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Japanese Government to Help Stabilize Nuclear Plant After Leaks Japan Stepping In to Help Clean Up Atomic Plant
(about 13 hours later)
TOKYO — The Japanese prime minister directed his government on Wednesday to step in to help stabilize the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, after continuing radiation leaks exposed the failure of the plant’s operator to contain the problem more than two years after a triple meltdown. TOKYO — First, a rat gnawed through exposed wiring, setting off a scramble to end yet another worrisome blackout at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Then, hastily built pits for a flood of contaminated water sprang leaks themselves. Now, a new rush of radioactive water has breached a barrier built to stop it, allowing heavily contaminated water to spill daily into the Pacific.
Calling recent revelations of new contamination flowing into the Pacific Ocean an “urgent issue,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the national government had to use its resources to help the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, bring the leaks under control. In a recognition of the magnitude of the problem, a government official said Wednesday that some 300 tons, or about 75,000 gallons, of contaminated groundwater is now believed to be flowing daily into the man-made harbor at the Fukushima plant. As the scope of the latest crisis became clearer on Wednesday, Japan’s popular prime minister, Shinzo Abe, ordered his government to intervene in the cleanup of the plant — taking a more direct role than any government since the triple meltdowns in 2011 qualified Fukushima as the world’s second worst nuclear disaster after Chernobyl.
Regulators said in the past week that a “chemical wall” built in June by the operator, also known as Tepco, had failed to contain the contaminated water, which appears now to be flowing over the top of the barrier and into the Pacific. This newest problem comes after a series of troubles at the plant earlier this year that included spills of highly toxic water and a partial power failure caused by a rat in a circuit board. Mr. Abe, a staunch defender of the country’s nuclear program, appears to have calculated that he needed to intervene to rebuild public trust and salvage a pillar of his economic revival plan: the restarting of many idled nuclear plants. That trust has been eroded not only by the original catastrophe, but also by two and a half years of sometimes embarrassing missteps by the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, and what many Japanese see as the its continuing attempts to mislead the public and cover up unending problems at the plant.
“This is not an issue we can let Tepco take complete responsibility of,” Mr. Abe told a group of Cabinet ministers gathered to discuss the plant. “We must deal with this at the national level.” “This is not an issue we can let Tepco take complete responsibility of,” Mr. Abe told cabinet ministers gathered to discuss the water problem that has swiftly emerged as the biggest challenge at the plant and that appears to be slowly spiraling out of control. “We must deal with this at the national level.”
Though Mr. Abe did not specify what his government would do, local news reports quoted unidentified officials in the trade ministry, which has promoted the use of nuclear power, as saying that Tokyo would most likely help pay for a $400 million wall of ice to surround the damaged reactor buildings. But taking a bigger role in a vast and unprecedented cleanup may also be a political gamble for Mr. Abe, especially if the government proves as unable as Tepco to contain the unending leaks of radioactive materials.
The plan calls for freezing the soil around the buildings to shut off the flow of contamination into nearby groundwater, and thus end the leaks into the sea. Doing this would require an ice wall nearly a mile in length that would reach almost 100 feet, or 30 meters, into the ground. Officials said that an ice wall of such a scale had never been attempted before, making it unlikely that Tepco could pull off the feat alone. Many analysts said Mr. Abe’s move was an admission that previous governments had erred by entrusting the 40-year, $11 billion cleanup to the same company that many blame for allowing the catastrophe to happen in the first place. Tepco’s leadership has been particularly worrisome, critics say, since it remains enmeshed in the collusive ties between the government and the industry that many say made the plant vulnerable.
“There is no precedent in the world to create a water-shielding wall with frozen soil on such a large scale,” the government’s main spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, told a news conference. “To build that, I think the state has to step in to support its realization.” Tepco had clung to the chance to lead the cleanup as an opportunity to redeem itself and regain its position as a leading member of Japan’s corporate community. But critics say it has continued to lose credibility by repeatedly underplaying dangers at the plant, following a pattern set in the early days of the disaster when it hid information about the extent of the damage and frequently bungled its response. The company balked at adding seawater to the reactors even as their cores became dangerously hot, for fear of ruining them for good, and officials did not acknowledge for two months that meltdowns had occurred at three reactors.
