The picture becomes clear: TEPCO blames the tsunami rather than the earthquake because making the nuclear fleet earthquake-proof is too expensive.
Real cause of nuclear crisis
SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), the operator of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Station, has been insisting that the culprit that caused the nuclear crisis was the huge tsunami that hit the plant after the March 11 earthquake. But evidence is mounting that the meltdown at the nuclear power plant was actually caused by the earthquake itself.
According to a science journalist well versed in the matter, Tepco is afraid that if the earthquake were to be determined as the direct cause of the accident, the government would have to review its quake-resistance standards completely, which in turn would delay by years the resumption of the operation of existing nuclear power stations that are suspended currently due to regular inspections.
The journalist is Mitsuhiko Tanaka, formerly with Babcock-Hitachi K.K. as an engineer responsible for designing the pressure vessel for the No. 4 reactor at the ill-fated Fukushima nuclear plant.
He says if the earthquake caused the damage to the plumbing, leading to a "loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA)" in which vaporized coolant gushed into the containment building from the damaged piping, an entirely new problem — "vulnerability to earthquake resistance of the nuclear reactor's core structure" — would surface and that this will require a total review of the government's safety standards for nuclear power plants in Japan, which is quite frequently hit by earthquakes.
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http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/eo20111213a1.html
Perhaps they are betting that in the long run it won't make any difference to the ratepayers in the long term.
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