Professor Bunn, by taking natural disaster off the table and calling this profoundly manmade, what did the commission conclude that people did wrong? Over the last month, there have been holding weekly demonstrations outside the prime minister's office.įor more, I am joined by Matthew Bunn, an associate professor at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, where he heads the school's main research group on nuclear policy. Combined with the report, Ohi's resumption will likely inflame those in the anti-nuclear movement in Japan. Japan has been running without nuclear power since early May.īefore the Fukushima accident, nuclear comprised about 30 percent of Japan's energy. Only hours before the report was issued, the Ohi reactor in western Japan came back online, the first to be restarted since last year's disaster. The report's conclusion? "We have proved that it cannot be said there would have been no crisis without the tsunami."īoth the findings and the report's criticism of a conformist culture suggests there could be bigger problems with some of the 50 other reactors in Japan. Among other questions, the report raises this key one: Did the tsunami inevitably lead to the disaster? The report also finds fault with the response from TEPCO, regulators, the government and the prime minister, who visited the plant the day after the tsunami. They either intentionally postponed putting safety measures in place or made decisions based on their organizations' self-interest, and not in the interest of public safety." "The accident occurred because TEPCO didn't take these measures, and NISA and the Nuclear Safety Commission went along. "There were many opportunities for taking preventive measures prior to March 11," the report reads. It specifically goes after TEPCO, Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the Fukushima plant, and NISA, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. Produced by an independent parliamentary panel, the 641-page study blames government and industry collusion and a conformist Japanese culture for the crisis.
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