Fukushima cleanup criticized
Print Edition
Japanese government auditors said the operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant wasted more than a third of the 190 billion yen (US$1.6 billion) in taxpayer money allocated for cleaning up the plant after it was destroyed by a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
A Board of Audit report described various expensive machines and untested measures that ended in failure.
It also said the cleanup work has been dominated by a group of Japanese utility, construction and electronics giants despite repeated calls for more transparency and greater access for international bidders.
Tokyo Electric Power Co spokesman Teruaki Kobayashi said all of the equipment contributed to stabilizing the plant, even though some operated only briefly.
Two of the failures cited in the report:
Among the costliest failures was a 32 billion yen machine made by French nuclear giant Areva to remove radioactive cesium from water leaking from the three wrecked reactors.
The trouble-plagued machine lasted just three months and treated just 77,000 tons of water, a tiny fraction of the volume leaking every day.
Secondly, seawater was used early in the crisis to cool the reactors after the normal cooling systems failed.
Machines costing 18.4 billion yen from several companies including Hitachi GE Nuclear Energy, Toshiba Corp and Areva were supposed to remove the salt from the contaminated water at the plant.
One of the machines functioned only five days, and the longest lasted just six weeks.
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