Nailing Tokyo Electric to the ground

Of all the articles I’ve read about the horrific magnitude 9 Fukushima earthquake, etc., of all the TV news I’ve heard, the scenes of disaster I’ve seen, the only real piece of solid news and information I’ve come across is Greg Palast’s article, Tokyo Electric to Build US Nuclear Plants—The no-BS info on Japan’s disastrous nuclear operators.

Palast, who is an outstanding investigative reporter, also was a lead investigator in several government nuclear plant fraud and racketeering investigations. He has now revealed the inner dynamics of this tragedy and the fact that the builder of the faulty Fukushima reactor complex, Tokyo Electric Power, is slated for “a $4 billion loan guarantee for two new nuclear reactors to be built and operated on the Gulf Coast of Texas with local partners. More jolts for the Gulf and America.

Palast lays it out from the get-go that the failure of emergency systems at Japan’s nuclear plants comes as no surprise to experts in the field, himself included.

Everywhere in the world, he points out, “Nuclear plants must be certified for ‘SQ’ or ‘Seismic Qualification.’” The owners, no exceptions, must swear that all components can take the toughest shaking event, from a major earthquake “to an exploding Christmas card from Al Qaeda.”

As Palast puts it, “the most inexpensive way to meet your SQ is to lie. The industry does it all the time.” His experience with a government investigative team in 1988 came from the Shoreham plant in New York. It could have cost the Shoreham builders a billion dollars to rectify the problems. But engineers were told to fudge the test scores from ‘failed’ to ‘passed.’ Despite the fact that Shoreham took from 1973 to 1984 to be built, it was far from perfect.

Wiki tells us, “It was located on Long Island Sound—near the mouth of the small stream that forms the border between Brookhaven and Riverhead towns, and was largely rural at the time (although about 50 miles from Manhattan).” Imagine if it popped with New York City’s millions in closer proximity than Tokyo’s to Fukushima.

The Fukushima plant disaster is now being compared increasingly to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, with a total meltdown in sight. The Shoreham plant, another nightmare, resulted in delays and cost overruns before New York Governor Mario Cuomo pulled the plug in a state takeover.

After completion, Shoreham received a low power license and underwent low power testing, but never produced any commercial electric power, because New York Governor Mario Cuomo’s representatives did not sign the Emergency Evacuation Plan. This meant that it could not receive a full power license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) . . . And bravo to the NRC for not giving it.

The plant was fully decommissioned in 1994, and did not leave a good taste in New Yorkers’ mouths about nuclear power.

Returning to Fukushima, the company that had the bright idea to falsify the complex’s safety report was Stone & Webster, now working as the nuclear unit of Shaw Construction, which will work with Tokyo Electric to put up the Texas plant. Do we really need them, and to hand them billions more of taxpayers’ money?

Palast reminds us that CNN reporters kept parroting the “official line that the tsunami disabled the pumps needed to cool the reactors, implying that water unexpectedly got into the diesel generators that run the pumps.” These safety back-up systems are called ‘EDG’s’ or Emergency Diesel Generators.

The fact that these diesel generators did not work, if I may point out, was that they weren’t buried underground for maximum protection from the tsunami that usually follows an earthquake of this size. The tsunami that hit Japan was 10 meters high and blacked out the diesel engines that were needed to cool the reactors as it flowed over and soaked them. Thus, the operators started pumping in sea water to cool the reactors.

Bottom line, Tokyo Electric cut corners by leaving these generators high above ground, which was a fundamental cause of the tragedy. And, all the while we’re listening to TV announcers tell us that Japan has the highest earthquake protection and readiness standards in the world. My eye it does. And if those poor people believe it, now they have the proof it isn’t. Their system, as ours, is the product of standard corporate greed.

As Palast puts it, “What dim bulbs designed this system?” He adds, “One of the reactors dancing with death at Fukushima Station 1 was built by Toshiba . . . also an architect of the emergency diesel system.” So the dim bulb also produced the exposed back-up safety system in question.

“Now be afraid,” Palast warns. And here comes the coup de grâce: “Obama’s $4 billion bail-out-in-the making is called the South Texas Project.” That is, for the plant to be built on the Gulf Coast of Texas. It’s been sold in as “a red-white-and-blue way to make power domestically with a reactor from Westinghouse, a great American brand.” The only trouble is that the reactor will be mostly made in Japan by the company that bought the US brand name, Westinghouse, which is really Toshiba. Well, whoever mentioned that in the news before?

Palast reminisces that he once had a Toshiba computer and “[He] only had to send it in once for warranty work. However, it’s kind of hard to mail back a reactor with the warranty slip inside the box if the fuel rods are melted and sinking halfway into the earth’s core.” Sure as hell is, and we’re watching the tragic, life-stealing performance all day and night long.

TEPCO (Texas Power Company), Palast adds, “and Toshiba don’t know what my son learned in 8th grade science class: tsunamis follow Pacific Rim earthquakes. So these companies are real, stupid, eh? Maybe. More likely is that the diesels and related systems wouldn’t have worked on a fine, dry afternoon.” The first thing that seems to have drowned in this tragedy is the best set of safety standards in the world. And with them an estimated 10,000 people, and more to come.

