Japan's Nuclear Samurai

"We had trained with it [lead-panelled truck to deal with nuclear incidents], but I never imagined we'd actually have to use it."

"With the loss of power at that plant, it was clear that we were in a worse-case scenario."

"The dispatch team said it was up to each member to decide whether they wanted to go But nobody said no. My family said 'take care' and wished me luck, but I don't think they really understood the full scope of what we were being asked to do."

"Other members of the team asked their closest friends to promise that they would look after their children and elderly parents if they did not come back."

"I had a strong sense of an invisible danger [at the plant exposed to deadly radiation levels]." 

"What happened at Fukushima made us all fearful, but we were forged into a team at Fukushima, and there is nothing now that we couldn't do to protect people's lives. I know if it happened again, we'd be ready."

Kenji Takeda, expert, Special Disaster Unit, Tokyo Fire Brigade

"What must be admitted -- very painfully -- is that this was a disaster 'Made in Japan'."

"Its fundamental causes are in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority."

Parliamentary Inquiry

"Japan likes to think of itself as a very safe place where nothing ever happens, so it used to be almost taboo to imagine the worst."

"That comes partly as a result of our postwar history, where we wanted to show the world we were bouncing back, and that everything was plain sailing."

The younger generation has started to question deference to authority, though, and people are much more wary of big power firms and big tech."

Noriko Hama, professor, Doshisha Business School

TEPCO

 

In March 2011 the world sat up in alarmed notice at news out of Japan. Out at sea, 80 kilometres from Japan, a massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake occurred; the Earth's crust displaced a giant-sized chunk of a tectonic plate, moving it about 50 metres. The resulting tremor was the most powerful on record for Japan. A population long accustomed to seismic shocks was justifiably terrified by this one. And then came the tsunami, a wall of water high as 40 metres in some places. Japan's eastern seaboard was flooded up to 10 km inland.

Over 300,000 buildings were wrecked in minutes and in that time frame close to 20,000 people died. Kenji Takeda was in his HQ's incident room, watching footage of ships on TV screens, tossed onto buildings, people desperate to flee the oncoming tide, packed into their cars, cramming the highways. Then came reports that the Fukushima nuclear power plant on the stricken east coast had its electrical supply knocked out, the very electricity supply used to control the reactors.

In anticipation of just such an event, a six-metre-high anti-tsunami seawall had been built. But it was a 15 metre-high wave that hit Fukushima, sweeping over and through the retaining wall, and on the way scattering its concrete blocks, wrecking the plant in the process. With no power to pump water to cool the plant's fuel rods, Fukushima was on the cusp of a Chernobyl-type meltdown. One that had the potential to render a  huge swath of eastern Japan and Tokyo uninhabitable.

Diagram showing basic design of a Mark 1 reactor like those of Fukushima Daiichi. When functioning properly, the reactor at center is filled with circulating water that bathes the contained fuel. Essentially a reinforced concrete container, the drywell is the first line containment vessel should the reactor become compromised. Below that is the wet well, which is a hollow steel donut filled with water. (Source: Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

 

The containment chambers around three of the plant's four reactors ruptured over the next four days, as a result of hydrogen gas buildups, sending radioactive mushroom clouds up 300 metres in height. There had been stern warnings the plant's seawall was too low but they were ignored. The plant's owners, Tokyo Electric Power Company, insisted on ordering its staff on the ground what their actions should be. The plant's on-site manager, Masao Yoshida, defied them, disobeying direct HQ orders not to use sea water to cool the reactors.

He had swiftly determined the only way to avoid an all-out meltdown was the use of seawater, and his determined action saved the situation from becoming a worse disaster than it already was. The scale of the damage was apparent to the crew of the emergency response team dispatched to the plant by the Special Disaster Unit of the Tokyo Fire Brigade. As they drove to the site they saw bridges were destroyed, cars washed up everywhere, trees pulled up and lying across roads.

As they neared the plant they saw no one but livestock and abandoned pets wandering about. The stricken reactor buildings were still smoking as they reached the plant. In part of the plant radiation levels were so deadly workers were unable to remain inside for long even while wearing protective clothing. Takeda's own Geiger counter bleeped warnings -- while he was helping to spray water on one of the destroyed reactors -- to get out immediately. "It didn't usually get up into the danger zone, but it was sounding the entire time that we had to stay there."

 

The workers were required to pump hundreds of tonnes of water onto the reactors every hour to cool them, normally done using the reactor's stocks of chemically pure fresh water. The pumping systems were unworkable which led Plant manager Yoshida to the quick-fix solution, turning to the limitless supply of water in the ocean. His decision spared Japan from an all-out meltdown. His supervising bosses at TEPCO were more concerned over the plant; using unpurified salt water would corrode the reactor's interior, rendering the multibillion-dollar facility inoperable. 

"We don't have the option to use fresh water, that will cause further delays", he retorted when asked to wait until fresh water could be sourced. Yoshida assessed the situation, given the choice between risking the plant's future usefulness, or the very future of Japan itself. His heroic action earned him a formal reprimand by his bosses, while subsequent official enquiries found his act of insubordination was critical to bringing an incipient total meltdown under control.

A 19-km exclusion zone remains in place around Fukushima. Some of the 150,00 residents of the area originally evacuated, have been permitted to return to less contaminated areas. There is an ongoing clean-up of remaining radioactive debris. And the plant has become a tourism attraction, visitors touring abandoned, overgrown ghost towns. 

In the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, nuclear power opposition rose, leading the government to pledge to phase it out. It was not only Japan where nervous tension over the catastrophic potential of things going dreadfully wrong with nuclear plants were brought to the fore. Other countries far from Japan, peering at the situation with the Fukushima plant, as dire as it was, decided they would mothball their nuclear plants; Germany for one decided to depend more heavily on solar energy until it discovered it could never entirely replace reliance on traditional energy sources.

Now that Fukushima's disaster has dissipated in time and memory, and concerns have been placed elsewhere, with pressure to meet carbon reduction targets, Japan's government last year announced plans to build a new generation of reactors. Yoshida and Takeda are celebrated as members of the "Fukushima 50"; plant technicians and rescue workers who saved Japan from disaster a decade ago. Those who worked in that inferno to save their country from a far worse disaster were resigned to the belief they might not themselves return alive from their mission.

This photo shows some of about 1,000 huge tanks holding treated but still radioactive wastewater at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO), in Okuma town, northeastern Japan, on Feb. 22, 2023. Treated radioactive wastewater is set to be released into sea sometime from spring 2023 to summer after required testing and dilution with large amounts of seawater. (AP Photo/Mari Yamaguchi)

"For five years after Fukushima, there was a big debate about the risks of nuclear power stations in a country that sits on such massive geological fault lines."

"Opposition has now waned, but I think that's more because of a belief that nuclear power is a greener option rather than faith in Japanese technological prowess."

Dr. Bryce Wakefield, Australian Institute of International Affairs