Fukushima Smoking Gun Emerges: Founding Engineer Says Reactor 4 Has Always Been A "Time Bomb"

It was only a matter of time before someone grew a conscience, and disclosed to the world that in addition to the massive cover up currently going on with respect to the true extent of the Fukushima catastrophe, the actual plant itself, in borrowing from the BP playbook, was built in a hurried way, using cost and labor-cutting shortcuts, and the end result was a true "time bomb." Bloomberg has just released a report that if and when confirmed should lead to the prompt engagement of harakiri by the Hitachi executives responsible for this unprecedented act of treason against Japan's citizens

Check it out:

Fukushima Smoking Gun Emerges: Founding Engineer Says Reactor 4 Has Always Been A "Time Bomb", Exposes Criminal Cover Up:

It was only a matter of time before someone grew a conscience, and disclosed to the world that in addition to the massive cover up currently going on with respect to the true extent of the Fukushima catastrophe, the actual plant itself, in borrowing from the BP playbook, was built in a hurried way, using cost and labor-cutting shortcuts, and the end result was a true "time bomb." Bloomberg has just released a report that if and when confirmed should lead to the prompt engagement of harakiri by the Hitachi executives responsible for this unprecedented act of treason against Japan's citizens. Quote Bloomberg: "One of the reactors in the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant may have been relying on flawed steel to hold the radiation in its core, according to an engineer who helped build its containment vessel four decades ago. Mitsuhiko Tanaka says he helped conceal a manufacturing defect in the $250 million steel vessel installed at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 4 reactor while working for a unit of Hitachi Ltd. in 1974. The reactor, which Tanaka has called a “time bomb,” was shut for maintenance when the March 11 earthquake triggered a 7-meter (23-foot) tsunami that disabled cooling systems at the plant, leading to explosions and radiation leaks....“Who knows what would have happened if that reactor had been running?” Tanaka, who turned his back on the nuclear industry after the Chernobyl disaster, said in an interview last week. “I have no idea if it could withstand an earthquake like this. It’s got a faulty reactor inside.” What follows is the harrowing tale of a criminal cover up at the only reactor that luckily was empty when the catastrophe occurred. We can only imagine what comparable horror stories will emerge in the next several days as other whistleblowers emerge and disclose that Reactors 1 through 3 (which unfortunately do have radioactive fuel in their reactors) passed the same "rigorous" quality control process that makes them the same time bombs just waiting or the signal to go off (and probably already have... but since the truth is the last thing the public will uncover one can only speculate).

More on this sad story of criminal corruption and incompetence from the bottom all the way to the top, from bloomberg:

Tanaka’s allegations, which he says he brought to the attention of Japan’s Trade Ministry in 1988 and chronicled in a book two years later called “Why Nuclear Power is Dangerous,” have resurfaced after Japan’s worst nuclear accident on record. The No. 4 reactor was hit by explosions and a fire that spread from adjacent units as the crisis deepened.

Hitachi spokesman Yuichi Izumisawa said the company met with Tanaka in 1988 to discuss the work he did to fix a dent in the vessel and concluded there was no safety problem. “We have not revised our view since then,” Izumisawa said.

Kenta Takahashi, an official at the Trade Ministry’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said he couldn’t confirm whether the agency’s predecessor, the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, had conducted an investigation into Tanaka’s claims. Naoki Tsunoda, a spokesman at Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the plant, said he couldn’t immediately comment.

Tanaka, who said he led the team that built the steel vessel, was at his apartment on Tokyo’s outskirts when Japan’s biggest earthquake on record struck off the coast on March 11, shaking buildings in the nation’s capital.

“I grabbed my wife and we just hugged,” he said. “I thought this is it: we’re dead.”

For Tanaka, the nightmare intensified the next day when a series of explosions were triggered next to the reactor that he helped build. Since then, the risks of radioactive leaks increased as workers have struggled to bring the plant under control.

Here is why one should not trust anything coming out of the authorities out of TEPCO and out of all other pundits who now rely on what is certifiably faulty information:

Tanaka says the reactor pressure vessel inside Fukushima’s unit No. 4 was damaged at a Babcock-Hitachi foundry in Kure City, in Hiroshima prefecture, during the last step of a manufacturing process that took 2 1/2 years and cost tens of millions of dollars. If the mistake had been discovered, the company might have been bankrupted, he said.

