Safety agency slams TEPCO for lax ID checks on nuclear plant workers

TOKYO (Kyodo) — The government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency
reprimanded Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Monday for failing to conduct
adequate identity checks on workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The agency found about the lax security as a result of an on-site
investigation it conducted on July 7 after the utility was unable to
contact more than 180 workers engaged in operations to bring the
crippled nuclear plant under control.

The utility only checked photocopies of identification such as drivers’
licenses in judging whether workers should be allowed to enter the
premises of the plant, breaching the utility’s in-house rules to prevent
the theft of uranium and plutonium, the agency said in a statement.

The agency also found cases where TEPCO did not individually distribute
entry passes to plant workers but handed them to their supervisors, it said.

A nuclear safety agency official said the agency, however, decided
against revoking TEPCO’s license to install and operate nuclear reactors
as the inadequate identification checks "do not constitute systematic
and deliberate wrongdoing" and were rather a result of situations
created by the crisis at the plant.

TEPCO spokesman Junichi Matsumoto told reporters "So far there has been
no case of suspicious persons entering the plant’s premises."

In late June, TEPCO alerted the nuclear safety agency that it was unable
to contact some Fukushima plant workers as it sought to determine
workers’ internal radiation exposure.

Kyodo, August 2, 2011

* http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2011/08/02/20110802p2g00m0dm012000c.html

2 TEPCO workers died in tsunami after following orders to check nuclear plant damage

Two Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) workers whose bodies were found at
the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power plant some three weeks after the March
11 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami were struck by the tsunami
while inspecting an underground facility under orders, the Mainichi has
learned.

The deceased pair, Kazuhiko Kokubo, 24, and Yoshiki Terashima, 21, were
ordered by their shift supervisor to check for leaks in the basement of
the plant’s No. 4 reactor turbine building when they were hit by the
tsunami. At the time a major tsunami warning was in place. It is the
first time that details on the background to their deaths have emerged.

In an accident report released in June, TEPCO said that the safety of
workers had been confirmed after the quake, and that workers were aware
of the earthquake and tsunami, but the latest finding suggests that not
all workers knew about the impending tsunami.

At the time of the earthquake, the No. 4 reactor was under inspection,
and the fuel rods had been removed. TEPCO officials and other sources
said that the two workers were in the central control room at the time,
inspecting the power operations of the No. 4 reactor and the opening and
closing of valves. After the earthquake struck, an alarm went off,
indicating that the water level in the cooling tank of the No. 4 reactor
turbine building had dropped. The shift manager accordingly ordered the
workers to go and check for leaks. Electricity to the building had been
cut, so the pair headed to the underground location of the tank pipes
with flashlights.

Terashima phoned his parents’ home in Mutsu, Aomori Prefecture, at about
3 p.m., and it is believed that he went to inspect the pipes after this.

Japan’s Meteorological Agency released a major tsunami warning for
Fukushima Prefecture and other areas at 2:49 p.m. on March 11, three
minutes after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck. The first wave of the
tsunami, measuring about four meters in height, hit the Fukushima No. 1
Nuclear Power Plant at around 3:27 p.m. Eight minutes later, a second
wave believed to be more than 10 meters high arrived, surging over a
coastal levee and practically submerging all of the buildings at the plant.

On March 12, TEPCO announced that two workers were missing. The company later conducted a search in the basement of the turbine building, but high radiation levels in water hampered its efforts. Police found the
bodies of the pair on March 30, after the water subsided, and an
announcement on the discovery of their bodies was made on April 3.

In a news conference the same day TEPCO said it was “investigating” why
the workers went into the turbine building, not mentioning that they had
been ordered to conduct inspections.

In a report on the company’s response to the accident, which was
released June 18 under the title "Response at Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear
Power Plant," TEPCO stated that the safety of workers was confirmed and
that a paging system was used to inform workers about the earthquake and
tsunami. However, it made no mention of the inspection orders issued to
the two workers.

A TEPCO representative admitted that the shift manager had ordered the
two workers to conduct inspections. The representative said the workers
in the central control room were aware of the major tsunami warning but
the company was unable to confirm whether the information had reached
the two workers.

Mainichi Shimbun , August 2, 2011

* http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2011/08/02/20110802p2a00m0na015000c.html