Ex-TEPCO Officials To Be Indicted Over Fukushima

AmiMoJo writes: Three former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Company will face mandatory indictment over the March 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The prosecution inquest panel of randomly-selected citizens voted for the indictment on Friday, for professional negligence resulting in death and injury. "Tokyo prosecutors in January rejected the panel's judgment that the three should be charged, citing insufficient evidence. But the 11 unidentified citizens on the panel forced the indictment after a second vote, which makes an indictment mandatory. The three are former chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, 75, and former executives Sakae Muto, 65, and Ichiro Takekuro, 69. Citizens' panels, made up of residents selected by lottery, are a rarely used but high-profile feature of Japan's legal system introduced after World War Two to curb bureaucratic overreach."

Comments

better late than never

[The Real Dr John]

The evidence is pretty clear that a lax attitude and cozy government-corporate-regulatory environment made this disaster much worse than it had to be. I am sure that they will all get off without any significant penalties or jail time, but at least they are going to have to go through the court system.

Re:better late than never

[Penguinisto]

I do kind of wonder about one thing, though... why are the engineers who designed that beast not being indicted? After all, nearly all of the vital pumps and generators were in the basements of both the Daiichi and Daini sites, with much of the critical equipment right next to the water, instead of uphill where they should have been (and at least not in basements... WTH, people?)

The Daini site lucked out big-time, with a monumental effort by the crews there to run enough cable from the few generators they still had working to the pumps which needed the juice - something like 2 miles of cable had to be scrounged and tied together.

BTW, props to the operators and supervisors onsite - for instance, the idea of scrounging car batteries and tying them together with inverters so that they could get the control panels back up was pretty genius. Same with having a special firefighting team from Tokyo come in to keep the storage pools full of water. At both sites they were stuck with having to come up with creative ways to avoid things from getting as bad as they could have.

I think that with a couple of design changes (both to the reactors and to the rest of the plant) they could have survived much better off than they were.

All that said, I don't think anyone could have predicted the size and scope of the tsunami that hit them. The TEPCO execs should still have to face a bit of music though (for instance, one site operator asking for 4,000 liters of water for a cooling pool and getting 4,000 bottles of drinking water instead? Damn, y'all...)

Re:better late than never

[Penguinisto]

You gonna charge them with crating a Tsunami? One that exceeded estimates by Government Officials?

Seems they have Witch Hunts in Japan too...

The idea isn't to charge them with the cause of the disaster, but with more than a little incompetence that they displayed afterwards - not to mention the often blatant lies they told to the public during the aftermath. Examples include publicly chewing out the Daiichi site supervisor for using seawater to keep the surviving reactors cooled down when that was pretty much all he had to use (given the alternative? Yeah, I'd piss on the things if it helped). Other examples include sending needed cooling water to the Daini site... in drinking water bottles. There's a whole host of other bork-ups, and the blame for the vast majority of them lies squarely on the execs in Tokyo.

Besides, I do respect one thing about the Japanese - when the shit hits the fan, the leaders are the first to take blame, and go out of their way to not pass the blame downhill unnecessarily. Up and down the chain, folks take responsibility for what they do (or don't do). Wouldn't hurt to see some of that attitude on this side of the Pacific...

Re:better late than never

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the infos. More details in the following article:

"How the Other Fukushima Plant Survived"
https://hbr.org/2014/07/how-the-other-fukushima-plant-survived/ar/1

Re:better late than never

[Mr D from 63]

The plant was not designed to be underwater. It should never have been sited where it could suddenly wind up underwater. It certainly could have been designed to withstand a tsunami, but that was never a criteria. It makes much more sense just to not site it where it can be suddenly deluged to start with.

Re:better late than never

[ACE209]

From the second linked article:

When Japanese prosecutors bring charges on their own initiative, they win convictions more than 99 percent of the time, but cases forced on them by citizens’ review panels are different. Almost by definition, they involve charges that prosecutors saw little hope of proving.

Re:better late than never

[khallow]

The idea isn't to charge them with the cause of the disaster, but with more than a little incompetence that they displayed afterwards - not to mention the often blatant lies they told to the public during the aftermath. Examples include publicly chewing out the Daiichi site supervisor for using seawater to keep the surviving reactors cooled down when that was pretty much all he had to use (given the alternative? Yeah, I'd piss on the things if it helped). Other examples include sending needed cooling water to the Daini site... in drinking water bottles. There's a whole host of other bork-ups, and the blame for the vast majority of them lies squarely on the execs in Tokyo.

