Never Say "Meltdown"

A queer trickery is just bared over the use of the term "meltdown" right after that nuclear power-station disaster in Fukushima in 2011. A report verifies that an instruction from the prime minister's official residence had TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) President Masataka Shimizu ban the term in the company's PR statements.

It all started when TEPCO's then Vice President Muto was in the middle of his press conference, three days ofter the disaster March 14 night, as a slip of paper was passed on to him. The note warned Muto to make no mention of meltdown in his interview "as instructed by the official residence of Prime Minister Naoto Kan. Muto complied, aware of the fact that the three nuclear reactors in the stations 1-3 had experienced "meltdown".

Now, the gag law had lasted till it was lifted two months later. Why?

A third-party team of investigators began tracking down the incident in March this year and a comprehensive report just came out this time on June 16. It bared the incidence at the press conference and the actual phrasing of the note and uncovered TEPCO's dubious explanation that "the term meltdown is not defined accurately enough (to substantiate the situation in Fukushima)".

The report also tracked down a series of events as follows:

"It was in March 12 afternoon, a day after the quake, that a TEPCO PR man did mention on the possibility of meltdown at a press interview at the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency; NISA.

At another press interview that night, the PR man was quickly replaced with an alternative staff, who rephrased the statement to "a relatively high possibility of the reactor cores damaged but the extent of the damage not yet precisely known".

TEPCO later bared 3 days after the accident that the percentages of damage done to the stations 1 and 3 were presumed to be 55% and 30%, respectively, and, asked of possible meltdown, they stuck to "damage" and never said meltdown".

Remember, folks, what happened in Fukushima was largely an Act of God but to a great extent a man-made disaster - by the prime minister of all men. (Nathan Shiga)