Japan Crises Nick on the nuclear plant dilemma

Nick on the Nuclear Plant dilemma

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Nick on the Nuclear Plant dilemma8y munsoniaCtealed 03n9,2011 - 20:17

Spoiler; For those of you that are squeamish let me advise you not to read the following. lt

is not for the feignt of heart.

critical update on Japan's nuclear crisis:what the media and regulators AREN'T telling you Nick note: never has the human race

been under so much peril. ln the past, wars, famines and pestilence were localized

events. lncredibly, now we face the universal destruction of our wealth... our freedoms

the food we eat... the water we drink... even the air we breathe... all at the same time

We live in a global police state. Governments say they want to protect us. lnstead theyimprison us in record, growing numbers. One and a half billion people are foot soldiers in

tnd gtoUat lslamic upris-ing. They believe their god-ordained duty is to.kill everyone who isnot i Muslim. lf you are a Jew, Christian or American, you can multiply their hatred of you

bv a hundred. Tirev are in armed conflict with the human race, in every corner ofthew;rld. Our wealth is being stolen. Governments confiscate it, to push ahead theirMarxisvsocialist utopia. They redistribute our wealth to the lazy. To the sick, foolish and

infirm. ln essence, we finance the people and institutions that bankrupt and imprison us'

Bankers of the world hold all our money. They pay us 1% interest. Yet they leverage thatsame money a hundred times over.lftheir sleaze leveraged deals work, we get our 1ol0. Maybe. lf they don't work, we get

nothing. We lose the interest, and often our principal as well. Bankers set up their monsterhedge-funds. \Mth those funds, they use derivatives to manipulate every market under thesuniThe house you live in. The food you eat. The fuel that drives your car. The precious

metals that were supposed to protect your wealth... and the industrial metals that make up

everything in our moilern world. All are trading at bizarre valuations, with a volatility thatconfoundi most players. ln essence, Wall Street uses our own money to gouge us'

Now on top of all that, we also face the possibility of an unprecedented natural disaster'The Japanese quake, horrific as it was, was not an isolated event Much of the Pacific

basin sits on top of a vast tectonic plate. ln the last year, major eruptions have taken place

at three of the four corners of this plate. The quakes in New zealand. The huge 8.8 quake

in Chile. And now the 9.0quake in Japan.

Please note, the quakes are gefting bigger' More deadly. That is because when one sideof a tectonic plate shifts, it sends shoci waves to the other corners. lt triggers quakes in

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those regions, where the fault lines are especially unsiable. \Mere is the last corner of thisplate? The one that lies along one of the most unstable fault lines in the world? The ontyone that has not yet erupted? California. Right under San Francisco. Talk about a gamechanger. California will not dodge this next bullet.

And now we face a vast man-made disaster as well. The world's largest nuclear complexis in at least partial meltdown. Three weeks of Herculean efforts - of desperateconsultations with the world's top scientists, who are assisting around the clock - have notextinguished the nuclear fires. Yes, they are hiding the truth. lndustry insiders - thescientists who make their living fromthis technology - know the future ofthe nuclear industry hangs in the balance. Threeweeks after the most lethal quake in modern history, Japanese reactors are still spewingradiation into the air, ground and water. Rods in at least one of the reactor buildings (andpossibly three) are still melting down. The radioactive cloud still is spreading around theglobe. Each day it grows bigger.

This disaster is already worse than 3 Mile lsland, which rated 5 on the nuclear disasterscale. lt's one away from Chernobyl, that was rated 7 (the highest score possible). And theFukushima crisis is not over. The meltdown still has not been brought under control. TheJapanese disaster was brought to us by the nuclear planl management company with theworsl safely record on the planet. With the biggest number of accidents in the field. Wth adocumented history of hiding EVERY accident and deadly radiation release from itsreactors. Believe nothing you read or hear from the Japanese nuclear power company(TEPCO). The devastation is far bigger than they are letting on. lt is far greater than theJapanese government is letting on. lf they don't get things under control (and soon) theycould turn the world's most costly natural disaster into the greatest disaster mankind hasever created. A nuclear volcano that spews radiation into the atmosphere for a generationto come.. Chances of this taking place currently arearound two or three in ten, and rising. I explain this in the article below.

