The day before, Bill Dedman, a reporter for NBC News and msnbc.com, had e-mailed the NRC about the seismic safety data. Dedman, a veteran investigative reporter, had trolled the massive public online archives maintained by the NRC and come across the GI-199 document titled “Implications of Updated Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Estimates in Central and Eastern United States on Existing Plants.” Appendix D of the report caught his eye. The appendix contained revised assessments of the risk of earthquake-induced core damage at ninety-six reactors in the eastern and central United States. Now he had some questions for the NRC.
Hearing nothing back from his initial e-mail inquiry, Dedman sought out some math professors to help ensure that he understood the complex calculations. Early on March 15 he bypassed the Office of Public Affairs and e-mailed the authors of the NRC report, outlining how he interpreted the data. “I’d like to make sure that I accurately place in layman’s terms the seismic hazard estimates,” he explained. Dedman also requested information about western reactors not on the list, which the NRC provided to him that afternoon.
Early the next morning, Dedman’s article, “What are the odds? US nuke plants ranked by quake risk,” was posted on the msnbc.com website. Based on the NRC’s estimates, the reactor at highest risk of core damage from an earthquake was not Diablo Canyon or San Onofre, located in earthquake-prone California, but rather Indian Point Unit 3, sitting thirty-five miles north of Manhattan.
The NRC’s immediate reaction was to discredit Dedman’s story, even while the commission’s experts were poring over it. Scott Burnell e-mailed Dedman: “I understand you’re making a honest effort to convey the latest research, but I have no doubt the technical staff are going to have significant problems with how you’ve presented it.” Burnell then e-mailed Kammerer: “Apart from ‘you’re totally off-base,’ what specific technical corrections can we ask for?”
As other media calls and inquiries about Fukushima continued to pile up in the Office of Public Affairs, the morning of March 16 was spent attempting to impugn Dedman’s report, which Burnell characterized as “jaw-flapping.” “Folks,” he wrote at midmorning to the technical staff assigned to scrutinize Dedman’s analysis, “the expected calls [about the story] are coming in—We need a better response ASAP!” The Nuclear Energy Institute was also urging the NRC to reply.
The story created an immediate stir, triggering interest from the Associated Press, CNN, the New York Times, New York’s congressional delegation, the Congressional Research Service, and reporters around the country. (Soon after Dedman’s report appeared, New York governor Andrew Cuomo ordered a safety review of the Indian Point plant, in part based on the new risk data.)
About 12:30 p.m. on March 16, Benjamin Beasley of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research e-mailed Burnell that the experts had come up empty-handed. “I have received no concerns or corrections regarding the msnbc.com article,” wrote Beasley.
What the NRC’s public affairs staff most objected to was that Dedman went a step beyond the information they had provided: he gave it meaning for a general audience. By sorting through the commission’s voluminous data, Dedman had arrived at risk rankings for the nation’s 104 operating reactors. (The NRC had provided the raw data for each reactor, listing the plants alphabetically but not taking the final step of ranking them in order of risk, consistent with its long-standing practice of trying to avoid identifying the most dangerous plants.) That, Dedman said in response to complaints from the NRC’s Eliot Brenner, is like the U.S. Census Bureau publishing poverty figures for metropolitan areas but not then identifying the poorest of the poor “lest anyone feel bad.” It’s left to reporters to inform the public of the numbers’ meaning. “That’s our job,” Dedman told Brenner.
In a conversation long after the kerfuffle, Dedman blamed the NRC’s Office of Public Affairs for caring more about the agency’s image than about informing the public. By attempting to discredit the messenger, versus acknowledging the public value of the information, “they lost credibility for their organization.”
As the number of Japanese leaving their homes continued to climb, hastily opened shelters beyond the evacuation zones began to fill. These nuclear nomads, who fled with few possessions, were now crowded into makeshift quarters that often lacked adequate heat, food, water, or sanitary facilities. For them, the impact on daily life was immediate and burdensome.
