Your trusted source

New facts about the Fukushima nuclear power plant are coming out now that two and a half years have elapsed since the dreadful disaster in March 2011. According to a local labour commission, low-skilled workers, illegally recruited in Japan's poorest areas, were used in building the nuclear power plant in the 1960s. The poor quality of construction, as well as structural defects and personnel negligence had eventually triggered disastrous consequences, the Voice of Russia said. 

The off-shore quake-caused tsunami hit the Fukushima plant when Naoto Kan was the Prime Minister of Japan. He has since admitted that the Japan Atomic Energy Agency had lied to him about the situation at the plant. "We were unprepared for the horrible accident," he said.

Following the powerful 9.0 magnitude quake on March 11th 2011 the plant's automatic checkout and control systems shut down the reactors and cut them off current. But the chain reaction in the reactors was still on, which called for their continuous cooling. The pumps immediately activated the stand-by diesel generators. However, these were able to operate for no more than half an hour, until the huge tsunami wave hit the plant and flooded the turbine island, causing the pumps to grind to a standstill. Even the brought-in mobile generators failed to restart the pumps. Without cooling, the reactors overheated causing core meltdowns and subsequent radioactive contamination of the nearby area. Meanwhile, the zirconium entrails of reactors were oxidized by water vapour, releasing hydrogen in the process. Deputy Head of the Russian Duma Committee on Natural Resources, Mikhail Shingarkin, feels that it was possible to avoid this kind of scenario.

"We should understand that the accident was not disastrous at the start. But the technical decisions made to secure the safe performance of the reactors proved catastrophic, indeed. So, when radiation levels were well above normal, the personnel left the power plant in keeping with radiation safety requirements. The automatic control systems had already become non-operational, so the situation worsened due to the circuit fracture," he said.

Ecologist Igor Shkradyuk believes the disaster occurred because of a very special stand on safety culture in Japan. The Japanese are really good at series production, but they care little about problems that occur rarely. By comparison, Russians try to foresee abnormal situations, the expert says.

"In Russia, a Fukushima-like nuclear reactor is running in the city of Dimitrovgrad, in the Ulyanovsk Region. The reactor is complete with a fireplug connector in case it runs out of water, so it could get the required water from water mains. If the Fukushima reactor had been supplied with a thing like that, the nuclear power plant would have suffered no accident," he said.

One never knows for sure, of course. After all, the neighbouring Fukushima-2 nuclear plant, a mere 10 kilometres away from Fukushima-1, also suffered reactor overheating, but there was no release of radiation. They managed to avoid a disaster without any fireplug connectors.

What happened afterwards was a hasty evacuation of 300,000 locals from the contaminated area. Thousands of bodies of the quake and tsunami victims were left under the house wreckage. The large-scale effort to remove the debris is still on. The authorities banned the consumption of locally-made foodstuffs, and also fish and water. Other countries have since refused to import Japanese-made food products, above all rice and fish. The financial losses are estimated at 74 billion dollars, excluding the quake and tsunami damage. The situation sparked street protests against the use of nuclear power.

According to an IAEA commission, the situation around the Fukushima-1 nuclear plant remains involved to this day. The huge amount of radioactive water at the plant is leaking into the Pacific. The radiation levels in the area remain above normal, preventing residents from returning to their homes. The Fukushima plant operating company TEPCO is in charge of area decontamination. To add urgency to the effort, the authorities have decided to split the company, with the basic part of it due to engage in power generation, while the other part supposed to focus on decontamination. Under the government plan, the decontamination work is due over by 2017, with the last evacuees expected to return to their homes in Fukushima Prefecture by then.

According to the former Prime Minister Naoto Kan, the Fukushima plant disaster altered the life of 50 million Japanese, almost a third of the nation's population. The disaster is comparable to a war. The former Prime Minister insists that the catastrophe may be prevented from being repeated only by giving up nuclear power generation.

This is what the Japanese leaders actually thought they would do, shortly after the accident, specifically shutting down the operation of all of Japan's nuclear power plants by 2030. But the government has since dropped the idea as irresponsible, since the alternative energy sources, such as winds, the solar energy and tides will have clearly proved unable to fully replace nuclear power and meet all of Japan's needs by the year 2030.