Culture of complicity linked to devastated by the nuclear power plant

Masataka Shimizu, center, President of the Tokyo Electric Power and leaders of society knelt to ask forgiveness of the residents to shelter in Kōriyama.

TOKYO - Light of fierce insular nature of the nuclear industry of the Japan, it may be normal that an outsider exposed the cover-up of more serious security in the history of the Japanese nuclear. It took place at Fukushima Daiichi, Japan plant has struggled to get under control since last earthquake and tsunami.

Kei Sugaoka, a nuclear inspector, said regulatory problems at the Fukushima Daiichi plant 11 years ago. Finally, a survey revealed that executives of the Tokyo Electric Power had engaged in a cover-up.

In 2000, Kei Sugaoka, an inspector nuclear Japanese-Americans who had worked for General Electric to Daiichi, said principal regulator of the Japan on a dryer nuclear believed that cracked steam was being concealed. If the presentations, the revelations could have forced the operator, Tokyo Electric Power, to do what the utilities want less to: undertake costly repairs.

What happened then was an example, critics have said since then, collusive ties that bind the nuclear nation enterprises, regulators and politicians.

Despite a new law shielding Blowers, the regulator, the nuclear and industrial safety agency, disclosed the identity of Mr. Sugaoka at Tokyo Electric, effectively rejecting the industry. Instead of immediately deploy its own investigators to Daiichi, the Agency has asked the company to inspect its own reactors. Regulators allowed the company to keep operating its reactors over the next two years, even if, a survey revealed in the end, its managers had actually hidden other, more serious problems, including cracks in the shrouds covering the reactor cores.

Investigators can take months or years to decide what extended security problems or low regulations contributed to the disaster to Daiichi, the worst of its kind since Chernobyl. But as the unrest in the plant and the fears of radiation continue to shake the nation, the Japanese raise more and more the possibility that a culture of complicity is particularly vulnerable plant to the natural disaster that struck the country on March 11.

Already, many Japanese and Western experts argue that incompatible, non-existent or unpatrolled regulations played a role in the accident - including low dikes which has failed to protect the plants against the tsunami and the decision to put diesel backup generators that supply the cooling system of the reactors at the ground levelwhich makes it very vulnerable to flooding.

An extension of 10 years for the oldest reactors of Daiichi suggests that the regulatory system was allowed to remain lax by politicians, bureaucrats and industry leaders firmly focused on the expansion of nuclear energy. Regulators approved the extension beyond 40 years under the reactor just a few weeks before the tsunami, despite warnings about the safety and subsequent admissions of Tokyo Electric, often referred to as Tepco, it did not conduct inspections appropriate critical equipment.

The mild punishment for previous offences of security has reinforced the belief that the main actors of nuclear power are more interested in protecting their interests to increase the security. In 2002, after finally, concealment of Tepco, became public, its President and the President resigned, only to give advisory positions to the company. Other frameworks have been demoted, but later took jobs in companies doing business with Tepco. Still other received cuts tiny pay for their role in the cover-up. And after a closure and temporary repairs to Daiichi, Tepco resumes operation of the plant.

In a telephone interview from his home in the Bay of San Francisco, Mr. Sugaoka said, "I support nuclear energy, but I want to see a total transparency."

Revolving door

To the Japan, the web of connections between the nuclear industry and the representatives of the Government is now commonly called the "village of nuclear power". The expression refers to the transparent, collusive interests that underlie the thrust of the institution to increase nuclear power despite the discovery of fault lines active under plants, new projections on the size of the tsunami and a long history of cover-ups of security problems.

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