So what? What's so special about your accusations that the level of "blame" rises to that of public humiliation? I think instead we see here a prime example of why the culture of responsibility, that Japan is or perhaps was famous for, has such a hard time taking root on "this side of this Pacific". Namely, that a certain culture is far more interested in assigning blame even to the point of blowing minor missteps out of proportion such as you do above, than in taking responsibility or respecting those who do.

And I find it interesting how you respond to a post about witch hunts with arguments based on water bottles. That veers into self-parody.

Re:better late than never

[drinkypoo]

I do kind of wonder about one thing, though... why are the engineers who designed that beast not being indicted? After all, nearly all of the vital pumps and generators were in the basements of both the Daiichi and Daini sites,

Yeah, now go research what area residents thought about putting generators on pylons, where they would have had to be in order to be useful in this incident. They didn't want them there. Wonder how they feel now?

The truth is that engineers will always say "this is what we need to do" and then bean counters or executives or lawyers get involved and say "well this is what we're doing so work it out" and then you can either feed your family or quit and maintain your principles and oh by the way, about that recommendation...

Re:better late than never

[Mr D from 63]

Emergency generators were not in the basements.

Putting generators on pylons is a tremendous oversimplification of what would be needed to design to withstand a tsunami. Generators are useless when all the distribution and control systems are also deluged. Placing large heavy generators on pylons makes them more susceptible to earthquakes. How high do you go?

Plants are designed for floods up to a certain level. It is up to the siting analysis to determine where you can place the plant and auxiliaries, and you don't place it where it can be deluged by a tsunami, because it is not designed for a tsunami to begin with. While placing a few auxiliaries higher up may possibly have had some benefit in the aftermath, you can't depend on maybes. You avoid the maybes by not placing the plant there to start with.

Re:better late than never

[drinkypoo]

Putting generators on pylons is a tremendous oversimplification of what would be needed to design to withstand a tsunami.

In this case, it probably would have done the job; emergency power would have been available to keep things running.

Plants are designed for floods up to a certain level. It is up to the siting analysis to determine where you can place the plant and auxiliaries

You know the site was actually lowered substantially to make construction cheaper, right?

Re:better late than never

[Mr D from 63]

In this case, it probably would have done the job; emergency power would have been available to keep things running.

Like I said, you don't depend on 'probably'. And you don't know if the pylons would have held up to a tsunami if you didn't postulate it to begin with. If you did postulate it, you simply don't put the pant there.

You know the site was actually lowered substantially to make construction cheaper, right?

Which is part of the siting and site analysis process that failed to keep a plant that was not designed to be hit by a tsunami out of the path of a tsunami.

Re:better late than never

[drinkypoo]

Which is part of the siting and site analysis process that failed to keep a plant that was not designed to be hit by a tsunami out of the path of a tsunami.

It's the post-bean-counter phase of design. Engineers find a site which will work, bean counters fuck it all up, just like I said.

Re:better late than never

[Penguinisto]

I'll just leave this right here...

Re:better late than never

[Mr D from 63]

It's the post-bean-counter phase of design. Engineers find a site which will work, bean counters fuck it all up, just like I said.

Was it bean counters, or design engineers, or environmental engineers, or geologists, that underestimated the tsunami potential?

Someone said the lower elevation was safe. In the end, it came down to mischaracterization of the tsunami threat. Either way, the plant should have never been sited where it was.

Re:better late than never

[blue9steel]

Or more likely "desire of proving".

Re:better late than never

[blue9steel]

How do you prosecute people for not forseeing a double-whammy overcoming triple redundancy?

Japan is known for both earthquakes and tsunami, I hardly think the event was unanticipated. They merely decided that a lower level of protection was cheaper and they'd probably be long gone from that organization before any negative events occurred. Hurrah for focusing on quarterly profits over safety!

