As Japan yesterday launched an investigation into the world's worst nuclear accident since the 1996 Chernobyl disaster, the child-like stupidity that caused the accident has left experts stunned.
The professional standards "we are talking about here are those of elementary school children," said Nobuo Oda, an emeritus professor of radiation physics at Tokyo Institute of Technology.
Among the litany of mistakes revealed by officials since Thursday's accident at the processing plant in Tokaimura, 120km northeast of Tokyo:
PHOTO: AFP
* Three workers used steel buckets to pour uranium solution into settling tanks because they were in a hurry. It should have been poured through a reserve tower to be mixed with nitrogen gas and slowly filtered.
* The trio, two of whom had no previous experience in the operation, used 16 kg of uranium, enough for a self-sustaining "criticality" reaction, when the limit was 2.4 kg.
* The company running the plant, JCO Co Ltd, revised its manual in October 1997 without legal approval to allow steel containers to be used in the dangerous operation.
* The government reportedly accepted JCO's application to run the plant even though JCO said there was no need "to prepare for a possible criticality accident" because it would weigh the nuclear material to prevent such a disaster.
Japanese media reported yesterday that one of the workers was found to have been exposed to a shocking amount of radiation -- far in excess of what hospital officials had initially reported.
Hisashi Ouchi had been exposed to about 17,000 times what is normal for annual exposure, a potentially deadly amount, Dr Kazuhiko Maekawa said yesterday.
"It is a lethal dose," said Maekawa, one of the physicians treating Ouchi at Tokyo University Hospital, where he was transferred yesterday.
The government says that 49 people were exposed to the radiation, although Ouchi and two other plant workers were the only ones to require hospitalization.
Amid public anger over how such a potentially devastating mistake could have happened, officials reiterated their promise to get to the bottom of what happened.
"We suspect the operator violated the nation's nuclear energy facilities law," said a spokesman for Ibaraki Police Department.
The Science and Technology Agency separately raided the firm's headquarters in Tokyo and facilities in Tokaimura late yesterday to seize documents.
"I ordered the Science and Technology Agency to carry out a strict inspection," an angry Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi said. "The workers had used their hands and a stainless steel bucket or something. This is inconceivable."
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