The
Associated Press has an insightful and disturbing report about how the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission came to do two things in the first week following the events at Fukushima which are still producing backlash in Japan and the U.S.
In those early days of the crisis NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko
told a Congressional committee March 16th that the agency believed all of the water in the spent fuel pool at unit #4 was gone and that it was releasing huge amounts of radioactive particles into the atmosphere.
Based on this assessment, Jaczko issued a statement advising all Americans in Japan within 50 miles of the Fukushima reactor site to evacuate the area. This statement was emphasized in a
March 17 White House press briefing.
The Japanese government
immediately protested these statements saying that to the best of their knowledge the spent fuel was still covered in water. Even more important, they objected to Jaczko interfering in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation.
It wasn't until two months later that the NRC revised its views on the condition of the pool based on video evidence and water chemistry samples that showed the fuel was undamaged by a hydrogen explosion at unit 4 and that water was covering the fuel right up to the top of the pool.
Enter a career government officialThe Associated Press article quotes at length
Charles Castro, an NRC career executive stationed in Japan at the time, who said he made the assessment that the spent fuel pool had lost its water. He blames "the fog of war" because there was no sensor data from the plant and no visual information on the condition of the pool. He added that there were high radiation levels being detected around unit 4 so that led to the assumption it was coming from the spent fuel pool.
This raises the question of what did the NRC really know and when did they know it? For instance, by the time Jaczko delivered his testimony to Congress a week after the tsunami hit the plant, there had been time for remote sensing UAVs and low earth orbiting satellites to provide data about the condition of the spent fuel pool. It was now visible from the air since the hydrogen explosion blew off the top of the building structure that surrounds the plant.
The Associated Press article quotes at length Charles Castro, an NRC career executive stationed in Japan at the time, who said he made the assessment that the spent fuel pool had lost its water. He blames "the fog of war" because there was no sensor data from the plant and no visual information on the condition of the pool. He added that there were high radiation levels being detected around unit 4 so that led to the assumption it was coming from the spent fuel pool.This raises the question of what did the NRC really know and when did they know it? For instance, by the time Jaczko delivered his testimony to Congress a week after the tsunami hit the plant, there had been time for remote sensing UAVs and low earth orbiting satellites to provide data about the condition of the spent fuel pool. It was now visible from the air since the hydrogen explosion blew off the top of the building structure that surrounds the plant.