Sunday May 27, 2012

Japanese, foreign media allowed into Fukushima nuclear plant

By David Guttenfelder

National ( 27 )

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Crushed piping is seen at the crippled Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant on Saturday. AP

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27 Comments

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  • 1

    YongYang

    Let's see what they report. Let's get it back on the international agenda, even if only for a day. We need people to SEE.

  • -7

    Virtuoso

    No, let's see if the reporters' hair starts falling out, they get loose bowels and their body weight plummets.

  • -1

    pawatan

    We need people to SEE.

    See what? Everybody including the people running the show knows it's not in good shape. Even TEPCO is reporting that.

  • -4

    ihrwjns

    Are you an unemployed Media type???...well, there may be some openings soon in your area...keep the faith!!!...lmao...

  • 1

    zichi

    "But the government has predicted that it will take another 30 years at least to safely remove the nuclear fuel and decommission the plant. It could also be decades before tens of thousands of residents forced to flee the 12-mile (20-kilometer) exclusion zone around the plant will be able to return. Some experts say even that estimate is optimistic."

    The end-game cost, more than ¥25 trillion.

  • 5

    CrazyJoe

    Mr. Yoshida (chief of the Daiichi plant) and the workers are doing an excellent job. Ganbatte!

  • -2

    zichi

    Yoshida san was totally in charge of the Daiichi plant before 3/11 and is probably the one who made all decisions about what happened at the nuke plant, including not updating 600 essential pieces of equipment against earthquakes as requested by NISA.

    TEPCO HQ were happy to leave everything up to him, provided profits continued to roll in.

  • 4

    Fadamor

    Yoshida san was totally in charge of the Daiichi plant before 3/11 and is probably the one who made all decisions about what happened at the nuke plant, including not updating 600 essential pieces of equipment against earthquakes as requested by NISA.

    TEPCO HQ were happy to leave everything up to him, provided profits continued to roll in

    While it is true that Yoshida-san was in charge of the plant, it is also true that plant managers rarely have control of the purse strings unless they are also the company president. Yoshida-san probably repeatedly called for these changes to be funded, but the expenditure was never authorized because the Board of Directors felt the likelihood of such an event happening during the lifetime of the plant was remote, at best.

  • 0

    Ted Barrera

    "We have not studied... we are not in a position to respond.... we have no plans.". Yup! That's TEPCO alright! The only thing they've been consistent with.

  • -6

    zichi

    TEPCO admitted some months ago that TEPCO HQ left the running of plant up to Yoshida and the other workers at the nuclear village, because those at the TEPCO HQ, had very little understanding how a nuclear power plant worked.

    If Yoshida had thought that important safety measures and vital maintenance wasn't being done he could have spoken out even at the cost of losing his job.

    I think he, and many other engineers now have deep regrets and shame for not speaking up.

    Even retired engineers have spoken up on that.

  • 0

    zichi

    Two reporters from the New York Times, and two from AP.

  • -1

    YongYang

    @Paw: Everybody? Everybody where? You ask anyone outside of Japan, arguably Tohoko and everything is fine and OK. That be the people we want to SEE. i,e the majority of the human inhabitants on THIS planet, earth.

  • 1

    zichi

    I have now watched one TV news piece about the visit and nothing new shown, so just a PR stunt by TEPCO to try and reassure Japan and the world, "everything is going according to plan?"

  • 4

    gaijinTechie

    Yoshida received a reprimand from top Tepco executives for disobeying a direct order to stop cooling the reactors with corroding seawater. Tepco pencil pushers giving that kind of orders suggest that they were definitely not going to leave the operations to those who actually knew what they were doing. I don't believe for a second that Tepco execs were interested in allocating funds for routine repairs.

    There are some references in Masao Yoshida Wikipedia page.

  • -1

    Tigerta9

    I can imagine the pressure salaryman executives at the TV stations or the editors at the big corporate publications must be under to soft pedal this. Gotta be tough to be a reporter that wants to be an investigative journalist not a good salaryman.

  • -6

    zichi

    with reference to Yoshida,

    "too little, too late!"

  • -1

    Tigerta9

    @zichi sounds crazy for anyone to get close to that place. Who to trust regarding the safe radius around Fukushima now. As sad as I feel for the prefecture my gut tells me not to believe the PR and to stay out of there.

  • 1

    zichi

    Tigerta9,

    fortunately, for Japan and the world there are people willing to work at the nuclear power plant, otherwise.......

  • 0

    JeffLee

    "During the first week of the accident, I thought several times that we were all going to die.-- Plant chief Masao Yoshida.

    Seems like the "hysterical" foreign media got the story right from the start. Same can't be said of the Japanese media, which parroted Tepco's line that "everything is under control."

  • -1

    waltery

    Thank you TEPCOs workers you have worked tirelessly to stabilise and contain the situation Great job letting the media in to dispel rumour. I trust the operators to do everything they can to resolve the problem in the safest possible way for the short and long term. I hope the media keeps to the facts and reasonable speculation and continues report in the future.

  • 0

    zichi

    The best source for info, photo's and video's is from the TEPCO site.

  • -2

    enoughalready45

    So many in the world are watching, seeking information not trusting the reports from TEPCO or the Japanese Government. Rise up Japan, Rise up World, we must be told the truth.

  • -4

    Samantha Zoe Aso

    Time will tell. You use smoke and mirrors as much as you like but Mother Nature will eventually reflect the scale of this disaster. It's going to take a long time for people to start feeling safe and confident again about the whole situation. Everytime we have another aftershock, I wonder how the nuclear plant is holding up. Photos of it don't install confidence that it could withstand another big aftershock or quake!

    Having said that.....I have nothing but pure, unadulterated respect for the staff who have been there fighting for us all, in the nuclear plant's 'trenches' so to speak from March the 11th. They must have been terrified as they, probably more than anyone, could fully understand the repercussions and tragedy that would have unfolded.

    I am hoping and praying for all of us that pride doesn't come before a fall and things, however slowly and painfully, are progressing over at the plant.

  • -1

    globalwatcher

    0

    pawatanNov. 12, 2011 - 06:17PM JST

    We need people to SEE.

    See what? Everybody including the people running the show knows it's not in good shape. Even TEPCO is reporting that.

    pawatan, the world wants to know what has been going on. Tonight, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC US nightly news have shown the damage done to Fukushima. We have been told that it will take DECADES for the cleanup.. FYI

  • 0

    Utrack

    In the compound, there are still places with high radiation levels. Buses carrying journalists passed through areas where radiation levels were measured to be low.

    Despite that, however, some reporters' dosimeters issued warning alarms when the buses neared the No. 3 reactor building. When a TEPCO employee measured the radiation level there, it showed one millisievert (1,000 microsieverts) per hour.

    TEPCO employees continued to monitor radiation levels in the buses during the reporters' visit. The figures continued to rise from several tens of microsieverts per hour to several hundreds and further to 1,000 microsieverts.

    During that time, an Asahi Shimbun reporter ended up being exposed to a cumulative total of 69 microsieverts.

  • -2

    Darren Brannan

    More self serving Japaganda from the govt. There is a very very dark and underrepertorted flipside to this story. http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/11/rescue-squad-member-died-from-renal.html

  • 0

    SquidBert

    This seems to be the result of the visit for NY Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/world/devastation-at-japan-site-seen-up-close.html?ref=science

    Not really falling in the propaganda trap, but failing deeper investigation and asking the really difficult questions.

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