国会事故調が、福島原発は人災だと結論づけたことを、さすがの日本のメディアも大きく取り上げた。海外メディアが声を挙げているのに、さすがにスル―するだけの気概はなかったようである。NHKはもっぱら菅首相の官邸介入の責任に焦点をあてた報道を行ったが、ニュースステーションには、黒川委員長が生出演した。しかしその黒川委員長の、イントロを読めば、これがえっ！と驚くような、非常に中途半端な報告書であることがわかる。
原発の原因をMade in Japanの、集団主義だの、自省的で従順な態度など、権威に対して疑問を呈さない姿勢や島国性など、誠に陳腐な「我々の文化論」ですり替えてしまっている点である。
事故調のメンバーもまた、首相同様、再稼働反対をめぐって大飯原発再稼働の前夜に１５万人、今日もまた小雨の降りしきる中、１５万人もの一般市民が反対運動を展開していることを、たんなる小さな音としてしか受けとめていないのだろうか。独占企業体として存続していた電力会社と霞が関官僚と国会議員と原子力関連企業、原発立地自治体の首長、住民と電力会社から利益を享受している製鉄、化学などの大きな製造業を中心とする大企業、銀行、御用学者が私利私欲のために日本経済新聞社、産経新聞とそれにつながる系列のテレビ放送局、NHKなど大型メディアまでを大々的に取り込み、都合の悪いことはすべて口封じをして、安全神話を流布し続け、原子力工学などというおたく的な分野には当然疎い一般市民を、安心、安全と長い間だまし続けていただけの話である。
せめてメディアが誠実に、小出裕章氏などが長年主張してきた主張をもっと早くからしっかり受けとめ、原発の危険性を国民にしっかり知らしめていれば、少なくとも阪神大震災が起こった段階で、原発の既得権益で潤っている人間以外、誰もこの地震大国に、多くの原発を設置し、その上にまだ新たな、原発関連施設をこんなに狭い国土に強引に増設しようとする電力会社や政府に対して、黙っておとなしく服従するようなことはしなかったに違いない。
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/world/asia/fukushima-nuclear-crisis-a-man-made-disaster-report-says.html
Inquiry Declares Fukushima Crisis a Man-Made Disaster
By HIROKO TABUCHI
Published: July 5, 2012 40 Comments
TOKYO — The nuclear accident at Fukushima was a preventable disaster rooted in government-industry collusion and the worst conformist conventions of Japanese culture, a parliamentary inquiry concluded Thursday.
Kyodo News, via Associated Press
Rubble was removed on Thursday from the damaged building for Reactor No. 4 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
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The report, released by the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, challenged some of the main story lines that the government and the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant have put forward. Most notably, the report said the plant’s crucial cooling systems might have been damaged in the earthquake on March 11, 2011, not only in the ensuing tsunami. That possibility raises doubts about the safety of all the quake-prone country’s nuclear plants just as theybegin to restart after a pause ordered in the wake of the Fukushima crisis.
“It was a profoundly man-made disaster — that could and should have been foreseen and prevented,” said Kiyoshi Kurokawa, the commission’s chairman, in the report’s introduction. “And its effects could have been mitigated by a more effective human response.”
While assigning widespread blame, the report avoids calling for the censure of specific executives or officials. Some citizens’ groups have demanded that executives of the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, be investigated on charges of criminal negligence, a move that Dr. Kurokawa said Thursday was out of his panel’s purview. But criminal prosecution “is a matter for others to pursue,” he said at a news conference after the report’s release.
The very existence of an independent investigating commission — which avoids reliance on self-examination by bureaucracies that might be clouded by self-defense — is a break with precedent in Japan, but follows the pattern followed in the United States after major failures involving combinations of private companies, government oversight and technology issues. Those cases, which were cited by the panel, include the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979, the Columbia and Challenger space shuttle disasters in 1986 and 2003 and the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
The 641-page report criticized Tepco as being too quick to dismiss earthquake damage as a cause of the fuel meltdowns at three of the plant’s six reactors, which overheated when the site lost power. Tepco has contended that the plant withstood the earthquake that rocked eastern Japan, instead placing blame for the disaster on what some experts have called a “once in a millennium” tsunami that followed. Such a rare calamity was beyond the scope of contingency planning, Tepco executives have suggested, and was unlikely to pose a threat to Japan’s other nuclear reactors in the foreseeable future.
The parliamentary report, based on more than 900 hours of hearings and interviews with 1,167 people, suggests that Reactor No. 1, in particular, might have suffered earthquake damage, including the possibility that pipes burst from the shaking, leading to a loss of coolant even before the tsunami hit the plant about 30 minutes after the initial earthquake. It emphasized that a full assessment would require better access to the inner workings of the reactors, which may not be possible for years.
“However,” the report said, “it is impossible to limit the direct cause of the accident to the tsunami without substantive evidence. The commission believes that this is an attempt to avoid responsibility by putting all the blame on the unexpected (the tsunami),” the report continued, adding, “and not on the more foreseeable quake.”
The report, submitted to Parliament on Thursday, also contradicted accounts put forward by previous investigations that described the prime minister at the time, Naoto Kan, as a decisive leader who ordered Tepco not to abandon the plant as it spiraled out of control. There is no evidence that the operator planned to withdraw all its employees from the plant, the report said, and meddling from Mr. Kan, including his visit to the plant a day after the accident, confused the initial response.
Instead, the report by the commission — which heard testimony from Mr. Kan and a former Tepco president, Masataka Shimizu — described a breakdown in communications between the prime minister’s office and Tepco, blaming both sides.
“The prime minister made his way to the site to direct the workers who were dealing with the damaged core,” the report said, an action that “diverted the attention and time of the on-site operational staff and confused the line of command.”
The report faulted Mr. Shimizu for an “inability to clearly report” to the prime minister’s office “the intentions of the operators,” which deepened the government’s misunderstanding and mistrust of Tepco’s response.
The commission also accused the government, Tepco and nuclear regulators of failing to carry out basic safety measures despite being aware of the risks posed by earthquakes, tsunamis and other events that might cut off power systems. Even though the government-appointed Nuclear Safety Commission revised earthquake resistance standards in 2006 and ordered nuclear operators around the country to inspect their reactors, for example, Tepco did not carry out any checks, and regulators did not follow up, the report said.
The report placed blame for the tepid response on collusion between the company, the government and regulators, saying they had all “betrayed the nation’s right to safety from nuclear accidents.” Tepco “manipulated its cozy relationship with regulators to take the teeth out of regulations,” the report said.
Dr. Kurokawa reserved his most damning language for his criticism of a culture in Japan that suppresses dissent and outside opinion, which he said might have prompted changes to the country’s lax nuclear controls.
“What must be admitted, very painfully, is that this was a disaster ‘Made in Japan,’ ” Dr. Kurokawa said in his introduction to the English version of the report. “Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the program’; our groupism; and our insularity.” The Japanese version contained a similar criticism.
Shuya Nomura, a commission member and a professor at the Chuo Law School, said the report had tried to “shed light on Japan’s wider structural problems, on the pus that pervades Japanese society.”