Inside a blast furnace the size of a small airplane hanger the reactor pressure vessel was being treated one last time to remove welding stress. The cylinder, 20 meters tall and 6 meters in diameter, was heated to more than 600 degrees Celsius (1,112 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that softens metal.

Braces that were supposed to have been placed inside during the blasting were either forgotten or fell over when the cylinder was wheeled into the furnace. After the vessel cooled, workers found that its walls had warped, Tanaka said.

The vessel had sagged so that its height and width differed by more than 34 millimeters, meaning it should have been scrapped, according to nuclear regulations. Rather than sacrifice years of work and risk the company’s survival, Tanaka’s boss asked him to reshape the vessel so that no-one would know it had ever been damaged. Tanaka had been working as an engineer for the company’s nuclear reactor division and was known for his programming skills.

Saving Hitachi billions by putting millions at risk:

“I saved the company billions of yen,” said Tanaka, who says he was paid a 3 million yen bonus and presented with a certificate acknowledging his “extraordinary” effort. “At the time, I felt like a hero,” he said.

Over the course of a month, Tanaka said he made a dozen nighttime trips to an International Business Machines Corp. office 20 kilometers away in Hiroshima where he used a super- computer to devise a repair.

Covering up the lies with a sheet, and bribing with golf and hot springs:

Meanwhile, workers covered the damaged vessel with a sheet, Tanaka said. When Tokyo Electric sent a representative to check on their progress, Hitachi distracted him by wining and dining him, according to Tanaka. Rather than inspecting the part, they spent the day playing golf and soaking in a hot spring, he said.

The guy wouldn’t have known what he was looking at anyway,” Tanaka said. “The people at the utility have no idea how the parts are made.”

After a month of computer modeling, Tanaka came up with a way to use pumpjacks to pop out the sunken wall. While it would look like nothing had ever happened, no-one knew what the effect of the repair would have on the integrity of the vessel. Thirty- six years later, that reactor pressure vessel is the key defense protecting the core of Fukushima’s No. 4 reactor.

“These procedures, as they’re described, are far from ideal, especially for a component as critical as this,” Robert Ritchie, Professor of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of California of Berkeley, said in a phone interview. “Depending on the extent of vessel’s deformation, it could possibly lead to local cracking in some its welds.”

"The father of the Japanese Chernobyl":

After the meltdown at Chernobyl in 1986, Tanaka was asked to narrate a Russian movie documenting the disaster. A team of Soviet filmmakers had taken 30 hours of footage inside the plant, getting very close to the ruptured core. The movie’s director died of radiation poisoning about a year after the filming. While watching the footage, Tanaka had a breakdown.

“All of a sudden I was sobbing and I started to think about what I’d done,” Tanaka said. “I was thinking, ‘I could be the father of a Japanese Chernobyl.’”

Two years later Tanaka says he went to the Trade Ministry to report the cover-up he’d been involved in more than a decade earlier. The government refused to investigate and Hitachi denied his accusations, he said.

Everybody lies.

“They said, if Hitachi says they didn’t do it, then there’s no problem,” Tanaka said. “Companies don’t always tell the truth.”

So... is there still someone who believes anything coming out of Fukushima? And anyone who thinks that spraying water on overheating reactors from hopelessly irradiated firetrucks will actually do anything at all?

Source

More on this sad story of criminal corruption and incompetence from the bottom all the way to the top, from bloomberg

What a story. Of course he should feel terrible, but at least he had the guts to pass along word to the authorities in 1998.

This guy can only be one of legion who share fault in this catastrophe. I have a feeling that TEPCO and .gov Japan will not be able to keep all the secrets under wraps for much longer.

Japan´s Chernobyl, what an awful thought. I really hope we don´t have one coming our way as well.

MSM sucks all over the world.

There were concerns about the Fukushima Plant in wikileaks.

Japan was warned more than two years ago by the international nuclear watchdog that its nuclear power plants were not capable of withstanding powerful earthquakes, leaked diplomatic cables reveal.

www.telegraph.co.uk...

Originally posted by woodwardjnr
There were concerns about the Fukushima Plant in wikileaks.

Japan was warned more than two years ago by the international nuclear watchdog that its nuclear power plants were not capable of withstanding powerful earthquakes, leaked diplomatic cables reveal.

www.telegraph.co.uk...

