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Former Tokyo Police Chief: Tepco wanted to withdraw from Fukushima Daini, not only Daiichi
ENENews
June 9, 2012
INSIGHT: Diet panel’s conclusion on TEPCO defies evidence
Asahi AJW
HIDEAKI KIMURA
June 9, 2012
[...] the hearing on June 8 revealed exchanges on the teleconferencing system between TEPCO’s main office in Tokyo and the crippled Fukushima plant on March 14 and March 15 that showed the company was in the process of giving up the recovery efforts and abandoning the plant.
[...]
According to the exchanges around 8 p.m. on March 14, someone asked: “Around what time will evacuation of all workers from the site be ready?”
Another person sought confirmation of evacuating to TEPCO’s Fukushima No. 2 [Daini] nuclear power plant, which was also hit by the tsunami but had shut down properly.
“All workers will evacuate to the visitor hall of the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power plant, is that correct?” the person asked.
[Masataka Shimizu, TEPCO president at the time] responded in the teleconference, “We have yet to finalize the evacuation.” He also said, “We are in the middle of the process of confirming with the appropriate authority.”
[...]
The newspaper also learned that Tetsuro Ito, deputy chief Cabinet secretary for crisis management and former chief of Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department, was told directly by a TEPCO official at the prime minister’s office that the utility wanted to “abandon” the Fukushima No. 1 plant and “eventually withdraw” from the Fukushima No. 2 plant.
The Response
Shuya Nomura, a lawyer and member of the Diet investigative panel, asked Shimizu if government officials misunderstood the meaning of “evacuation of all.”
“I am afraid so,” Shimizu said.