Many had no idea why their lives had been turned on end. Without power, the ability to obtain news was gone.2 While the rest of the world was watching the nuclear crisis unfold, those most threatened by the deteriorating conditions inside the reactors were living in an information bubble.
As the displaced populace waited for explanations, the evacuation zones kept expanding outward. In those first tumultuous days, some evacuees were forced to relocate six times or more, fleeing ever farther from the reactors, their few belongings stuffed in bags or tucked under their arms. Others, however, were forgotten, with fatal consequences.
Evacuees crowded into school gymnasiums and other public buildings, where living conditions were harsh and privacy nonexistent. Many of those who fled their homes had little or no idea why they had been ordered to relocate. As conditions at the reactors worsened, large numbers of evacuees were forced to move several times. Voice of America
Hours after the second evacuation notice was issued early in the morning of March 12, preparations got under way to move the two hundred and nine ambulatory patients and staff out of Futaba Hospital, located about three miles (five kilometers) from the plant. Left behind, however, were one hundred and thirty bedridden hospital patients and ninety-eight residents of a nearby nursing home. The SDF reportedly were en route to transport them. Owing to a series of bureaucratic errors and communication mix-ups, the troops didn’t arrive for two days, during which time the facilities had no power or heat and caregivers had departed. By then, four patients were dead. When the troops finally showed up, the patients began a grueling odyssey, spending hours on the road before the troops found a shelter that would accept them. Fourteen more died during the trip. But thirty-five patients were accidentally left behind, forgotten and not rescued until March 16. By the end of that month, officials reported that among the Futaba evacuees a total of forty patients and ten nursing home residents had died.
In a society accustomed to order and predictability, the accident response increasingly seemed chaotic and leaderless. The confusing and incomplete information coming from the government offered little guidance for Japanese seeking to understand the threat from Fukushima Daiichi. Later, officials would defend their withholding of facts by claiming they did not want to alarm people. But for many, this show of paternalism was tantamount to putting lives at risk.
Events in the scenic mountain town of Iitate, like the bungled evacuation of Futaba Hospital, came to symbolize the breakdown of the government’s response and the consequences for those left to fend for themselves.
Following the explosion at Unit 3 on March 15, the prevailing winds shifted, carrying radiation to the northwest toward villages such as Iitate, population six thousand, located about twenty-five miles (forty kilometers) from Fukushima Daiichi and thus well outside the official evacuation zone. An evening snowfall blanketed the region, carrying with it particles of radioactive iodine, tellurium, and cesium. SPEEDI, the sophisticated computer tracking system, had predicted that Iitate and the town of Namie were in the path of the plume, but top officials in Tokyo dismissed the data as unreliable. Nearly two weeks after the March 15 release, government officials realized that Iitate and its neighbors had become “hot spots,” with areas of radiation far above background levels. As officials debated whether evacuation was warranted, the residents of Iitate stayed put, caring for their families, their farms, and their prized cattle.
A map of the emergency response zones near Fukushima Daiichi established by the Japanese government as of the end of April 2011. The region marked “deliberate evacuation area,” extending
northwest of the plant to Iitate, was created nearly six weeks after the accident began. Authorities had been forced to confront the fact that winds and precipitation had spread dangerous levels of radioactive contamination well beyond the twelve-mile (twenty-kilometer) evacuation zone established soon after the accident. Government of Japan
All the while, radiation data from a wide radius around Fukushima Daiichi was appearing online, showing elevated levels in Iitate and other areas to the northwest of the reactors. Based on that information, some local residents grew alarmed about the lack of protective measures, expressing their frustrations to anyone who would listen. “We have been sacrificed so that Tokyo can enjoy bright lights,” a tobacco farmer told a New York Times reporter, visiting Iitate the same day as an IAEA inspection team, dressed in protective clothing, arrived to take radiation readings among farmers working the fields. Even after the discovery of the hot spots, the government failed to act. Later, one Iitate resident expressed what many were thinking about their government: “Do they really value our lives?”
