This came out right after #FukushimaNuclearAccident.

Is Tokyo Electric Power becoming #Japan's BP?

16 March 2011

"[It] has to be said that #Tepco has a chequered history in divulging information about its #nuclear operations.

"In 2002, the Japanese government accused Tepco of false reporting in routine inspections of nuclear facilities and of concealing information about safety lapses over many years.

"The company had to close all its boiling water nuclear reactors - the sort caught up in the current crisis - until further inspections had taken place.

"Tepco eventually admitted to 200 occasions in which information had been falsified between 1977 and 2002. Further revelations of past concealment emerged five years later.

"As the company struggles to contain a crisis seen on a par with the Three Mile Island reactor meltdown in the US in 1979, it is easy to see why some Japan observers suspect Tepco is less than enthusiastic about revealing the full extent of what it knows.

"A Tepco spokesman said on Wednesday that 20 government officials had moved into the company's Tokyo offices.

"#BP suffered a huge loss to its prestige, lost its chief executive and put $40.9bn set aside for charges relating to the giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"What will be the outcome for Tepco?"

bbc.com/news/business-12764458

#WaterIsLife #OceansAreLife #IAEAHides #TEPCOLies
#FukushimaIsntOver #NoDumping
#NuclearPowerPlant
#RadioactiveWater

From #NEI, the PRO #Nuclear lobby! TEPCO has a long history of "Dishonest Acts"?!! And why are we trusting them to test #FukushimaDaiichi #wastewater?!!

Tepco admits leaktightness test falsification

Staff Writer November 3, 2002

"Tokyo Electric Power (#Tepco) staff manipulated main steam valves to reduce leak rates during containment testing in 1991 and 1992, the company has admitted.

"Tepco admitted the '#DishonestActs' in a press release on 25 October. The company said that during the two annual inspections at #Fukushima Daiichi 1 (Fukushima I-1), plant staff knew that the containment leak rate was too high. When government inspectors carried out the leak tightness test the staff injected air via the main steam isolation valves to reduce the leak rate. It is reporteed elsewhere that the real rate was 2% per day compared to the allowed maximum of 0.45% per day. By manipulating the valve, the rate was reduced to 0.12% per day.

"Tepco said the plant had been shut down for additional leak rate inspections, and an external commission comprising five specialist lawyers had been assigned to oversee the investigation. The company could not say whether 'dishonest acts were conducted in the leakage inspections at all Tepco’s nuclear power stations other than the above-mentioned two inspections'; nor could it say whether other tests at that plant had been #falsified. All the company’s leak tests are now being examined.

"Once again, the power company found itself saying: 'Tepco sincerely regrets and apologises that such dishonest acts were conducted.' Tsunehisa Katsumata has taken over as head of Tepco following the resignation of Nobuya Minami. At a press conference Katsumata said the data falsification was 'the gravest crisis since the company was established', and that the company had lost so much 'it should start again from zero'. Shigemi Tamura is to be promoted to chairman, replacing Hiroshi Araki.

"Meanwhile, additional cases of covered up crack findings were also reported by Tepco. According to data Tepco provided to #METI, these cases involve flaws found in recirculation pumps and piping connecting the pumps to the primary circuit at Fukushima I-1 to I-5, at Fukushima II-3, and at #KashiwazakiKariwa 1 and 2. Unlike previously disclosed cases of concealed inspection results, the inspections at these reactors were carried out by Hitachi and Toshiba, rather than by GE.

"In one case, Hitachi has acknowledged that, while under contract for BWR inspection work for Tepco in 1992, it found cracks in neutron-measuring equipment at a BWR at Fukushima. Tepco officials then asked Hitachi personnel to delete the crack finds from reports that they wrote.

"According to a Hitachi spokesman, a senior official in Hitachi’s nuclear plant design division agreed to Tepco’s request because Tepco was a Hitachi client.

"As a consequence of these revelations, plans to build six new reactors totalling 9000MWe at three sites have been indefinitely frozen. This will halt over half the new nuclear capacity that Japan had intended to have in place soon after 2010, including Japan’s first two APWRs."

