Loir-Et-Cher would handle Saint-Laurent des Eaux blacking out and melting down better than Tepco did Fukushima. Honest answer: I don't know for sure. I can't prove (experiments are hard to come by in the non-hard sciences) that it would be closer to the organized Chernobyl response than to the haphazard Fukushima response. It should be better in theory, because Prefects don't have to contend with management or stockholders or think about the balance between their Company's position and a possible political intervention. That's one less distraction.

Granted, I have known some pretty dim Prefects who should be able to mess things up pretty badly as well. Still, I would stick with my original assessment that prospects for a reasonable response would be better. And apparently the nuclear apparatus in France agrees with me: neither AREVA nor EDF are supposed to be in charge in case of a major incident, and all civil preparedness resources are to be found in prefectoral hands. NPP operators are to advise, not decide, at least for everything going on outside the plant. So the responsibility is squarely put on the State -something which was much less clear in Japan.

Pierre

P

 

[PLG]

Addendum: you could reply that EDF will still be in charge within the plant, so a Tepco-like circus could take place, with EDF messing up inside and Prefects lollygagging outside. That is true, but I have a very hard time believing the French State apparatus would tolerate a performance like Tepco's for a whole 3 months. At any rate, the balance of power would be much less unequal, with local Govt representatives having at their disposal at least as many resources as EDF itself; that in itself would be a massive difference with Fukushima. And in fact I suspect that even within a damaged plant, disaster management would eventually be handed over to teams including governmental experts, with ASN and the Army playing a major role.

Pierre

 

[NUCENG]

Hi all,

I am not a physicist, but an economic historian with some training in business history, and have been trying to get info on Fuku1 for personal reasons (Japanese friends). I stumbled on your thread in the process, and I was a bit surprised, reading the posts on this forum, at the seemingly widespread notion that the Japanes Govt could have chosen to take over from Tepco -and generally at what seems to me a mistaken view of Gvt possibilites in Japan, so much so that I take the liberty of adding my 2 cents.

There was an org chart of the nuclear emergency response earlier on this thread, and it was pointed out that no link pointed to Tepco. Indeed... As far as I understand, the Japanese govt does not have the human resources, know-how, and even legal tools to take over from Tepco. This is a result of the peculiar interplay of the Japanese State apparatus and large Japanese companies since the 1950s, with the State apparatus being purposefully designed as a tool to further the efficiency and profits of the companies, to which it is effectively a servant, even though it may look like a master (I am not being judgemental here, just descriptive -one can be technical about such matters as well, to a certain extent, I think).

The result is that the Govt is absolutely, utterly incapable to take over from Tepco -it has never been ready to do so. When Japanese banks failed in the 1990s, it took almost 8 years for the Ministry of Finance to set up a 2000-persons strong State organ able to take over management of failed bank. There is nothing even close to that in the Japanese "nuclear village" at this point, and such organisations cannot appear magicallly out of thin air. Bottom line: the Japanese Govt is forced to let Tepco manage, with disastrous results.

Why disastrous? Lesson 2: Private firms are fine in a normal market situation, but the free market does not operate well in the midst of Apocalypse. What you want then is indeed the Soviet Union -clear chains of command, masses of disciplined troops ready to give their lives, complete unconcern for costs, stores of expensive equipment designed for nuclear war, etc. Chernobyl was a major mistake, but the response to it, when it finally got under way, was impressive -and on the whole reached its goal, avoiding an even bigger disaster.

Tepco people cannot do that. They have employees, not soldiers; they are cost-conscious, and have to be; they are untrained anyway. The NEW President of Tepco is a finance and marketing guy, who knows about engineering about as much as I do. The result: a nightmare. Large corporations are very bad at managing disasters, not because they are nasty, but because that's not what they are designed to do, and what they are designed to do mostly interferes with the job at hand. Again, I am not being judgemental, just descriptive -saying that fighting a Martian invasion would probably be better done by the U.S. Army than by Blackhawk style mercenaries, or for that matter scrappy Montana minutemen, is not politics, but technical fact. Yes, the 101st Airborne has more firepower.

Nucgen was asking for a root cause. While (full disclosure) I do not believe nuclear energy is a good solution in the long run, for various reasons, there is certainly a basic rule to follow when dealing with such a dangerous industry (and yes, it is true for other industrial branches -just ask the people over at Bhopal): free market operations must be strictly kept within narrow institutional bounds, watched over hawk-like by large bodies of independent, well-paid regulators, and Govts mut be ready to stop them any time, and step in with a fully prepared, Soviet-style central planning, militarized approach (which, by the way, is very costly indeed, and should be factored in when we talk about energy costs). So, possible root cause: lack of a State apparatus strong enough to step in, and prepared to do so (an don't even get me started about the Japanese Defense Forces).

Well, at least that's what some of us tend to think over here on our side of the scientific field; not hard science, more jell-O science, I guess, but still. And by the way, yes I am implying that there are things to learn from the former USSR, and to top it all I am French, so I am fully expecting the stream of abuse us yellabellied commie froggies obviously deserve. Go for it!

Pierre

Excellent post and spot on discussion of the disserence between a company trying to make a profit and the roll of a stong leader/governmentr that can step in and manage a crisis. Your criticism of precture and government response is also inciteful. I have spent a great amount of time trying to figure out the chain of command with NISA, METI, MEXT, NSC, and the rest of the alphabet, but I gave up trying to figure out who was in charge.