Re: better late than never

[Anonymous Coward]

The examples given are not minor missteps in any way. When operating reactors of this type and a cooling failure leaves you with only the option of killing the reactor permanently (boron injection, sea water, or any other last-ditch effort that will damage the reactor beyond repair), it is of absolute importance that the operators in charge have the authority to do this. There must be no question about who has that authority. The threshold is high enough as it is, since the operators know that they will suffer personal consequences if they scuttle the reactor and are wrong. What the execs did here was to also instill fear in the operators that they would suffer consequences even if they were right. The execs made an effort to delay or prevent the necessary measures.

Re:better late than never

[tlhIngan]

I do kind of wonder about one thing, though... why are the engineers who designed that beast not being indicted? After all, nearly all of the vital pumps and generators were in the basements of both the Daiichi and Daini sites, with much of the critical equipment right next to the water, instead of uphill where they should have been (and at least not in basements... WTH, people?)

Actually, the generators being under was not the problem. You can run generators underwater, provided you have a source for fuel and air above water and can keep it reasonably water tight.

The real problem was the distribution gear got flooded.

As in the electrical panels. Once the tsunami flooded the panels, they shorted out. The generators were running just fine with the water level, and even then, the generators were a backup to a backup.

The first thing is if the reactors go offline, the power station draws power from the grid to run the equipment. And the plant was doing that since there was still power going in. That's the first backup. The second backup is if the grid power goes offline, then you have local generators.

All of which means diddly when your electrical distribution panels get soaked and short out your switchgear, taking with it BOTH backup mechanisms. So now it doesn't matter that the generators or grid power was available - the panel's shorted out and you can't use either system.

Re:better late than never

[khallow]

So Japanese politicians can exploit crises for gain too. Who knew?

Re:better late than never

[Kagetsuki]

Actually the points of contention here are:
1. Emergency pumps were marked as checked, but were not actually checked.
2. Diesel backup generators were probably not checked as they experienced a cascade failure when powered on.
3. Post could have been dealt with better (though this is likely more the fault of former P.M. Kann).
4. Company may have mis-used disaster management emergency funds / officials did not act in a responsible manner (EG officials did not take pay cuts / officials did not start working extra hours / generally officials did not show enough responsibility).

Particularly #4 should be looked at as there have been accidents at nuclear plants before - all previous cases had officials immediately responding to the issues ON SITE and seeing the solutions to completion personally. Companies like Touhoku Electric and Chubu Electric have shown extremely responsible oversight to the point of their CEO's taking extreme personal risks to remedy any problems and constantly going beyond government requirements for all safety measures. TEPCO on the other hand seems to be run by greedy d-bags.

Re:better late than never

[Fire_Wraith]

It's not just their incompetence afterwards. There is evidence that they were made aware of the threat, as recently as three years prior:

In short, they were warned by scientists, and failed to take action.

Re:better late than never

[AmiMoJo]

Even with the loss of the generators and distribution panels there was still a backup option. They used pump trucks to inject water into the system for emergency cooling. They were in place and operating in time to avert a major disaster, but a critical valve was in the wrong position so the pumped water ended up in storage tanks instead of the reactor cooling system. The valve could not be checked because the monitoring equipment was damaged, and damage to the plant made physical inspection difficult.

The real heart of the issue is that there was both inadequate tsunami resilience and due to management being cheap, and mistakes made by operators due to lack of experience, understanding and proper procedures thanks again to management being cheap.

Re:better late than never

[countach]

All nukes need to be near water. All (or almost) all sources of water can overflow their normal height. Ergo putting generators in the basement is never a good idea.

Re:better late than never

[countach]

Even if you can technically run generators underwater if all the stars are aligned, it's hardly what you want to plan for is it? How do you do repairs on a generator underwater?

Re:better late than never

[khallow]

Another alternative here is that you can acquire your viewpoint of reality through some other means than the current whim of a politician. I just fail to see the value of the argument that some dude who is a "local governor" happens to have an opinion on the Fukushima accident.

Re:better late than never

[Mr D from 63]

The emergency generators were not in the basement. They would operate just fine under the design basis flood, which is the flood level the plant was designed for. Unfortunately, they put it where it could get flooded above that level, and worse because a tsunami not only floods, but tears up whatever is in its path.

Re:better late than never

[Hussman32]

Several reactors in the United States are BWR Mark I containments. Newer designs have enhanced safety measures, and there have been many upgrades since the accident, but they can operate safely for design basis accidents. The tsunami was far beyond design basis.