And if you think about, the Japan were supposed to be the first nation in concernings about nuclear energy. I mean, they suffered a lot because this and I'm pretty sure they knew the risks.

Let's be clear, this is not a "smoking-gun" regarding the current issues at that nuclear plant (see further below for why if you're interested).

However, it is certainly a "smoking-gun" from an over-all nuclear power safety issue.
But, it's also nothing new. That Engineer came forward years ago with these allegations. In 1988 he brought it to the attention of the "Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry", see [here]. Two years later (~1990), it was also in his book "Why Nuclear Power is Dangerous". It's been a "known" issue for about a decade.

The story is (justifyably) being brought back up again, as a result of recent events - but it not directly linked to current events. It does however, serve as a warning about safety and/or corruption issues in the industry (and goverment oversight) that may have a bearing on current events.

.....

If you care about why Japan lucked-out regarding the reactor that Engineer is talking about, read this ...

That particular reactor (#4, at Fukushima Plant I) was completely shut-down and vacant of fuel at the time of the earthquakes and subsequent tsunami. Having a potential safety issue with the RPV (reactor-pressure-vessel) that is described by that Engineer, can not be a contributor to the current problems - because the RPV was empty.

The current issues associated with "Unit 4" (meaning the building that the #4 reactor is housed within), are related to the "spent-fuel cooling-pond". This is located in an upper part of the building, outside the reactor (RPV) itself. The two issues with Unit 4 are/were:

• As a result of the Tsunami, TEPCO lost the ability to run the cooling system that is used to provide continuous cooling for the spent-fuel pond - allowing the fuel rods to heat-up, and possibly allowing some/all of the water to boil off. Even "spent" fuel rods are radioactive, and must be covered in water at all times, to keep them cool, and prevent corrosion (from prolonged exposure to air while hot) which can lead to their break-down and release of additional radioactive material into the environment.
  
• As a result of the explosion next door at Unit #3, the upper part of Unit #4 took quit a bit of damage. This possibly caused extensive damage to the cooling-pond inside Unit #4 - possibly causing it to (at least) leak water - which must now be replenished (possibly continuously).

Japan's "Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency" (NISA) has a good PDF available to the public (from one of their recent press-releases), that provides diagrams of the current issues with each of the six reactor's at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant. Here's the URL to the most recently avialable English version of that PDF:
Seismic Damage Information (the 46th Release)(As of 19:00 March 23rd, 2011)

Likewise the "Japan Atomic Industrial Forum" (JAIF), has another good PDF available to the public (from one of their recent press-releases), that provides a color-coded "Status" spreadsheet regarding each of those six reactors, plus the four reactors at the other nearby nuclear power plant in Fukushima. Here's the URL to the most recently avialable English version of that PDF:
Reactor Status and Major Events Update 28 - NPPs in Fukushima as of 21:00 March 23

Now, that being said, ... this scandal is still a big deal - IMH(f)O; and certainly should not be forgotten/overlooked.

The #4 reactor (which maybe should never have been in production initially) should never be allowed to go back into production. However, it's kind of a moot point now - since there's no way they are going to salvage Unit #4, in a way that would allow it's reactor to be brought back into production anyway.

There is another thread, covering all the technical details associated with Japan's current nuclear crisis available here ...
Japan declares 'nuclear emergency' after quake

reply to post by EnhancedInterrogator


I dont think you read all the info I provided. The smoking gun is the fact that they hide what the Engineer said about the reactor been a bomb with time to explode.

All the best.

Im not surprized, I mean Every Government/Company is going to hire the contractor that can do the job the cheapest/quickest.

I feel like with every new piece of information that arises it becomes more and more apparent that the Japanese government has blatantly mishandled this entire situation. I feel so bad for the Japanese citizens that are now doubt being poisoned by radiation this second.

What an awful way to die

Originally posted by wtf1is1happening
I feel like with every new piece of information that arises it becomes more and more apparent that the Japanese government has blatantly mishandled this entire situation. I feel so bad for the Japanese citizens that are now doubt being poisoned by radiation this second.

What an awful way to die

You are right, but in this case, the lies will rise like a terrible truth. I hope this never happens and the Japan gov indeed telling the truth, but all point to the opposite way. Sad.