I know the stock market is climbing, after its initialselloff. Precious metals are rallying. Oilis over $100 a barrel and commodities prices are approaching new highs. We are told it'sa recovery. That's why demand for commodities irom energy to precious and industrialmetals and food is supposedly soaring through the roof. Total b.s. The only thing soaringhere is the desperate greed of hedge funds and their extreme leverage. Don't be fooled.That shit won't last much longer. Even the authorities admit the Japanese earthquake willcost $300 billion to clean up. ln my opinion it will easily climb to over $ 1 trillion.That is if they ever fully recover. The Japanese government is already the most indebtedin the world, with a debt that equals 2000/0 of GDP. And that 's not counting the nucleardisaster. The authorities' naivete, denial and coverup could well turn the ongoing crisis intoa worst-case scenario. ln that case, we could face something far worse than any of theabove-mentioned threats.

I don't believe that will happen. But it could. Either way, this Japanese wipeoul is a crucialevent. lt kicks offthe next phase of the ongoing depressionary wipeout. The news thesedays is filled with the riots in N. Africa. Wth the Libyan "sophisticatedweapons lest fire zone." Those are little more than sideshows. They are designed to takeour attention off the money ball.

The real story now is the depressionary impact of a trillion dollars of wealth andproductivity, that were wiped out in twenty minutes. And maybe a nuclear disaster of

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untold dimensions. These incredible bubbles in oil, precious metals, industrial metals andcommodities are about to blow up in the sleazy bankers'faces. All I can say is, GOD helpus all.

MELT DOWN

I haven't slept for days. l've been trying to get to the bottom of what could turn into theworst nuclear disaster in history.From the start of this catastrophe, nothing the Japanese said or did made sense. I

suspected intrigue. Now those suspicionshave been tragically veritied. Tokyo Electric Company (TEPCO) owns the reactors inmeltdown. TEPCO has a long remrd of lying, cheating and covering up nuclear accidents.Over and over, it has falsilled records, hidden hazards and even covered up fatalities.(See the box later in this report for more on this. Warning: it's shocking.)

Through it all, they have maintained a "we don't give a shit, we are inveslment bankersimmune from the law" kind of attitude.And now they have given us the world's first nuclear earthquake. ls it not incredible? Theybuilt the world's biggest nuclearcomplex built right smack dab in the middle of the world's biggest, most active earthquakezone. They were even going to addmore reactors there. lt show you the power of money and the corruption of politicians.

Several of lhe junk reactors at the heart of this crisis are forty years old. They should havebeen shut down a decade ago.In fact, TEPCO repeatedly promised to do exactly that. But each time the companystalled. Each time the bought-off politiciansagreed.

I found out why. Those nuclear power planis were very valuable, both to TEPCO and theJapanese government. More so thanyour average garden-variety nuclear power plant. That's because TEPCO discovered abetter way to make money, than simply by generating electricity. Japan's governmentfound a bette[ use for these plants, than merely as power generators.Japan is carefully managing the news stream. Reports of the catastrophe are sketchy atbest. But even they admit huge amountsof cesium, radioactive iodine and strontium-90 are spewing out of the reactors.

That made me suspicious. These are deadly, radioactive materials. They should not comeout in such quantities - fromsuch simple Uranium-23s reactors - if those reactors had only been generating power.The evacuation zone around lhe nuclear power plant quickly widened. The companyremoved the vast majority of its personnel. Only 80 volunteers stayed behind, trying tocontain the radiation. The radiation was so strong, they could only stay on site for a fewhours at a time.

Still the crisis got worse. Japan was forced to admit to growing fatalities. Obviously,something was very, very wrong. The clincher came several days after the quake hit. lndesperation, the Japanese used waler cannons to shoot sea wateronto the crippled reactors. They dumped water from helicopters. What the hell is going on,was my immediate thought. That is

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like shooting a squirt gun at a forest fire - if in fact the cores were at risk, as theJapanese kept claiming.