Read more:
neimagazine.com/news/tepco-adm…

#WaterIsLife #OceansAreLife #IAEAHides #TEPCOLies
#FukushimaIsntOver #NoDumping
#NuclearPowerPlant
#RadioactiveWater
#RethinkNotRestart #PacificOcean

This from someone very familiar with TEPCO's falsification. From 2011:

#TEPCO’s shady history

LA Times: "As many people here are well aware (TEPCO) has a history of not being forthcoming about nuclear safety issues, particularly those surrounding earthquake-related dangers. In 2003, all 17 of its nuclear plants were shut down temporarily after a scandal over falsified safety-inspection reports. It ran into trouble again in 2006, when it emerged that coolant-water data at two plants had been falsified in the 1980s."

by Tim Shorrock
March 14, 2011

"In 2002, Tokyo Electric Co. admitted to #falsifying its records of #nuclear inspections and hiding the facts for more than a decade. Ironically, the information came from a #whistleblower at #GE, which helped build the plants and has contracted with TEPCO on operational matters for decades.

"The problems at the tsunami-stricken #NuclearPowerPlant at #Fukushima continue to mount. On Monday in #Japan, another hydrogen explosion shook the plant as the utility and the government tried furiously to stop a meltdown at two reactors.

"This morning the New York Times is reporting that 'experts in Japan and the United States say the country is now facing a cascade of accumulating problems that suggest that radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months.'

"If we’ve learned anything from the crisis so far, it’s that the Japan government and its nuclear industry don’t have the smoothest PR in the world. Ever since the tsunami knocked out the plant’s cooling system on Friday and the reactor cores began over-heating, the official word has been confusing, contradictory and downright mysterious.

"The problem was underscored in a most ludicrous way on Saturday afternoon in Washington, when the Japanese Ambassador appeared on CNN with Wolf Blitzter and sought almost desperately to reassure the world that everything was fine. 'No meltdown,' he snapped to Wolf. But, within minutes, the ambassador was contradicted by the head of Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety agency, which told CNN that a meltdown actually 'might be under way.' Hard to reconcile those two points (see this chart on what happens in a meltdown.)

"By now, of course, it’s clear that there’s been a partial #meltdown, and we’re all hoping that the situation can be brought under control and the radiation contained. Yet the impression lingers of, let us say, a failure to communicate. And it’s much worse for people in Japan, who are trying to sort through the conflicting information and monitoring a news media that doesn’t seem to be demanding answers. As my friend Alan Gleason, a translator, editor and jazz musician living in Tokyo, wrote on this site yesterday,

"So far the most sobering and disturbing thing is the inability or unwillingness of government and power company spokesmen to give straight answers about what’s going on, as well as the TV stations’ unwillingness to press them on this…[It seems that] when a man-made disaster, or one exacerbated by human error, occurs, self-censorship kicks in to protect #PowerfulInterests."

Read more:
timshorrock.com/2011/03/14/tep…

#WaterIsLife #OceansAreLife #IAEAHides #TEPCOLies
#FukushimaIsntOver #NoDumping
#NuclearPowerPlant
#RadioactiveWater
#RethinkNotRestart #KashiwazakiKariwa #PacificOcean #Censorship #FalsifyingData #JapanSecrecyAct #CIA

From 2007:

"Not Again": Yet Another #TEPCO Scandal

Citizens' Nuclear Information Center

"Over the years there have been all sorts of cases of data fabrication and falsification at #nuclear, thermal and hydroelectric power plants. Each time the power companies and plant makers apologize and say that they will lance the wound, but then they go and repeat the same behavior over and over again. When Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) reported yet another case of data falsification to the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry (#METI) the headline in the Fukushima local newspaper the following day (1 February 2007) was 'Not Again!', sigh the local people and the Prefectural government '.

