Here is the English report from the Japanese Parliament (Diet) investigating committee:
http://naiic.go.jp/en/ Here are some interesting comments by Chairman Kurokawa in the Executive Summary. Incidentally, I cannot find these comments in the Japanese version: "THE EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI of March 11, 2011 were natural disasters of a magnitude that shocked the entire world. Although triggered by these cataclysmic events, the subsequent accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant cannot be regarded as a natural disaster. It was a profoundly manmade disaster – that could and should have been foreseen and prevented. And its effects could have been mitigated by a more effective human response. How could such an accident occur in Japan, a nation that takes such great pride in its global reputation for excellence in engineering and technology? This Commission believes the Japanese people – and the global community – deserve a full, honest and transparent answer to this question. Our report catalogues a multitude of errors and willful negligence that left the Fukushima plant unprepared for the events of March 11. And it examines serious deficiencies in the response to the accident by TEPCO, regulators and the government. . . . . . . This conceit was reinforced by the collective mindset of Japanese bureaucracy, by which the first duty of any individual bureaucrat is to defend the interests of his organization. Carried to an extreme, this led bureaucrats to put organizational interests ahead of their paramount duty to protect public safety. Only by grasping this mindset can one understand how Japan’s nuclear industry managed to avoid absorbing the critical lessons learned from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl; and how it became accepted practice to resist regulatory pressure and cover up small-scale accidents. It was this mindset that led to the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant." Yup. Check, check . . . So far so good. He goes on to say: ". . . This report singles out numerous individuals and organizations for harsh criticism, but the goal is not—and should not be—to lay blame. The goal must be to learn from this disaster, and reflect deeply on its fundamental causes, in order to ensure that it is never repeated. Many of the lessons relate to policies and procedures, but the most important is one upon which each and every Japanese citizen should reflect very deeply. The consequences of negligence at Fukushima stand out as catastrophic, but the mindset that supported it can be found across Japan. In recognizing that fact, each of us should reflect on our responsibility as individuals in a democratic society . . ." In other words, blame it on the people and the culture of Japan. Not the specific nitwits who put the fuel tank on the the ground on the ocean side of the reactor plant. The blame is nebulous, applying to everyone, and therefore to no one. This was the same response the government had immediately after the surrender in WWII. The message to the citizens and schoolchildren was: "You people did not fight hard enough. You failed the Emperor and the nation." The government was all set to impose more hardships and more sacrifices on the people when the Occupation Authorities arrived and overruled it. Lawrence Forsley, who was at W&M, went to Fukushima to assist in some of the technical analyses of nuclear products. I believe it was some months after the accident. He said the officials and scientists there are lying through their teeth, and the situation is much more dire than they admit. That is what Mizuno and many other independent observers have said. Kurokawa said the accident is continuing to the present day. Apparently, so is the lying and the cover up. However, the cover-up is far from airtight. A lot of information is leaking out. A cover-up never works. A cover-up plus baseless anodyne assurances from officials make the public assume the government and TEPCO say are lying. People imagine the real situation is even worse than it actually turns out to be. That was true even in Stalinist Russia. - Jed