Let me explain. The dirty work at nuclear power plants is done at the reactor core. Thecore is located deep underground.Solid steel/concrete walls encase it, lt's protected better than Fort Knox.Dumping/shooting water would not touch the core. lt would only reach the upper floors ofthe reactor. That's where the cooling pools are located. They (normally) hold the spent[Jraniumrods, that are not so radioactive. The rods slowly cool down, under water, until they can bedisassembled and moved.\Mile spent uranium rods must be handled with care, they don't carry anywhere near therisk that the live core rods do. lf thecore was in danger, why would you water bomb the upper pools, where the spent uraniumwas located? Made no sense.

Two of the reactors had been closed for maintenance. i.e. they were not in operation. VVhywould so much radiation escapeinto the atmosphere - from reactors lhat had been 'turned off - and ifthey only storedspent, low-radiation uranium rods there?' The answer is terrifying. TEPCO wasn't simply generating electricity... and the rods werenot merely uranium. \Mat TEPCO really was doing at the Daiichi plant Companies thatown nuclear reactors have a deep dark secret. They can generate electricity for free. Atthe same time, they can pay for all the uranium they need. How? By using the reactors asbreeders.

Along with electricity, they can make (or breed) other products. ln fact, the models used inJapan can breed all kindsof enriched nuclear products. e.g. They can make medical isotopes. Such as theradiopharmaceuticals used in nuclear medicine. Very valuable stuff. Nuclear powercompanies can pull it out of their reactor stacks, if they are careful. Now say the nuclearpower plant has an especially cozy relationship with government. (As I'll show you in amoment, TEPCO has exactly that.)ln that case, the reactors can breed a product worth far more than merely medicalisotopes. They can breed plutonium. Plutonium is many, many times more valuable thangold. ln fact a troy ounce of plutonium currently sells for over $179,000. That's becauseplutonium is an essential ingredient for the most powerful weapon known to man. Nuclearbombs. A few problems, though. Besides being powerful, plutonium is also one ofthemost deadly substances known to man. lt must be kept cool, in perfect conditions. lt's theultimate hazardous waste.

Reactors #3 and #4 were plutonium enrichment reactors. i.e. Japan wasn't just generatingelectricity. lt was producing weapons-grade plutonium, to be used in nuclear weapons. lnfact, it finally admitted it was producing plutonium there, in a specialmixture with uranium, called MOX. Plutonium is never, and I mean never, mixed withuranium in reactors that only generateelectricity. lt is done when they use the reactor as a breeder for nuclear bombs. Thisexplains all the bizarre things that did not add up, ever since this crisis erupted on March11. Japan claims it has no nuclear weapons program. You have to ask yoursell why thendo they have nuclear breeder reactors? VVhy don't they allow the IAEA (lnternational

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Atomic Energy Agency) to examine theirreactors? Why isn't the IAEA taking the lead on this emergency, as it normally would?

I told you how Tokyo Electric has the most sordid safety record in the nuclear industry. For20 years it has hidden nuclear accidents, radioactive discharges and even dealhs ofemployees. See the boxes to the right and on the nelit several pages for more onthis.

Why is the Japanese government letting this lying gang of thieves manage the biggestnuclear crisis of all time? Because TEPCO lS the government - and they have a wholelot to hide. Namely that Japan has run a covert nuclear weapons program for years. \/Vhocan blame them? China, their historic enemy, has a nuclear program. lts missiles canstrike Japan in minutes. lran, with no lovelost for Japan, also has a nuclear program. Even 3rd rate Pakistan has nukes. Then thereare the North Koreans. They regularlythreaten war against South Korea, who Japan has a defense treaty with.

You can see why Japan, with nuclear enemies just minutes away, urgently wants nukes ofits own. And you can understand why they keepit secret. Let's look at this further. TEPCO is the 4th largest electric company in the world.It is a government-sanctioned monopoly. That is why they were able to quietly refuse entryto all outside inspectors for years. \My, despite their dismal safetyrecord, the Japanese governmenl let them operate with impunity. lt's why these fourancient reactors, several of which are way past their expiration date, that were scheduledto shut down years ago, were still operating.