"The latest scandal began when Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported on 31 October 2006 that #Chugoku Electric Power Company had falsified data for #DoyoDam on the #MatanoRiver. People might assume that the reason for #ChugokuElectric's admission was simply that it had made a judgment that the problem could no longer be concealed once it was leaked to the newspaper. However, there was more behind the admission than meets the eye. Even before this, anti-dam activists had been pursuing TEPCO over suspicious data related to its dams. For example, it had recorded flow measurements that could not possibly have been taken, because the locations were inaccessible due to heavy snow falls. Chugoku Electric's admission should be seen against this background.

"METI and the Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport responded by demanding that all electric power companies check their records. The upshot was that it was discovered that Chugoku Electric was not alone. In fact, it became apparent that all power companies had falsified and fabricated data in relation to such things as subsidence of dam embankments, and alterations to facilities without prior approval.

"The next major development came on November 15th, when it was revealed that Chugoku Electric had falsified data in relation to releases of hot wastewater at its #Shimonoseki thermal power plant. This led to similar revelations for nuclear power plants owned by TEPCO, #Kansai Electric Power Company (#KEPCO), Tohoku Electric Power Company and Japan Atomic Power Company (#JAPCO). On 10 January 2007 TEPCO submitted a report to METI entitled 'Causes of and measures to prevent a repetition of falsification of sea temperature data at the condenser outlets of #KashiwazakiKariwa Nuclear Power Plant, Reactors 1 and 4'.

"The report said, 'An investigation of power plants was instigated, because the Shimonoseki thermal power plant case reminded a worker that corrections had been made to sea temperature data.' As a result, falsification (referred to by TEPCO as "corrections") was discovered at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa reactors 1 & 4 and #Fukushima I reactors 1, 4 & 5.

"The hot wastewater referred to here is seawater, which has been used to cool and condense the steam used to drive the turbines of thermal and nuclear power plants. When the steam from the turbine condenses, its heat is transferred to the coolant, which in this case is seawater. The temperature of the seawater is raised in the process. If the seawater released is too hot, it can affect the ecosystem. Therefore, the temperature at both the intake and outlet points is measured and monitored to ensure that the temperature difference is not too great. At some power plants computers were programmed to record a higher than actual intake temperature, while at others they were programmed to record a lower outlet temperature. The readings were thus falsified to show a lower temperature difference than was really the case.

"On 31 January 2007 TEPCO released details of data falsification at its nuclear power plants. It admitted to a total of about 200 irregularities. A few examples are discussed below.

1. During a periodic inspection in May 1992 at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa reactor number 1 (K-K-1), the day before it was to be tested it was discovered that, due to a fault with the electric motor, the residual heat removal pump (part of the Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS)) was not working. TEPCO staff made some adjustments to make it appear from the central control room that the pump was working. In this way, they were able to trick the METI inspector into awarding a pass for the inspection.

2. Again at K-K (the reactors are not specified), from around 1995 to 1997, measurements of the concentration of radioactive iodine released from the exhaust stack were made to appear lower than they really were by taking the measurements on the reverse side of the filter. In May 1995 the concentration of radioactivity from rare gases emitted from the exhaust stack of reactor 4 was also falsified.

3. From 1979 to 1998, in order to pass inspections, internal pressure readings for steam pipes connecting the reactor to the turbines at Fukushima I reactor 1 were falsified to match the specifications in the inspection guidelines. It was said that the specifications were inappropriate and that they were later amended so that falsification ceased to be necessary.

"There were many instances of malpractice besides these, in relation to periodic inspections and also in other areas. Fabrication and falsification had indeed become standard practice. Investigations are still proceeding and one cannot help feeling that the most serious and dangerous cases are still to come."

[And indeed it would come, 4 years later!]

cnic.jp/english/newsletter/nit…

#CitizensNuclearInformatioNcenter #NoNukes #WaterIsLife #OceansAreLife #IAEAHides #TEPCOLies #FukushimaIsntOver #NoDumping #NuclearPowerPlants #RadioactiveWater #RethinkNotRestart #PacificOcean #DataFalsification