| The strong
earthquake that damaged Niigata and Nagano prefectures on July 16 has exposed
disturbingly poor firefighting capabilities of many nuclear facilities
in Japan. The deadly earthquake caused a fire at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa
Nuclear Power Plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO). The plant's
response to the fire was delayed by various factors. Alarmed by the ineptitude,
the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which regulates the power
industry, ordered electric power companies and related firms to report
on their preparedness for fires at nuclear facilities.
The picture that has emerged from the reports submitted to the ministry is quite troubling. Of the 10 companies that operate nuclear power plants, only about half have chemical fire engines and hotlines linked to local fire departments. None of the operators has firefighting squads on duty around the clock at their nuclear power plants. TV footage showed a column of black smoke billowing out of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant immediately after the fire broke out there. Many TV viewers felt uneasy about the fact that there was no army of fire engines at the site. Given the facts revealed by the power companies' reports, there could well be replays of the frightful spectacle at other nuclear power plants. It took about two hours to douse the fire at the TEPCO plant in Niigata Prefecture. Various disruptions caused by the magnitude 6.8 quake were also behind the failure to act more quickly. The plant has an emergency hotline for firefighting efforts, but it was unusable because the temblor damaged the building where the equipment was located and workers could not enter the building. It was 12 minutes after the fire was discovered that the call to report the fire connected to the Kashiwazaki municipal fire department. But the fire department was unable to respond immediately to the accident at the plant because it was working furiously to deal with situation created by the quake. (suite)
|
suite:
The fire department asked the plant staff to use its own firefighting team to make the initial response. Workers at the plant tried to extinguish the fire on their own, but their efforts were frustrated; the water pipes used for the plant's firefighting system had been rendered useless by the quake. In the end, local firefighters who arrived at the site more than one hour later brought the fire under control. A fire within a nuclear power plant must be subdued quickly. Otherwise, it could destroy wirings and pipes, triggering a chain reaction of trouble that could eventually lead to a nuclear disaster with a huge leak of radioactivity. It is crucial for all nuclear power plants to have their own systems to douse fires. They also need to have the ability to fight fires without depending on the fire department. The damage the latest quake caused to the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant also drew the attention of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog. IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei offered to have a group of experts of the agency inspect the plant and investigate the accident. The aim of the mission is to obtain information about the damage and share it internationally, according to the IAEA. One important lesson was learned when Japan's power industry was hit by a series of revelations about trouble cover-ups at nuclear power plants. That was the importance of swiftly publishing information about minor errors and glitches, allowing information to be shared among all people working in nuclear industries around the world. Details about how the firefighting operation at the TEPCO plant was delayed can be used to prevent deadly nuclear disasters in the future. The government should cooperate with the IAEA's investigation. |