None of it makes sense - unlil you understand this was part of Japan's covert nuclearweapons factory. They built their nuclearplant on the world's biggest known earthquake fault line. Many of their reactors did noteven have concrete containment buildings (unlike their counterparts in the U.S.) They letthe plants operate, even afrer they received repeated warnings from their own nuclearscientists, engineers and offlcials about the likelihood of catastrophe.

To take these risks seems inexplicable. Until you understand it was a matter of nationalsecurity.

Japan has 54 nuclear reactors. After the quake, the others were easily brought undercontrol. Their automatic shutdown proceduresworked fine. You don't hear about them. That's because they weren't used as breederreactors. They weren't as hot. lt was much easier to contain them. Not so at theFukushima reactors. That is why the EU's energy chief, Giinther Oettinger, told theEuropeanparliament the situation was out of control. He said it was impossible to "exclude theworst." He said, "There is talk of an apocalypse and I think the word is particularly wellchosen."

It's why even the Japanese have been forced to admit they have neared the point of norcturn.

Nuclear volcano

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Despite all the niceynice reports, lime is running short. At the very least, these reactorsare in partial meltdown. The rods are fusing together. That is why all this radiation keepssteaming out into the atmosphere. Radiation is already found in Japanese milk andspinach. Over 27 times the safe level. The Japanese government has banned allfoodsales in and from that entire area. So has the rest of the world. Radioactive iodine hasbeen detected in Tokyo tap water. Many Japanese people - those who can afford it - areattempting a mass exodus out ofthe country. And it's not just Japan.

Radiation is already being detected across the ocean, in California, Texas and evenlllinois. lt's showing up in Europe. You are seeing a slowmotion nuclear meltdown.Radiation is measured in units called "millisleverts" (msv). The safe level for the public isone msv per year. ln most countries the max dose permitted for radiation workers is 20msv per year, averaged over five years, with a maximum of 50 msv in any one year' As lwrote this report, the radiation level at the Fukushima plant was fluctuating between 2906msv and 3342 msv per hour. i.e. in one hour, workers were getting around 30 times moreradiation than they are supposed to get in five years. These are samurai warriors,committing suicide. \/Vhich is why Japan has repeatedly pulled ALLemergency workers out of the plant. lts simply too risky.

Here's the real potential problem. The four reactors hold over 40,000 pounds of nuclearmaterial. Part of that deadly load isplutonium. All four reactors are or have been spewing radiation. They'vebeen subjecl tobxplosions and/or fires. They are venting off Cesium 137, lodine 131 and Strontium-90,which has a hal ife of 28.8 years. i.e. afrer 28.8 years, half the deadly radiation is stillthere. After another 28.8 years, one-quaftet (y2 of yz) is still there.

Don't get me wrong. The reactors have not yet gone into total meltdown. They may not.

It's a race against the clock. For now the Japanese are pumping water' Even they admitthat is not going to work. They finally conceded they will be forced to pump sand andcement, toliterally try and cover up the nuclear mess. Best case scenario: they are able tocontain the crisis. They get the meltdowns under control, and bury the plants undermillions oftons of concrete.

Even in this best-case outcome. the world has another abandoned nuclear waste siteAnother radioactive hazardous dump.One that sits next to the sea, on top of the world's hottest geological fault line, vulnerableto quakes and tsunamis.The cost of decommissioning these reactors alone is over $50 billion. TEPCO alone hasalready asked for a $300 billion loan.The cost to Japan's overall infrastructure will exceed a trilllon dollars That's if everythinggoes perfectly from now on.But even that may only put off the destruction. Because the next quake^sunami couldtrigger the whole meltdown again. Asother recent earthquakes there (2007) show... as the continuing aftershocks warn... this isfar from unlikely. ln fact,seismologists expect another major 8.0 earthquake there sometime in the next fewmonths.

