The ensuing chaos and confusion—at TEPCO headquarters and at the plant site—would lead to a series of early missteps that would eventually cause hydrogen explosions at three of the reactor units, blasts that released damaging levels of radioactive material in the atmosphere and seawater. "I thought we were done," recalls Masao Yoshida, the plant manager. "I thought we would lose control over the reactors completely."
Heads in the sand
Nuclear safety in Japan historically has been predicated on making sure plants could withstand "design basis accidents."
Translation: an accident that the plant has been designed to deal with automatically. What happened a year ago went far beyond that. The industry calls the accident at Fukushima Daiichi a station blackout, or an SBO.
In the United States, in the 1980s and 90s, regulatory authorities and nuclear operators began planning for the possibility of station blackouts, in which a nuclear plant loses all sources of power, just as Fukushima Daiichi did last year. They began installing what Satoshi Sato, a nuclear industry consultant in Tokyo, calls "defense in depth," which means there are both redundant and diverse mechanisms in place intended to cope with accidents, up to and including SBOs.
TEPCO and Japan's nuclear regulators say they did have redundant power sources in place—the on site diesel generators that also eventually failed after the tsunami struck. (Despite sitting within a few hundred yards of the Pacific ocean, the generators were not designed to withstand flooding.)
But Japan never even tried to prepare for station blackouts. Even as the rest of the world moved on, says Sato, the feeling in Tokyo was, "SBOs are not conceivable; don't even think about it."
Critics of the industry in Japan say there is a basic reason for that. Historically, the government and the power companies spent more time and energy trying to convince the public that nuclear energy was safe than it did actually trying to make nuclear energy safe. Says Sato: "we spent ten times more money for PR campaigns than we did for real safety measures. It's a terrible thing."
"A Tough Moment"
When Shimizu walked into Kan's office in the early hours of March 15 of last year, the Prime Minister was surrounded by the key officials from his office and various ministries trying to cope with the ongoing crisis.
Kan told the TEPCO executive that his plan to withdraw from Fukushima Daiichi was unacceptable. "There's no way you can leave the site." Shimizu, according to Kan, didn't protest. "I understand," he replied. TEPCO has denied through its press spokesmen that it ever intended to pull out entirely from the plant and Shimizu has declined to talk to the press. Kan, in his interview with Fortune, was adamant in his language about what Shimizu said he wanted to do: "Tettai," he said in Japanese. Withdraw.