Re:better late than never

[khallow]

Do you know anything about what happened in the months after the Tsunami?

Yes. For example, I know about the huge rush to judgment. I also know that the accident was successfully contained.

Re: better late than never

[khallow]

The thing is, while there's evidence that the decision to permanently scuttle the reactors was delayed somewhat, there's no similar evidence that interference from "execs" materially delayed that. Else, you wouldn't be speaking in vague generalities.

Re:better late than never

[kesj]

The answer to your question is simple. The plant rode out the initial event (earthquake) with no problem. The site's diesel generators did, in fact, start on loss of off-site power and picked up load. All systems functioned as designed post-trip. The diesels and the pumps they powered ran until the diesels were submerged and their combustion air cut off by the tsunami flood. Additionally, not only was the AC power lost when the diesels flooded but the vital DC power was also lost as the 125V DC barttery banks and distribution panels also flooded. There is a reason for putting very heavy battery banks, distribution panels, and pieces of heavy machinery low in a building close to the underlying bedrock. Do you really want something that weighs tens of tons swaying back and forth in an earthquake? The batteries, AC and DC distribution panels, and diesel generators were positioned above the site's design basis flood level as determined by the geologists. The problem wasn't an engineering/design issue but a failure of geologists to recognize a tsunami of the size experienced was possible at the site. If you want go after the technical people, then I suggest the geologists are a better target then the enginners/designers.

Re:better late than never

[khallow]

For varying definitions of successfully contained given all the radiation that poured into the ocean and polluted soil for miles around the plant. Let us also not forget that they were warned to raise their generators higher off the ground. The new specifications would have prevent the failure in the first place and we'd still have a nuclear power pant if they had spent the money when it mattered.

"Warned" by who? And how credible were these warnings? I know you think you know the difference between foresight and hindsight. But you don't. You have to understand when people knew what and how fast a very conservative bureaucracy responds to newly exposed risks.

Here's my understanding of the timeline for the tsunami risk assessment. From previous discussions on Slashdot, I gather it was realized before the earthquake that the risk of much higher tsunami had been underestimated. But this risk wasn't even revealed till 2001 (that's the oldest reference anyone has given me).

Then the various nuclear plants were instructed to review this risk some point after that with TEPCO completing their assessment of the Fukushima plant some point around 2008 or 2009. At that point, apparently, it was determined that the plant did not have adequate sea walls for the worst case.

At this point, you have various complicating factors such as the planned closure of these reactors over the next decade and the fact that nobody in the nuclear industry moves fast.

It is much like the levies in Louisiana that flooded the whole city. The army core of engineers had already recommended improvements that were not performed because nobody wanted to spent the few million it would have taken. So instead we spent 10s of billions cleaning up the mess.

Except that those risks have been known for a long time and the risk of New Orleans getting directly hit by a strong hurricane remain considerably higher than eastern Japan getting hit by very high tsunami. New Orleans still faces that same risk despite the levee upgrades.

For example, if a hurricane stalls over New Orleans, then it'll be just as flooded as it was that time. It's also worth noting that they still have the habit of appointing the sort of irresponsible leadership that led to the high loss of life in the Katrina disaster.

Re: better late than never

[khallow]

But it does create a bunch of opportunity for the government to shut down your business on grounds of not taking legally sufficient precautions against underage access. It's a balancing act of liability for credit card fraud vs. liability for fines for noncompliance.

No, it didn't. From Wikipedia, the highest operating estimate is 800 PBq versus 5200 PBq. Further, 80% of that radiation is thought to have fallen in the ocean. So that looks like less than 1/30th the release of Chernobyl on land.

Interesting

[Fire_Wraith]

The part that interests me is how this seems to differ quite radically from grand juries in the U.S., where the citizens on the Grand Jury are largely window dressing. If the prosecutor wants an indictment, they'll get it, and if they don't, they'll make sure the grand jury won't deliver one.

Here, though, it's clear the prosecutors didn't want an indictment, and the citizens forced one anyway.

Re:Interesting

[CODiNE]

Sweet, in addition I nominate going after bosses who shush security holes in their products and insist on adding new features instead.

Re:Interesting

[JoshuaZ]

Well, it is likely connected to the fact that Japan has an insanely high conviction rate, over 99% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate. Part of this is due to the fact that prosecutors in Japan only bring cases if they are very confident of a conviction (probably part of why the prosecutors did not want to prosecute in this case) but also cultural issues where once a person is prosecuted, the default assumption in terms of how people treat it is that the person is guilty.

