EDITORIAL: Seawater injection snafu underscores lack of cooperation in nuclear crisis

The brouhaha over the alleged suspension of the seawater injection operation at the disaster-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has turned out to be a big fuss over nothing.

A fierce tussle took place in the Diet between opposition parties and the government over the disputable action that was not actually taken.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the plant, has said there was in fact no 55-minute interruption in efforts to cool the No. 1 reactor with seawater on the day after the nuclear disaster was triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. TEPCO retracted its previous claim that the operation was halted by government intervention.

If TEPCO's revised report on the operation is true, the utility's management was not aware for as long as over two months of the fact that the plant's manager disobeyed instructions from headquarters and ordered the continuation of the injection of seawater. It appears the utility is not functioning properly as a company.

The plant manager's judgment is defensible, at least to some extent. Halting the operation to pour seawater over the crippled reactor was probably something that must never be done.

If, however, the manager decided to continue the operation in defiance of the company's instruction, he should have reported it to the headquarters immediately after the fact. And the company should have published the facts, including its instruction, as soon as it realized what happened.

Information about what actions were taken minute by minute immediately after the crisis erupted is crucial for efforts to prevent the situation from worsening.

Even if the decision has proved to be the right one, the misinformation has seriously damaged the credibility of the announcements about the nuclear disaster made by the government and the utility.

Such failures to provide accurate information about the plant, if continued, will not just undermine efforts to bring the crisis under control but also cause Japan to lose the confidence of the international community.

An even more serious fact highlighted by this snafu is the lack of effective cooperation among the government, the TEPCO headquarters and the team working at the plant, even at this stage.

Being caught up in the blame game, they still cannot even give clear and accurate accounts of events that have taken place at the plant.

Why didn't the government immediately approve TEPCO's plan to inject seawater into the reactor? What kind of exchanges took place between them before the final order was issued?

The government said it considered the possibility of recriticality.

But experts point out that switching from fresh water to seawater for cooling the reactor doesn't increase the possibility of recriticality.

If so, the Nuclear Safety Commission and top TEPCO executives must have been able to advise Prime Minister Naoto Kan to order a seawater injection as soon as possible.

Or did Kan ignore such advice?

It is outrageous if officials at the government and TEPCO are putting greater importance on protecting their political interests, saving their faces and avoiding displeasing their bosses than on the safety of the public and workers directly dealing with the situation.

The work to end the crisis is still under way at the Fukushima plant. It involves many tricky challenges that could trigger a disaster if one mistake is made.

Kan should immediately establish a system to ensure that he will receive accurate information about the situation from the front-line operational staff and be able to make appropriate decisions by considering such information from various angles.

The issues revealed by the episode are serious enough to demand much more than TEPCO's punitive action against the plant manager.

--The Asahi Shimbun, May 28