In the case of the latest leak — a flood of groundwater tainted with radioactive tritium, cesium and strontium — the company denied that it posed any threat to the Pacific, even after regulators publicly said evidence suggested the company was wrong.
Tepco’s own advisory group of foreign experts criticized the company’s late admission that the water was reaching the sea, with one saying it “brings into question whether Tepco has a plan and is doing all it can to protect the environment and the people.” Although the advisers said Tepco was doing a good job cleaning up, other experts and some regulators have questioned its ability to handle the highly complex decommissioning of reactors.
“This is an admission by the government that Tepco has mismanaged the cleanup and misinformed the public,” said Eiji Yamaguchi, a professor of science and technology policy at Doshisha University in Kyoto. “The government has no choice but to end two years of Tepco obfuscating the actual condition of the plant.”
The groundwater problems at the plant started soon after the disaster, when Tepco realized that tons of water flowing from the mountains and toward the sea were pouring into the contaminated reactor buildings. The company began storing the water in multiplying rows of tanks and pits. But it was slow to come up with longer-term solutions.
Then, in May, Tepco realized it had a new problem, with contaminants apparently leaking from a maze of conduits near the wrecked reactors causing a spike in radiation levels in groundwater elsewhere in the plant.
It began to build an underground “wall” created by injecting hardening chemicals into the soil — even as it denied there was a threat to the ocean — but the water that was pooled behind the barrier eventually began to flow over. On Wednesday, government officials said they believed 300 tons was entering the ocean daily.
The amounts of some radioactive materials, like cancer-causing strontium, flowing into the ocean are above safety limits, but experts say that given the size of the plant’s previous releases, the new ones are relatively minor.
Some experts suggested Wednesday that the government’s intervention might be the first step in attempts to win public acceptance for what they say is an increasing inevitability: the dumping into the ocean of some of the less contaminated water being stored in the hulking tanks overwhelming the plant. At a news conference last week, Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority, seemed to lay the groundwork, saying that eventually “it will be necessary to discharge water,” a possible solution likely to raise concerns not only in Japan but in other Pacific Rim countries.
Whether the government intervention will help remedy the groundwater issue is an open question, Mr. Yamaguchi and others said. Its expanded role will probably be led by the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry, or METI, which has been criticized as having close ties to Tepco and the rest of the nuclear industry. Other aspects of the Fukushima plant’s decommissioning have also been dominated by members of Japan’s collusive “nuclear village,” including politically connected construction companies.
Experts have long worried that the government erred early on by refusing to bring in other Japanese and foreign companies in leading roles, including American companies with experience in nuclear cleanups like that at Three Mile Island.
“Without involving outsiders, there will be no way to know for sure what is really happening at Fukushima Daiichi,” Mr. Yamaguchi said.
It was also not clear how intensively the government would actually get involved in the cleanup. Mr. Abe did not give specifics beyond directing his ministers to help resolve the water problem, which he said was causing public anxiety. On Wednesday, local news reports quoted unidentified officials in METI as saying that Tokyo would probably help pay for a $400 million wall of ice that is being planned to surround the damaged reactor buildings and keep at bay groundwater before it can become contaminated.
Some top officials hinted that Wednesday’s move amounted to little more than an effort to provide public money to assist Tepco. Others suggested that the government might seek to take the lead in at least certain aspects of the cleanup, like the technologically challenging ice wall.
“There is no precedent in the world to create a water-shielding wall with frozen soil on such a large scale,” said the government’s top spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.
Indeed, the proposed ice wall is seen here as a symbol of both the daunting technological challenges, and the need — critics say desperation — for creative solutions at the plant.
The wall would run nearly a mile in length and reach almost 100 feet into the ground.
But even as Tepco places a bet on the ambitious plans, experts have begun to raise concerns, including that the wall will need to be consistently cooled using electricity at a plant vulnerable to power failures. The original disaster was brought on by an earthquake and tsunami that knocked out electricity.

Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting.