2011年8月21日日曜日

No time to foresee blasts: worker

An employee of Tokyo Electric Power Co. has told investigators that workers were so busy during the initial hours of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 plant that they couldn't foresee the first hydrogen explosion, a source said.

The source, connected with the independent panel probing the nuclear crisis, did not reveal the employee's rank.

The source said the panel's members view this and other accounts by Tepco employees as evidence of the company's inability to prepare for possible problems and take countermeasures to prevent them from worsening.

The panel, set up by the Cabinet of Prime Minister Naoto Kan and led by Yotaro Hatamura, a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, informed every member of the accounts this month, and plans to scrutinize them while continuing interviews to compile an interim report by the end of the year.

A hydrogen explosion blew away the upper part of the building that houses reactor 1 on March 12.

The source said Wednesday that the Tepco employee told the investigators, "The possibility of an explosion occurring if hydrogen fills the building was beyond the reach of our thoughts because at that time, we were preoccupied with assessing the situation surrounding the atomic reactors and their containment vessels."


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