There is no other document that condenses or embodies more clearly the immaturity and non-scientific levels hidden within the Japanese society than this. The interim report on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station accident released by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, Incorporated (hereinafter referred to as TEPCO) on Dec 2 was strange “outwardly” for the fact that the prime suspect was doing the investigation. In addition to that, it was also full of falsifications of scientifically irrational facts and a defiant tone.

In the interim report, various false calculations were included in order to blame the actual catastrophe of radiation contamination caused by its own nuclear power station = manufacturing production facility wholly on the tsunami. These were, sadly, too obvious and clumsy. It clearly shows a lack of discretion unbecoming of a major public corporation in a democratic country.

This is essentially what the A4-size 250-paged interim report is saying: “A big tsunami came and everything was broken. Radiation dirtied everywhere, but I only did what they told me, so it’s not my fault at all!”

In order for this report not to be withdrawn or deleted later, I want to name it the “childish document” or “childlike selfish document” and preserve it permanently.

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station was not the only nuclear power station damaged by the Tohoku Pacific Offshore Earthquake. The Higashidori Nuclear Power Station in Aomori Prefecture, the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station in Miyagi Prefecture, the Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station, and the Tokai Daini Nuclear Power Station in Ibaragi Prefecture all suffered damaged from strong tremors and the tsunami. There were some difficulties but unlike the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, none of these power stations leaked radiation and safely went into cold shutdown. Within the group of nuclear power stations attacked by the earthquake and tsunami, why was it that only the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station’s four consecutively linked nuclear reactors simultaneously experienced a “severe accident?” What caused this difference? The initial step of the accident investigation should be a thorough comparison between the other damaged nuclear power stations and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

Nine months have passed since March 11 but there are still no signs of such comparative investigation from the academic world and the media. It could be because TEPCO and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry have been withholding basic data of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. It is, however, more appropriate to say that the absence of such a comparative analysis report, which to the academic world and the media, is the common and right practice, tells us that it is intentionally avoided and withheld.

The reason can be surmised as compensation responsibility. In order to escape from the absolute liability and unlimited compensation responsibility based on the Act on Compensation for Nuclear Damage, TEPCO has been systematically releasing “useful information” immediately after the accident. At one time, because of its magnitude (M) of 9.0, the scale of the energy at the hypocenter, the commonplace view that the earthquake was one of the top five major earthquakes around the world was noised about in the economic and judicial circles.

The low scientific literacy of so-called humanities people in Japan based on reports by OECD, etc. is world famous. Magnitude is the number showing the earthquake energy size at the hypocenter. It is not a number to show the strength of the shake that reached a particular place. No matter how strong the earthquake energy at the hypocenter is, the farther a place is from the hypocenter, the weaker will be the shake of the earthquake wave that reaches it.

The Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant was the damaged nuclear power station closest to the hypocenter, and the maximum shake recorded there in terms of gravitational acceleration was 570 gals, less than half of the 1300 gals recorded in 2007 at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant during the Chūetsu-oki Earthquake. The tremors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station were also automatically recorded by the seismometers and according to the TEPCO’s interim report, the maximum shake was 550 gals.

A tremor of 500-600 gals does not come under the disclaimer “unusually large natural catastrophe” in the Act on Compensation for Nuclear Damage at all. It’s too lax for an earthquake-prone country like Japan because if equipment, pipes and the system are damaged simply by tremors equivalent to the Standard Seismic Motion (the maximum seismic motion expected and considered in earthquake-resistance planning) as pointed out by seismologists, the electric company would have lost face completely. After bragging that even if the earthquake-resistance standard is low the excess scale included in the design can withstand a major earthquake, its slipups and poor preparedness were known to the world. It therefore, has no choice but to insist that nothing was damaged by the earthquake.

Tsunami was the last hope to escape from responsibility. It has to be very high and stronger than any human effort can withstand.

TEPCO has insisted from the beginning that the loss of external power, an indirect cause of the core reactor meltdown and hydrogen explosion, was due to the tsunami toppling down a metal tower used to send electricity. It was discovered however, that the tsunami did not reach the toppled metal tower and that it fell due to the earthquake. TEPCO had no choice but to make a correction, but its attitude to blame all damages on the tsunami, even by making weak lies which can be easily exposed, has still not changed since.