The world is in the middle of its third major nuclear meltdown hotspot. First was 3 Milelsland. The core there melted down,and still can't be moved. Thank God the radiation is minimal. 3 Mile lsland was the least


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deadly of these three crises.Second was Chernobyl. Melted down in 1986.25 years later, still a nuclear hot spot. youcan't walk there, without acomplete radiation Hazmat (hazardous materials) suit.

To this day, the area surrounding Chernobyl has 100 times the cancer rate. 10OO timesthe birth defects. And it's not reallycontained. To build a portable containment structure around Chernobyl would cost $50billion. No one wants to pay that.But this Japanese crisis could turn into the granddaddy of them all. Because so far I haveonly given you the best-casescenario.

Now let me give you the worst. Japan does not contain the meltdown. The reactors couldthen hit critical mass. Once started, this process cannot be stopped. lt would create theworld's first nuclear volcano. Similar to volcanoes in Hawaii and ltaly that spew lavanonstop, the nuclear volcano constantly spews radioactive steam clouds. The bigdifference with'mere' lava-spewing volcanoes:this man-made nuclear volcano would spew the most deadly radioactive isotopes knownto man. Not just for days, or months. For decades.

Radioactive lodine 131, Cesium 137 and Strontium 90 could end up raining down from theclouds. It would eventually fall onevery square mile of the planet. lt would get into the air we breathe. The water we drink.The food we eat. Just like alreadyis taking place in Japan, only in far greater amounts. The chances of this happening areless than they were a fewdays ago. Maybe one or two chances in ten. But I guarantee you, even the best-casescenario is far, far worse than the Japaneseauthorities are letting on.

To sum up: the world's largest nuclear power facility has been trashed. lt is in meltdown. ltwas tragically under-built. Both against earthquakes (this quake was around 35 timesmore powerful than than the max it was designed to withstand)... and tsunamis (thetsunami that hit it was twice as high as the biggest the plant was built for).

Those reactors were not supposed to have plutonium. They weren't designed or built for it.On top of that, they held threetimes the amount of radioactive materials they were designed for. GE (General Electric)built all six reactors. GE also builtthe #1, #2 and #6 reactors. No surprise the company is desperately trying to distanceitself.

Each and every reactor suffered damage. Radiation has been spewing out since the daythe quake hit. lt's being measured allover Japan and now the world over. lt's in the food supply. lt's in Hawaii, mainland U.S.and Europe. The crisis has not been averted. lt could well turn into the worst nucleardisaster in history. And they tell us there is nothing to worry about. Ain't that some sickstuff?

Nick Guarino

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Late-breaking news: reactors 5 and 6 also went into partial meltdown. i.e. theearthquake/tsunami crippled all six reactors,at the world's biggest nuclear power plant.

" Meanwhile, in the Pacific Ocean near the plant, radioactive iodine was 127.6 times thelegal limit. Cesium was 24.8 times thelimit. TEPCO says this poses no immediate danger.

* March 21, reactors #2 and #3 were again venting off radioactjve steam into theatmosphere. This "steam" contains themost deadly radioactive substances known to man.

- The U.S, UK and Australia are urging their citizens to leave Japan. All cite the extremelyhigh levels of radiation.France is doing the same, both with its citizens and its embassy. Same with Belgium,NoMay, Russia and China.

* The #4 reactor's plutonium-filled pool lost all its water on more than one occasion. Fuelrods in the other three reactorshave been exposed as well. They are releasing huge amounts of radiation.

" I have definite reports that water levels at reactors #5 and #6 either have no water intheir fuel pools; or the water isdropping very fast. When the water boils away, the fuel rods are exposed. They startburning. The uranium and plutonium corrodes,releasing the radiation.

* Yukiya Amano, Director General of the IAEA (lnternational Atomic Energy Agency),visited the plant. He said, "the crisishas not been resolved. The situation remains very serious."

* Amano also said, "buildings have been severely damaged by explosions. For most therehas been no electric power. Radiationlevels are elevaled. lt is no exaggeration to describe the work of the emergency teams asheroic."

* Japanese Health Ministry has urged residents to stop drinking tap water, because ofextremely high levels ofradioactive iodine.