Japanese authorities, however, continued to drag their feet. Finally, on April 22, Tokyo ordered the evacuation of Iitate by the end of May. When the order came at last, the residents of Iitate were confronted with decisions both pragmatic and poignant. Some residents, especially those with young children, had already fled. A priest told a visitor, “Anyone who thinks about the future has left our village.”
For others, severing ties was a wrenching experience. They already had been exposed to the radiation; had the damage already been done? Many lived on land that had been in their families for generations; could this soil be farmed again in their lifetimes? Their children’s lifetimes? And what of their beloved cattle, considered almost like pets? Photos of abandoned livestock, dead or dying, in evacuation zones elsewhere had been published around the globe.
Knowing that no one would buy their animals for fear of contamination, and not wanting them to suffer, Iitate’s farmers saw no choice. Before departing, they slaughtered nearly three thousand cattle. Soon, Iitate, which the year before had been declared one of the most beautiful villages in Japan, became a ghost town.
6
MARCH 19 THROUGH 20, 2011: “GIVE ME THE WORST CASE”
On March 19, eight days had passed since the massive tsunami surged up and swamped the Fukushima Daiichi site. Ironically, what the crippled nuclear plant needed most now was water. Tons of it.
Inside the cores of reactor Units 1, 2, and 3, water levels had dropped—the result of heat boiling away coolant and of intentional releases of steam through safety relief valves to lower pressure so that makeup water could be injected. Even though seawater was being steadily pumped into all three reactor vessels, instrument readings showed that the intensely radioactive fuel in all of them remained exposed; in Unit 3 by as much as six and a half feet, by slightly less in the other units.1 The amount of water in the spent fuel pools, especially in Unit 4, was uncertain (and a subject of continuing debate). One thing was obvious to everyone, however: water provided at a sufficiently high rate offered the best hope that operators might be able to lower the temperature within each core below its boiling point, prevent further radioactive releases, and wrestle the crippled machinery into some sort of eventual shutdown. At the least, it would buy them some time. For the past two days, Self-Defense Forces and riot police had been spraying water on and, they hoped, into the Unit 3 spent fuel pool using helicopters, high-volume water cannons, and fire engines, each capable of delivering six tons of water per hour. These were augmented by a high-pressure pumper provided by the U.S. military. As water hit the hot Unit 3 drywall head, a large steam plume shot skyward through the gaping roof, an event captured by photographers. When the NRC’s team at White Flint saw the images, they were convinced that the pool, along with the Unit 4 fuel pool, was dry. TEPCO vehemently disagreed, however, and had not yet attempted to inject water into Unit 4.
Also murky was the status of the Units 1 and 2 spent fuel pools, which like the others were perched high above the containment vessels. The concrete-and-steel roof atop the Unit 1 reactor building had collapsed into the pool during the explosion there, possibly preventing water from reaching the pool, or at least filling it with debris. But the heat load from the fuel in the Unit 1 pool was smaller than the others, so it appeared to pose a less immediate threat. Unit 2, which had a higher heat load than Unit 3, still had a roof, so it was impossible to see inside. However, just doing the math—pool volume, heat of spent fuel times days without power to provide circulation and cooling—made it clear that the Units 1 and 2 spent fuel pools would soon need cooling restored or they would also be endangered.
Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and riot police employed fire trucks and water cannons in an attempt to cool Unit 3’s spent fuel pool. Even after the top of the reactor building had been blown off, it was unclear how much water had reached the pool. Tokyo Electric Power Company
Adding water to the pools was also critical to reducing radiation levels around the plant site. The water would provide a vital shield against radiation from the spent fuel; however, workers still would face a threat from the radioactive debris thrown to the ground between Units 3 and 4 by the hydrogen explosions. That and the “shine” beaming from the open pools rendered much of the area off limits. A worker on a fire truck driven close to the reactors had picked up ten rem of radiation in just two minutes—double the maximum exposure that workers in U.S. nuclear plants are allowed to receive during an entire year.
