Engineering professor Yotaro Hatamura has built a career on failure.
The 70-year-old academic at the University of Tokyo founded the nonprofit Association for the Study of Failure in 2002, which has members including Tokyo Electric Power Co., the owner of the Fukushima plant at the center of the biggest nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
Tokyo Electric is now the subject of Hatamura’s next study. He was appointed by Prime Minister Naoto Kan last month as head of the 10-member team to conduct an “impartial and multifaceted” investigation into what went wrong at the Fukushima nuclear plant and how to prevent a repeat. He made a visit to the station yesterday. His objectives are similar to those of US President Barack Obama’s commission on the BP Plc Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010, which in January recommended “urgent reform” of government rules and oil industry practices.
The independent Fukushima investigation team has the authority to question officials at Tokyo Electric and government leaders including the prime minister. “I won’t be influenced by the positions of others or considerations of profit or loss,” Hatamura said at the team’s inaugural meeting on June 7 attended by Kan.
Hatamura also indicated his team will probe whether an earthquake-prone country such as Japan should have an energy policy built around atomic power. Because of the inherent dangers in nuclear power, it’s a mistake to treat it as being “safe,” he said at the meeting.
Trade Minister Banri Kaieda today said he may allow utilities to restart nuclear generators that had been shut down for routine maintenance. There are negatives to suspending all nuclear power, he said at a press briefing in Tokyo, citing an expected “gap” in power supply and demand in Japan’s coming summer months.
Tokyo Electric halted water decontamination today after five hours because a cesium-absorption unit needed replacement sooner than expected. The utility doesn’t know when it will be able to restart the system, Junichi Matsumoto, a spokesman for the utility, said at a news conference.
Decontamination to reduce radiation in about 105 million liters (28 million gallons) of water in basements and trenches at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant was halted after the level of cesium in the absorption unit reached 4.7 millisieverts of radiation, Matsumoto said.