- ln 1990, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) warned about just such a crisis.The NRC identified power outage leadingto the failure of cooling systems, as one of the most likely causes of nuclear accidents.They were ignored.* TEPCO admitted that, two weeks before the quake, it failed to check 33 pieces ofequipment. lncluding the backup generatorthat failed.

' The spent fuel rods, including the ones with plutonium, were only protected by the flimsysheet metal outer shell ofthereactor buildings. They only had a single pump to circulate the cooling water. No backup.

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* Without any engineering work or study, TEpCO increased the fuel rod storage capacityof the plant way beyond its originaldesign. They re-adjusted the pools, to increase their capacity. They even built a separatepool outside the reactor, to store morerods, without any building around it at alt.

* Japan's nuclear safety energy agency only has two field inspectors for the nation's 54nuclear plants.

" Container ships carrying Japanese goods were turned away when they arrived in China.\My? Because they were radioactive,contaminated from the Japanese reactors in partial meltdown. How about this for endingexports to the rest of the world.

" The Japanese announced a rigorous examination, to find out why so much radiation iscoming from reactor #3. Radiation levelsthere are 10,000 times normal.

* Japan is also quietly expanding the evacuation zone from 12 miles to 19. That in part isbecause radiation levels are abovethe safe level for infants outside the 12 mile evacuation zone. Further proof of how out ofcontrol the situation has become.

Japan Disaster Caps Decades of Faked Reports, Accidents As Bloomberg News reported,the unfolding disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant follows decades of falsilied safetyreports, fatalaccidents and underestimated earthquake risk in Japan's atomic powerindustry.

ln 2002 and 2007, revelations the utility had faked repair records forced the resignation ofthe company's chairman and president, and a threeweek shutdown of all .17 of itareactors.

Nuclear engineers and academics who have worked in Japan's atomic power industryspoke of a history of accidents, faked reports andinaction by Liberal Democratic Party governments that ran Japan for nearly all the poslwarperiod.

Katsuhiko lshibashi, a seismology professor at Kobe University, says Japan's history ofnuclear accidents stems from an overconfidence in plant engineering. ln 2006, heresigned from a government panel on reactor safety, saying the review process wasrigged and "unscientific."

Coverup admitted

Mitsuhiko T€naka, 67, working as an engineer at Babcock Hitachi K.K., helped design andsupervise the manufacture of a $250 millionsteel pressure vessel for Tokyo Electric in 1975. Today, that vessel holds the fuel rods inthe core of the No. 4 reactor at Fukushima's Dai-lchi plant, hit by explosion and fire afterthe tsunami.

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Tanaka says the vesselwas damaged in the production process. He says he knowsbecause he orchestrated the cover-up. When he broughi his accusationi to thegovernment more than a decade later, he was ignored, he says.

The accident occurred when Tanaka and his team were strengthening the steel in thepressure vessel, heating it in a furnace to more than 600 degrees CeGius (1,1.12 degreesFahrenheit), a temperature that melts metal. Braces that should have been inside th;vessel during the blasting were either forgoften or fell over. Afrer it cooled, Tanaka foundthat its walls had warped.

Saved the company - 'Felt Like a Hero'

The law required the flawed vessel be scrapped, a loss that Tanaka said might havebankrupted the company. Rather than sacrifice years of work and risk the company'ssurvival, Tanaka used computer modeling to reshape the vessel so that no one wouldknow it had been damaged. He did that with Hitachi's blessings, he said.

"l saved the company billions of yen," Tanaka said in an interview March 12, the day aflerthe earthquake. Tanaka says he got a 3 million yen bonus ($38,000) from Hitachi and aplaque acknowledging his "extraordinary" effort in 1974. "At the time, lfelt like a hero.',

That changed with Chernobyl. Two years after the world's worst nuclear accident, Tanakawent to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and lndustry to report the cover-up he,dengineered more than a decade earlier. Hitachi denied his accusation. Governmentrefused to investigate.

Falsified reports for two decades

Tokyo Electric in 2002 admitted it had falsified repair reports at nuclear plants for morethan two decades. Chairman HiroshiAraki and President Nobuyama Minami resigned totake responsibility for hundred of occasions on which the company had submitted falsedata to the regulator.