Thank you for your contribution..

 

[joewein]

Large corporations are very bad at managing disasters, not because they are nasty, but because that's not what they are designed to do, and what they are designed to do mostly interferes with the job at hand.

Your comment reminded me of something that's been going around my mind for a while, and that is how differently another major corporate (and local near monopoly) managed a disaster that was watched by the whole world not too long ago.

I am talking about the 2010 Copiapó mining accident in Chile, which was handled in a truly exemplary manner by the national copper company Codelco. The government realized that the small mining company that ran the mine was totally out of its depth and put Codelco in charge of the rescue operation, who brought the 33 back to the surface alive.

It can be argued that mining disasters are more common in the mining industry than nuclear meltdowns are in the nuclear power industry, so there was more experience to draw on, but still it shows how well some large corporations can manage disasters if they have their priorities right.

Maybe Tepco is like the Compañía Minera San Esteban, but no oner ever found and put in charge its Codelco equivalent. I wonder if Toshiba / Hitachi / GE had been put in charge from the start, would they have handled it any better?

 

[PLG]

I should have been more specific: contrary to popular wisdom, corporations can indeed be quite good at protecting their employees (no wonder, they control the work process, and should know how to go about things) -even though they don't always choose to do so. However, I was referring to a wholesale disaster involving the population at large, not just one's employees, and that's when you really want the Red Army -or at least some sort of army.

Tepco, by the way, is also terrible at protecting its own employees. GE would certainly have done a much, much better job (1 dosimeter per team! honestly...). Toshiba or Hitachi I am not so sure: I have met quite a few Japanese managers who seem utterly indifferent to the little people, I wonder sometimes if these managers really consider them as human beings at all. At any rate, the callousness toward lower-rung- and contract employees at Fukushima is absolutely sickening. If you can believe it, a number of workers eat and sleep on the premises until they reach their maximum dose. Now, would renting a few buses and setting up a base camp 40 kilometers out in an area all but emptied be so difficult?

PG

 

[SteveElbows]

I don't know the exact procedure but they have a base at J-Village which is used by workers, and is about 20km away from the plant. There are probably some practical reasons for minimising the amount of travel in & out of the evacuation zone, but I am sure more could have been done. Although some of it may be down to corporate nature, there are aspets to Japanese society which have shaped the response in all sorts of ways, but because I am an outsider looking in with relatively low level of understanding of Japanese culture I don't think its fair for me to attempt to get into detail on this.

When it comes to issues of the population at large, the role of a corporation is fairly limited, government departments are always going to have to get involved with that stuff, potentially including the use of army.

Unfortunately we see with Fukushima that the usual reasons governments have for not fully disclosing information in a timely manner still exist, for governments have as many if not more reasons to cover stuff up as corporations do. As I understand it, from a government mindset the control of information is one of the tools they have available with which to try to influence public behaviour. Sometimes its almost the only tool they have, and they cannot resist using it. In their minds, this can be fully justified on the basis that panic can cause unnecessary harm to people, and to economy, in theory it can cause more harm than the original threat which has scared people. Unfortunately I think the balance between these factors and the duty of care that they have towards their populations, is way too easy for them to get wrong.

In the case of Fukushima at least they did not hesitate for too long about the initial evacuations, or try to pretend that nothing serious was wrong at the plant at all. It was later, when evidence started to come in about the contamination to the north west, that I started to get angry at the long delays between this picture being formed, and people in these areas being evacuated. This stuff was sort of criticised by IAEA in a gentle way under the related topic of the longer-term shelter areas - areas where people were told to try and stay indoors, which was probably reasonable advice to start with, but should have changed to a proper evacuation as soon as relevant data emerged, instead of dragging their feet for a month like the Japanese actually did. The IAEA did not quite say this in as explicit a way as I am doing here, but I think this is what they were getting at.

Another mistake which emerged quite clearly in this weeks IAEA conference, is related to iodine pills. It seems that instructions were issued on a local level that people should take these pills to protect them during their evacuation from the area in the early days. But this order came too late, most people had already evacuated before these instructions were relayed. Its not at all clear at this stage how much harm this may have exposed people too that could have been prevented if the order had arrived on time.

 

[Calvadosser]

(snip)
At any rate, the callousness toward lower-rung- and contract employees at Fukushima is absolutely sickening. If you can believe it, a number of workers eat and sleep on the premises until they reach their maximum dose. Now, would renting a few buses and setting up a base camp 40 kilometers out in an area all but emptied be so difficult?

PG

I agree.

For at least a couple of weeks after the melt-downs, the on-site employees were being fed on just about nothing but crackers and bottled water according to reports at the time.

I assume all that some high-level manager in Tepco had to do was pick up a phone and give someone at Tepco HQ the job of keeping the workers on the hot-site supplied with steak dinners, pizza, sushi, beer and whatever else they desired - but it had not happened.

Tepco's inability to supply the basic needs of their workers convinced me that level of incompetence was something unprecedented.

 

[SteveElbows]

I expect there are actually some legitimate reasons why providing nice accomodation and food for workers is not quite as easy to setup under Fukushima conditions as some suggest. I expect more could have been done though, especially after the first week.