The company at the centre of Japan’s worst nuclear crisis has acknowledged for the first time that it could have avoided the disaster that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi power plant last year.
In a reversal of its insistence that nothing could have protected the plant against the earthquake and tsunami that killed almost 20,000 people on 11 March, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said it had known safety improvements were needed before the disaster, but had failed to implement them.
“When looking back on the accident, the problem was that preparations were not made in advance,” Tepco’s internal reform taskforce, led by the firm’s president, Naomi Hirose, said in a statement on Monday.
The company could have taken steps to prevent a catastrophic accident by adopting more extensive safety measures, the statement added.
Tepco’s about-turn came after an independent panel of experts challenged its claim that it could not have foreseen the up to 14m high waves that swept through the plant, knocking out its backup power supply and causing three of its six reactors to melt down.
In a damning report released in July, a parliament-appointed panel criticised years of “collusion” between Tepco, industry regulators and politicians, and described the disaster as “manmade”.
The crisis forced the evacuation of 150,000 residents, most of whom have yet to return home, and led Japan to announce it would end its reliance on nuclear energy, although it has since dropped its deadline to phase out atomic power by 2040.
In a rare moment of introspection, an internal taskforce set up to reform the embattled utility said the firm feared that improvements in safety would highlight the risks to nuclear power plants and encourage the anti-nuclear lobby.
“There was a worry that if the company were to implement a severe-accident response plan, it would spur anxiety throughout the country and in the communities near where nuclear plants are sited, and lend momentum to the anti-nuclear movement,” the report said.
The firm conceded that some suggested safety improvements, such as using multiple power sources and cooling systems, would have required the plant’s temporary closure and added to its costs. Acknowledging that previous safety measures were insufficient could have invited lawsuits, it added.
The statement said the company should have adhered more closely to international safety standards for atomic facilities, and trained specialist staff in practical disaster response rather than relying on safety drills it dismissed as a “formality”.
Tepco’s admission that it was unprepared for the disaster came after the first meeting of an independent advisory committee set up to help the company reform its nuclear operations.
2012 Guardian News and Media Limited