Re:Interesting

[jbmartin6]

Typically the prosecutor has an advantage since he controls the presentation and can frame it however he likes. But if a grand jury wanted to indict anyway, why couldn't they? It seems like the same holds true in Japan, the grand jury delivered the verdict the prosecutor wanted just like in the US. But the interesting part is, there is a third party (article didn't detail where it comes from or who is a member) that can appeal the grand jury decision.

Re:Interesting

[Chris Mattern]

Of course, given that the prosecutors didn't want an indictment in the first place and given that the prosecutors are the ones in charge of trying to convict the defendants, one wonders what the chances of actually getting a conviction are...

Re:Interesting

[ejasons]

I would suspect that the problem is that jurors are selected not to know anything about the case. Then, if the prosecutor doesn't present any compelling evidence, how can there be a conviction?

Re:What a...

[CrimsonAvenger]

fantastically sensible system.

You mispelled "stupid".

Note that if the prosecutors don't have enough evidence to convict (their reason for overturning the first Grand Jury decision), all that's going to happen is a show-trial followed by an acquittal. It'll waste some time, some money (for both the hypothetical villains and the government), and otherwise do nothing meaningful.

Or are we expecting them to start fabricating evidence, just to ensure a conviction?

Indictment does not mean guilty....

[bobbied]

All this really does is cause these poor guys to face charges that prosecutors now must try to prove. Given that all the other methods of getting an indictment on these guys failed, one can easily infer that the chances they get convicted of anything is next to nil.

This is basically a political witch hunt by some PR hounds who want to make it look like the accused are somehow guilty of gross negligence because it was their plant (which satisfied the government's safety requirements) blew up and made a mess after some natural disaster that nobody foresaw or even considered possible happened. It's like holding the tornado shelter installer criminally liable for not protecting the occupants of the shelter from earthquake damage and chemical attacks.

Lying, Sheer Incompetence and Disregard for life

[Anonymous Coward]

All this really does is cause these poor guys to face charges that prosecutors now must try to prove. Given that all the other methods of getting an indictment on these guys failed, one can easily infer that the chances they get convicted of anything is next to nil.

This is basically a political witch hunt by some PR hounds who want to make it look like the accused are somehow guilty of gross negligence because it was their plant (which satisfied the government's safety requirements) blew up and made a mess after some natural disaster that nobody foresaw or even considered possible happened. It's like holding the tornado shelter installer criminally liable for not protecting the occupants of the shelter from earthquake damage and chemical attacks.

Do some research before commenting. Corporate TEPCO repeatedly lied to the public and the government, was incompetent (sending water needed to cool the reactor in drinking water bottles) and obstructive to the point of disregarding human life (ordering sea-water injection to be shut off based on how the prime minister's "mood").

Terrible Idea

[tsotha]

This is an embarrassing process. It's the justice of the mob.

They didn't just do this to themselves...

[iq145]

...as seen here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... BUT they did this to us too, and the rest of the world... "A news report says Japan's tsunami-ravaged nuclear plant was so unprepared for the disaster that workers had to bring protective gear and instruction manuals from elsewhere and borrow equipment from a contractor. The report, released by operator Tokyo Electric Co, is based on interviews of workers and plant data. It portrays chaos in a desperate and ultimately unsuccessful battle to protect the Fukushima plant from meltdown, and shows that workers struggled with unfamiliar equipment." ap.org/ - "Scientists have found traces of radioactivity in fish off the California coast that migrated from the waters off of Japan, site of the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster of 2011, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The researchers say the evidence is unequivocal. The young tuna were found to be contaminated with two radioactive forms of the element cesium from Fukushima." http://content.usatoday.com/co... - "Japanese whalers caught 2 animals along the northern coast that had traces of radiation from leaks at a damaged nuclear power plant, officials said. 2 of 17 minke whales caught off the Pacific coast of Hokkaido showed traces of radioactive cesium, both about 1/20th of the legal limit, fisheries officials said. They are the first whales thought to have been affected by radiation leaked from the Fukushima nuclear plant since it was hit by a 3/11/11 earthquake and tsunami." nhjournal. com