Then in 2007, the utility said it hadn't come entirely clean five years earlier. lt hadconcealed at least six emergency stoppages at its Fukushima Dai-lchi power station and a"critical" reaction at the plant's No. 3 unit that lasted for seven hours.TEPCO ignored warnings about the tsunami risks that caused the crisis at Fukushima,Tatsuya lto, who represented Fukushima prefecture in the national parliament from 1991to 2003, said in a March 16 telephone interview.

The world's biggest nuclear power plant had been built on an earthquake fault line thatgenerated three times as much seismic acceleration, or 606 gals, as it was designed towithstand, the utility said. One gal, a measure of shock effect, representsacceleration of 1 centimeter (0.4 inch) per square second.

Afier Hokuriku Electric's Shika nuclear power plant in lshikawa prefecture was rocked by a6.9 magnitude quake in March 2007, government scientists found it had been built near anearthquake fault that was more than twice as long as regulators deemed threatening."Regulators just rubber-stamp the utilities' reports," Takashi Nakata, a former Hiroshimalnstitute of Technology seismologist, said at the time. While Japan had never suffered afailure comparable to Chernobyl, the Fukushima disaster caps a decade of fatal accidents.

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Two workers at a fuel processing plant were killed by radiation exposure in 1999, whenthey used buckets, inslead of the prescribed containers, to eye-ball a uranium mixture,triggering a chainreaction that went unchecked for 20 hours.

Regulators failed to ensure that safety alarms were installed at the plant run by SumitomoMetal Mining Co. because they believed there was ,,no possibllity', of a major accident atthe lacility, according to an analysis by the NRC in the U.S. The-report said there were'indications' the company instructed workers to take shortcuts, without regulatoryapproval.

ln 2004, an eruption of super-heated steam from a burst pipe at a reactor run by KansaiElectric killed five workers and scalded six others. A government investigation siowed theburst pipe section had been omitted from safety checklists and had not been inspected forthe 28 years the plant had been in operation.

The Fukushima Dai-lchi plant was only designed to withstand a S.7-meter tsunami, not the7-meter wall ofwaler generated by last week's earthquake or the 6.4-meter tsunami thatstruck neighboring Miyagi prefecture after the Valdiva earthquake in 1960, lto said.The dangers posed by a tsunami the size ofthe one generated by the g.s-magnitudeValdiva temblor off Chile are described in a 2002 report by the Japan Society;f CivilEngineers, lto said. But TEPCO ignored that.

"Tokyo Electric brought this upon itself," said lto, who now heads the National Center forthe Citizens' Movement Against the Nuclear Threat, based in Tokyo. ',This accidentunfolded as expected."

Coming clean

Ito said he has met Tepco employees to discuss his concerns at least 20 times since 2003and senl a formal letter to then- president Tsunehisa Katsumata in 2OOS.

.We areprioritizing the safety of the plant and are not at a point where we can reflect upon andproperly assess the root causes," said Naoki Tsunoda, a Tokyo Electric spokesman inTokyo. He said he couldn't immediately confirm the exchanges made between lto and thecompany.

Kansai Electric Power Co., the utility that provides Osaka with electricity, said it also fakednuclear safety records. Chubu Electric Power Co., Tohoku Electric power Co. andHokuriku Electric Power Co. said the same.

Only months after that second round of revelations, an earthquake struck a cluster ofseven reactors run by Tokyo Electric on Japan's north coast. The Kashiwazaki Kariwanuclear plant, the world's biggest, was hit by a 6.8 magnitude temblor that buckled wallsand caused a fire at a transformer. About L5 liters (half gallon) of radioactive watersloshed out of a container and ran into the sea through drains because sealing plugshadn't been installed.

Fault Line

\r'Vtrile there were no deaths from the accident, the damage was such that three of theplant's reactors are still offline.After the quake, Trade MinisterAkira Amari said regulators hadn't properly reviewedTokyo Electric's geological survey when they approved the site in i974.

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Japan Crises Nick on the nuclear plant dilemma