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Nuclear plant hit by earthquake in Japan
The Associated PressPublished: July 18, 2007
KASHIWAZAKI, Japan: An earthquake-ravaged nuclear plant was shuttered indefinitely Wednesday, amid revelations that a radiation leak was worse than initially announced and mounting international concern about Japanese nuclear stewardship.
The mayor of Kashiwazaki ordered the damaged Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility closed until its safety could be confirmed, escalating a showdown over a long list of problems at what is, in terms of output capacity, the largest nuclear power plant in the world.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, pressed Japan to undertake a thorough investigation of the accidents to see whether there were lessons that could be applied to nuclear plants elsewhere.
Adding to the urgency was new data from aftershocks of the deadly 6.8-magnitude quake suggesting that a fault line may run under the power plant.
Tsunehisa Katsumata, president of the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power, visited the site Wednesday, two days after the quake, and declared it "a mess." The previous evening, his company released a list of dozens of problems triggered by the quake.
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Katsumata apologized earlier for "all the worry and trouble we have caused," but he defended the safety standards.
"We will conduct an investigation from the ground up. But I think fundamentally we have confirmed that our safety measures worked," he said. "It is hard to make everything go perfectly."
The company, the largest power producer in Japan, said the quake was stronger than had been prepared for at the seven-reactor plant in the northern prefecture of Niigata. But none of the problems posed serious threats to people or the environment, the company said. Still, the plant suffered a fire, broken pipes, water leaks and spills of radioactive waste.
The company said Wednesday that a leak of radioactive water into the Sea of Japan was actually 50 percent bigger than announced Monday night. But the levels were still well below danger levels, it said.
"We made a mistake in calculating the amount that leaked into the ocean. We apologize and are making a correction," the statement said.
Later, the company also said about 400 barrels containing low-level nuclear waste tipped over at a storage facility at the plant, revising an earlier figure of 100. The impact knocked the lids off about 40 barrels, spilling their contents onto the floor, a spokesman, Tsutomu Uehara, said in Tokyo. But Uehara said no radiation had been detected outside the facility.
Akira Fuqushima, deputy director of a government nuclear monitor, backed that up, saying inspectors had not detected any hazardous abnormalities.
Still unconvinced was Hiroshi Aida, the mayor of Kashiwazaki, a city near the quake's epicenter and home to the plant and 93,500 people. He ordered operations at the plant to be halted Wednesday for what he called safety reasons.
The company had already come under fire for delays in reporting troubles, including the fire at an electric transformer and leaks of water containing radioactive material. But the list of problems released more than a day after the temblor stoked concerns about the safety of nuclear power in a quake-prone country.
A spokesman for the power company, Hiroshi Itagaki, said aftershock data indicated a fault line under the ocean floor near the plant. While it was unclear how close the line came to the plant, a Meteorological Agency official, Osamu Kamigaichi, said the fault might stretch under the plant's grounds.
The quake killed nine people, damaged hundreds of buildings and buckled roads.
On Wednesday, Toyota Motor said that it would halt production at all its factories in Japan for the rest of the week because of quake-induced damage at a major parts supplier in Kashiwazaki.
Toyota will assess the situation at the supplier, Riken, which supplies critical transmission and engine parts, before deciding whether to resume production Monday, said a company spokesman, Paul Nolasco.
Riken is also a supplier to Fuji Heavy Industries, the maker of Subaru cars, and to Mitsubishi Motors, both of which said they would scale back production.
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