Palast remembers “ . . . when emergency back-up diesels were ‘checked’ in America, a mind-blowing number flunked.” “At the New York nuke [Shoreham] . . . the builders swore under oath that their three diesel engines were ready for an emergency. They’d been tested. The tests were fake, the diesels r[a]n for just a short time at low speed. When the diesels were put through a real test under emergency-like conditions, the crankshaft on the first one snapped in about an hour, then the second and third. We nicknamed the diesels, ‘Snap, Crackle and Pop.’”

Palast’s humor is dark, but so is the picture emerging of the nuclear industry in Japan as well as in America; of their reactors overproducing beyond their 40-year life span, of easy regulators stamping 20-year extensions to other reactors, of profit driving safety. And word comes shortly after Palast wrote the above, “that two of three diesels failed at the Tokai Station as well.”

Palast tells us, “In the US, we supposedly fixed our diesels after much complaining by the industry. But in Japan, no one tells Tokyo Electric to do anything the Emperor of Electricity doesn’t want to do.” Scary, that not only has Tokyo Electric screwed up its own country inestimably; but Tokyo Electric will be the same people Obama is lining up for this $54 billion bailout to build nuclear reactors across the US. Now, wouldn’t this be an excellent reason and time to nix the deal? Is anybody listening at the White House? This is John Q. Public calling. Hello! Anybody home?

In fact, “lots of confidential notes from nuclear industry insiders” come to Palast. “One engineer, a big name in the field, is especially concerned that Obama waved the come-hither check to Toshiba and Tokyo Electric to lure them to America.” Fortunately, he says, “[T]he US has a long history of whistleblowers willing to put themselves on the line to save the public. In our racketeering case in New York, the government only found out about the seismic test fraud because two courageous engineers, Gordon Dick and John Daly, gave our team the documentary evidence.” So we have to count on whistleblowers, not the nuclear industry to monitor their reactors. Keep your fingers crossed.

It seems that in Japan this is simply not the practice. “The culture does not allow the salary men, who work all of their lives for one company, to drop the dime.” Not that different than here, where all those shills for BP told us every day about how much they were doing to keep us safe while the Gulf of Mexico was dying, hemorrhaging oil, choking on the toxic chemicals poured in to fix it.

Okay, so the US is no piece of cake. And both whistle-blowing engineers in the New York case were canned and blacklisted in the industry. Fortunately the government (local, state, federal) charged the builders with civil racketeering. They did not accept the corporate excuses. In the end, the plant was dismantled. Let’s hear it for Cuomo senior.

Palast asks us not to see himself as “some kind of xenophobic anti-Nippon crusade[r].” I don’t. I think he’s calling a spade a spade and I thank him for it. But still, Palast is considerably more frightened by the American swifties in the South Texas nuclear project, especially Shaw, with Stone & Webster now their nuclear division, since they’re also the firm that faked the EDG (Emergency Diesel Generators’) tests in New York. Additional exploits of the company have been divulged by John Perkins in his best-selling book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

In Palast’s words, “If the planet wants to shiver, consider this: Toshiba and Shaw have recently signed a deal to become worldwide partners in the construction of nuclear stations.” And we thought BP was a disaster. It is. But Toshiba and Shaw are a worse disaster—one that throws a tiny nation into an economic spiral downwards while its population is sprawling to nowhere in confusion, looking for food, drink, a safe place to sleep, clothing, blankets, etc. Do we want more of that in the US? In fact, the only positive thing to come out of this tragedy is to wake up America and its 104 nuclear reactor owners to these dangers. And beyond that, to wake up the nuclear reactor sector in the world.

Palast warns, “The other characters involved at the South Texas Plant that Obama is backing should also give us the willies. But as I’m in the middle of investigating the American partners, I’ll save that for another day.” I can’t wait for that tale, given the first episode.

Conversely, Palast asks, “Well, if we turned to America’s own nuclear contractors, would we be safe? Well, two of the melting Japanese reactors, including the one whose building blew sky high, were built by General Electric (Ronald Reagan’s old employer) of the Good Old US of A.” Fantastic, let’s hear it for sloppy nuclear power.

“And now, the homicides,” Palast says . . .

“CNN,” Palast asserts, “is only interested in body counts, how many workers burnt by radiation, swept away or lost in the explosion. These plants are now releasing radioactive steam into the atmosphere. Be skeptical about the statements that the ‘levels are not dangerous.’ These are the same people who said these meltdowns could never happen. Over years, not days, there may a thousand people, two thousand, ten thousand who will suffer from cancers induced by this radiation,” a truly frightening thought.

“In my New York investigation, I had the unhappy job of totaling up post-meltdown ‘morbidity’ rates for the county government. It would be irresponsible for me to estimate the number of cancer deaths that will occur from these releases without further information; but it is just criminal for the Tokyo Electric shoguns to say that these releases are not dangerous. Indeed, the fact that residents near the Japanese nuclear plants were not issued iodine pills to keep at the ready shows TEPCO doesn’t care who lives and who dies whether in Japan or the USA. The carcinogenic isotopes that are released at Fukushima are already floating to Seattle with effects we simply cannot measure.” And here comes another capper . . .

“Heaven help us. Because Obama won’t.” And let that be a lesson to us all, another notch in the inglorious career of our erstwhile leader, setting us up for destruction and failure, probably getting a tip for it too. But at least let me tip my Yankee cap to Greg Palast for this amazing piece of reporting. This is what the news is supposed be: what you don’t know and need to know to get on with your life—or save it. And don’t ever listen to a round-the-clock TV news catastrophe show again without thinking, cui bono, who profits from this failure.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer, life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.