Fukushima officials failed to probe cause of faulty filters
Source: AP
By MARI YAMAGUCHI
TOKYO (AP) — Technicians at Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant have acknowledged neglecting to investigate the cause of faulty exhaust filters key to preventing radioactive pollution, after being forced to replace them twice.
Representatives of the Tokyo Electric Power Company made the revelations Monday during a regular review of the Fukushima Daiichi plant at a meeting with Japanese regulatory authorities. The plant suffered triple meltdowns following a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
“At the core of this problem is TEPCO’s attitude,” said a Nuclear Regulation Authority commissioner, Nobuhiko Ban, at the meeting.
TEPCO has been repeatedly criticized for coverups and delayed disclosures of problems at the plant. In February, it said two seismometers at one reactor remained broken since last year and failed to collect data during a powerful quake.
FILE in In this Feb. 27, 2021, file photo, tanks (in gray, beige and blue) store water that was treated but is still radioactive after it was used to cool down spent fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, northeastern Japan. Technicians at Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant neglected to investigate the cause of faulty filters that were discharging dangerously radioactive water into the sea, company officials admitted Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2021, after being forced to repair the filters. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae, File)
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