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TOKYO – Japan's leader felt fearful and helpless during last year'snuclear disaster and lacked experts capable of giving him guidance,he testified Monday in his first response to a public investigativeinquiry on the crisis. Naoto Kan resigned in September after being criticized forgovernment failures during the disaster. He told the parliamentarypanel he felt afraid when nuclear officials kept failing to explainconditions at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, where threereactors melted down following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake andtsunami on March 11, 2011. Kan also said the country's nuclear emergency preparedness law, setup in 1999 after a fatal accident at a nuclear fuel processingplant, did not address a severe accident that would requirehundreds of thousands of people to evacuate, as in Fukushima. "Everything anticipated in the law was inadequate, and we had to gothrough all kinds of troubles that we didn't need," he said. Forinstance, the plant's off-site crisis management center, which hadno protection for radiation or backup power, had to be abandoned. Kan said nuclear officials sent from government offices and theutility operating the plant as his advisers were not useful, and henever received the kind of information he needed. Japan's mainregulatory body, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, wasparticularly incapable, he said. "I was frightened and felt helpless," he said. "You can't expect anuclear expert to be prime minister or Cabinet minister, so we needtop regulatory officials to provide expertise and help us. Wedidn't have those people." NISA's top officials, who are not nuclear experts, haveacknowledged the need to improve their resources. Officials have also said information disclosure was slow and attimes wrong, particularly in the immediate aftermath. They alsocited poor communication and coordination between nuclearregulators, utility officials and the government. The crisis, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986,also revealed problems of the cozy ties between the nuclearindustry and sympathetic government regulators — known as"the nuclear village" — that have prompted a culture ofcomplacency. He called that "a root of the illness" of Japan andmust be destroyed to create a fully effective regulatory system. The government led by his successor, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda,had planned to revise the regulatory body, but the plan has beendelayed as opposition lawmakers demanded more independence from theinfluence of the promoters. Noda is desperately trying to restart two reactors in western Japanto curb the summer's power crunch, though the process has beendelayed due to opposition from nearby towns, a move seen asbackpedaling from Kan's push for a nuclear-free society. Some 100,000 residents from around the plant have evacuated due toradiation contamination in the area. Japan declared stability atthe plant in December, but it runs on makeshift equipment and itsearthquake resistance is a concern. Officials say it will takeabout 40 years to decommission the plant. A worst-case scenario envisioned by the head of the Japan AtomicEnergy Commission two weeks after last year's accident warned thata melting of the fuel rods at the No. 4 reactor would require theevacuation of 30 million people just from the greater Tokyo area. I am an expert from carcodescanner.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Obd ii Connector , Airbag Reset Tools Manufacturer, Automotive Scan Tools,and more.
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