Two months have passed since the accident. TEPCO has released parts of the visual images from the surveillance cameras of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. Viewers are repeatedly shown images of the tsunami rising as it hit the reactor containment building, etc. and successfully made to think, to TEPCO’s advantage, that it was a natural catastrophe caused by a fifteen-meter high tsunami.

It is a natural physical phenomenon for the tsunami to rise when it has nowhere else to go when it hit a big wall such as the reactor containment building. This is not the height of the tsunami as measured in geophysics. The height of a tsunami which can be comparably measured in science is how much the sea level has risen compared to the standard sea level decided based on the average tide level of the coast, etc.

After blatant lies comes image manipulation through fragmented information. The mass media lends a hand to this and scientific journals did not even bother to analyze the data and images scientifically. This string of “It’s all the tsunami’s fault” tactics culminated in the Dec 2 interim report.

According to the report, a thirteen-meter high tsunami and a nine-meter high tsunami attacked the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and the Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station respectively. It emphasized that major constructions of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, standing at ten meters above sea level, were flooded and damaged by the thirteen-meter high tsunami. Apparently, the scenario for the Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station was that the nuclear reactors stood twelve meters above sea level and so were able to withstand the nine-meter high tsunami.

This is purely imagination and is nothing but a scenario. Both the thirteen meters and nine meters of the tsunami are not measured values. Plausible-sounding names such as “inversion analysis” and “tsunami re-enactment calculations” are used, but the results are nothing more than impractical virtual calculations, extremely lacking in scientific credibility.

TEPCO said that the distance from the tsunami source, direction of the waves, amount of water moved, surrounding topography, etc. were taken into consideration in estimating the height of the tsunami that reached the coastline, but where exactly did the measured values of the tsunami at the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini Nuclear Power Stations go? The interim report simply said: “tide gauges and wave gauges were affected by the earthquake and tsunami and so measurement cannot be taken directly,” however, it is hard to believe that.

The data from the tide stations set up in the port of the nuclear power station is supposedly sent automatically to the monitoring room, and as such, records showing zero are not possible. If the tide gauges measuring the tsunami were damaged by the tsunami, TEPCO should clearly explain the situation in such a way that everybody is convinced.

Nine months after the accident, it is strange if we do not have any suspicions on falsifications and false calculations about a responsible corporation which brandishes estimated calculations which can produce numbers that depend on the parameters.

TEPCO apparently is aware of the credibility problem with their estimated calculations. Given that there was only a five-kilometer difference in the distances of the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini Nuclear Power Stations from the epicenter, 178 km and 183 km respectively, their reasons given for the four-meter difference in the tsunami heights, “condition of overlapping of wave peaks,” etc. are incomprehensible.

There is another incomprehensible point about the height of the tsunami based on the estimated calculations and that is, the standard sea level for construction use in Onahama Port, which is quite a distance from the nuclear power station, is used as the standard sea level for comparison. Why isn’t the standard level of the sea in front of the nuclear power station used?

In sharp contrast to the extremely suspicious TEPCO’s interim report is the Tohoku Electric Power Co., Inc’s report on the earthquake at the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station and the tsunami. The data was released on April 7, less than one month after the disaster.

According to the actual measured data at the tide station set up in the port in front of the power station, the tsunami that attacked the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station was thirteen meters. The tide station at the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station has a tide gauge for regular observations which can measure tide changes five meters above and below the standard sea level, and an emergency tide gauge for backup observations which can record changes twenty meters above and five meters below the standard sea level. Thus, the big tsunami could be recorded as scientifically verifiable data.

Based on that, it was also clear that the biggest wave reached the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station forty-four minutes after the earthquake, at around 3:30 p.m. In the case of the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station, the major facilities are built fourteen meters from the standard sea level and they were almost not flooded in the thirteen-meter high tsunami. So records and reality match.

On the one hand, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station scattered radioactive materials and forced more than 80,000 people to live in evacuation shelters, while on the other, the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station had a cold shutdown and became a shelter for residents hurt by the tsunami. Where this difference between heaven and hell to residents comes from can be seen in none other than the interim report released by TEPCO, the “childish document”.

The TECPO’s interim report was a voluminous A4 size 250-paged report, while the Tohoku Electric Power Co., Inc’s earthquake report was a 19-paged one of similar size. Lies are generally “loquacious” and “garrulous.”

Chinese / French / Japanese