Nominated for the Public Eye People’s Award 2012
by Finance Green Watch, www.financegreenwatch.org
Summary
Risk blindness led to a meltdown: Against its better judgement, Tepco, Japan’s largest energy company, grossly neglected the structural safety of its nuclear power plants in order to cut costs. The meltdown at Fukushima and the resulting radioactive contamination of people, land and sea could have been prevented. Confronted with violent natural forces, first the equipment capitulated, followed by the on-site emergency management. The company also provided information that was verifiably false or very late in coming. A culture of favors, cover-ups and falsifications reigns at Tepco.
About TEPCO
Headquarters: Tokyo, Japan
Industry: energy
Owned by: publicly-listed corporation
Employees: 38,000
President: Toshio Nishizawa
Website: www.tepco.co.jp
Irresponsible Corporate Behavior
Tepco neglected multiple serious flaws and risk appraisals of its atomic power plants. For example, in 2007, reactors in the neighboring community of Niigata were damaged due to an earthquake. Although investigations revealed in retrospect that Tepco had severely underestimated the risk of natural catastrophe, no inspections or upgrades were carried out on other nuclear power plants. Safety inspections were even falsified, and flaws in structural design were not repaired. When the Fukushima plant was originally built at a 35-meter-high (115-foot) site above sea level. But they dug down by a 10-meter-high(33-foot) above sea level, because they needed to access sea water to cool down the vessel most economical way. If they built original site, they could have prevented from flooding by tsunami and avoided the meltdown. Moreover, Tepco failed during the crisis: The emergency organization was poorly devised, personnel were overextended, and information dissemination was overseen by the interests of Tepco. The company’s sluggish or non-existent compensation of victims also gives a bad impression.
Consequences
The consequences of a meltdown are not quantifiable, but they are immense in any case: Hundreds and thousands people were temporarily exposed to high levels of radiation and were forced to leave home and belongings behind. Three hundred sixty thousand Japanese children and youth were examined for possible radiation injuries. Large stretches of land around Fukushima were contaminated with radioactivity and are no longer inhabitable. Contaminated water continues to flow into the ocean and spread to the world. The extent of the long-term effects to health, including increased cases of cancer and effects on the human genotype, are difficult to estimate. Their behaviour might be called a crime of omission, but they could have avoided such result. Therefore it shall be regarded as a willful negligence. It is worse than unquestionable crime.
Current Status and Demands on the Company
Tepco must expedite clean-up operations and put more effort into compensation. The company must also inspect and drastically increase the safety of all reactors, simultaneously invest in a smart grid that encourages the use of renewable energy sources, and drastically reduce as quickly as possible Japan’s reliance on nuclear power. Shouldn’t the company be dissolved?
Further Information
Website of Finance Green Watch:
How Tepco knowingly accepted the risk of a meltdown:
www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111026a1.html
Fukushima contamination is equal to 168 Hiroshima bombs:
Huge protest against Tepco in Japan:
www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/thousands-rally-for-fukushima-compensation
The journal “Nature” on Tepco’s understated impacts of Fukushima:
www.nature.com/news/2011/111025/full/478435a.html