A truck known as a kirin or giraffe, normally used to pump concrete at high-rise construction sites, delivers water to the Unit 4 spent fuel pool. This truck was soon joined by others. Tokyo Electric Power Company
The ability to deliver water to the pools did not improve until March 22, when a giant truck with a fifty-eight-meter articulated boom arrived. It could precisely direct up to 120 cubic meters of seawater per hour (about 32,000 gallons) high into the fuel pools, a far more effective aid than the aerial drops from helicopters or the fire hoses from ground level. The truck could be driven in, parked, and then operated remotely, meaning human radiation exposure could be kept to a minimum. The single truck now in position at Fukushima Daiichi would eventually be joined by trucks from China, Germany, and the United States.
Although getting water to the reactors and pools was a high priority for the Japanese, they were also devoting considerable time and effort to restoring power to Fukushima Daiichi. Workers were slowly bringing in new lines from the outside. They finally restored off-site electricity to Unit 2 on March 20, and gradually brought power to the remaining units over the next week. However, the NRC crew had its doubts about the Japanese push to regain electricity. Connecting cables was one thing, but getting electricity flowing to equipment that had been flooded was quite another.
“We don’t see where the power thing is any solution at all,” Chuck Casto told his colleagues from Tokyo. In all likelihood, water damage had rendered some of the circuitry and instrumentation inside the reactors and control rooms unusable. (As it turned out, they were partly right. Even after the Unit 2 power panel was energized, it took another six days before crews could even turn on the lights in the main control room. But the availability of off-site power eventually enabled workers to switch from fire engines to electrically powered temporary pumps for delivering water to the reactor cores.)
A week after the accident, radiation levels were still so high that sending in workers to make the necessary connections and repairs to the installed equipment would be difficult if not impossible. No one had yet even been able to get close enough to the damaged buildings to map the areas of highest radiation, vital information if human workers were to be dispatched to the site. Readings from the fire truck indicated those radiation levels were deadly, however.
On the phone Casto sounded exhausted—and exasperated. His colleagues at White Flint knew he was running full-out. “Right now he’s basically a 24/7 individual,” Jim Wiggins explaine
d in a briefing. “He’s getting very little sleep, and he’s holding up, but not for long.” Casto’s days—and nights—were filled with meetings, and his to-do list never seemed to get shorter. The U.S. Embassy staff was struggling to devise a contingency plan in case radiation levels rose enough to threaten Tokyo and the embassy itself had to be evacuated. Casto was being pressured for accident scenarios and dose calculations he didn’t have.
Nor did the NRC at White Flint, for Fukushima was exposing huge gaps in the agency’s ability to provide useful advice in real time for protecting people during a nuclear accident. The decades of stylized accident computer simulations were proving of little help in interpreting the events that had already happened in Japan, much less making credible predictions. As a result, everyone was scrambling to come up with high-confidence assessments of how bad the accident was and how much worse it could get.
Marty Virgilio, who was manning the overnight shift at White Flint, assured Casto that the NRC’s Protective Measures Team was working on the dose estimates. “We’re developing calculations to see what we think would be the worst case and the best case with respect to radiation levels in your neighborhood,” Virgilio explained. “That would be fantastic,” replied Casto. The team was aware that the French Embassy, concerned about the levels of radioactive iodine reported in Tokyo, had recommended that French nationals evacuate the Tokyo region. Ambassador Roos might well be wondering if the French knew something that he didn’t.
Relations between the Japanese government and the Americans sent to Tokyo to assist with the accident response were occasionally distant and strained. This clearly frustrated the NRC crew at the embassy as well as back at headquarters. “[T]he political dynamic and the . . . organizational dynamic, is just, you know, unfathomable,” said Casto over the phone. He chafed at the formalities of some meetings—“it’s probably one of those pretty-face things again,” he said of one coming up. These formalities, to his mind at least, ate up valuable time—and the Japanese didn’t have any to spare.
Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster Page 16