Former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said concernthat Tokyo Electric Power may evacuate all workers from itsFukushima atomic plant after last year s quake and tsunami prompted him to create ajoint response center. Kan, who was prime minister at the time of the disaster thatwrecked the plant and caused radiation leaks, spoke today beforethe probe headed by Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a professor emeritus at TokyoUniversity. When this withdrawal issue was raised as a possibility, I felt weneeded to integrate the government and Tokyo Electric sdecision making or else a terrible situation would arise, Kantold the commission. The body comprising officials from thegovernment and the company known as Tepco was established on March15, he said. Then Trade Minister Banri Kaieda woke Kan early on March 15 withnews of a plan by Tepco President Masataka Shimizu to withdrawstaff from the crippled reactors. The former premier said hedisagreed with the proposal because he had been assured by plantmanager Masao Yoshida that more could be done to control themounting crisis. When Kan called Shimizu, the company president assured him that thewithdrawal wouldn t occur, he said. Shimizu resigned in May lastyear. The company s view is that it never requested a completewithdrawal. A statement to this effect is on Tepco s website. Kurokawa, the head of Japan s latest probe into the Fukushimanuclear disaster, promised to dig deeper than previous inquiriesinto the events that unfolded after last year s March 11earthquake and tsunami. He has said he will present the findings ofthe commission, which has subpoena powers and was appointed byJapan s parliament, by June. Edano s testimony Kan s testimony came a day after Trade Minister Yukio Edanorecollected his own response as then-chief cabinet secretary toTepco s proposal that workers be evacuated from the plant. I received a phone call from Tepco s president about fullwithdrawal from the plant, Edano told the investigation. Myresponse was that will make the situation worse anduncontrollable. Kan said at today s hearing that he was concerned about a meltdownat the station because it housed six separate reactor units andseven spent fuel pools. In terms of Chernobyl, it was only one reactor, he said. Thiswould not just be a few times more than the damage in Chernobyl butdozens of times, hundreds of times. Nationalization The committee on May 15 questioned Tepco Chairman TsunehisaKatsumata, who said it was the job of the company s president toimplement safety plans. Katsumata will be replaced as chairman inJune following the government s announcement it would nationalizethe utility. At an earlier meeting of the panel in February, Nuclear SafetyCommission Chairman Haruki Madarame played down his own agency sresponsibility for the crisis, saying utilities and bureaucratswere to blame for lax enforcement of the country s atomic safetyrules. Kurokawa s 10-member parliamentary panel includes some of the mostvocal critics of the government and Tepco before and after theMarch 11 accident. They include seismologist Katsuhiko Ishibashi, who in 2007 warnedof a catastrophic disaster at a nuclear plant similar to that whichunfolded at Fukushima, and Mitsuhiko Tanaka, a former atomicequipment engineer and now an anti-nuclear activist. Japan s government said this month it will take control of Tepcoand provide 1 trillion yen ($12.6 billion) as part of a bailoutthat is the nation s largest since the rescue of the bankingindustry in the 1990s. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as Led Tube Light Fixtures Manufacturer , Dimmable E27 Led Bulb Manufacturer, and more. For more , please visit E27 Led Lamps today!
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