» Japanese engineer uring Taiwan to throw nuclear energy away

2014/01/16

A Japanese engineer, Mitsuhiko Tanaka, who helped build reactor 4 at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant said such plants are inherently unstable and urged Taiwan to ditch atomic energy for renewable resources.

He told a press conference at Taipei that the 1986 Chernobyl disaster changed his views on nuclear power.

Tanaka, who helped build part of reactor 4 while working at Hitachi Ltd. in 1974, quit the company in 1977 and became a writer. He chronicled the discovery of a manufacturing defect in reactor 4, and the subsequent coverup, in a book in 1990.

When he went in 1988 to the then-Ministry of International Trade and Industry to report the cover-up, the government refused to investigate it and Hitachi denied his accusations.

Little did he know that the manufacturing defect would resurface decades later after the March 11, 2011, magnitude-9 earthquake off the Pacific coast rocked the plant, spawning a tsunami that robbed it of all power and disabled its cooling systems, triggering three core meltdowns.Reactor 4 was shut for maintenance during the crisis but hit by hydrogen explosions and a fire that spread from adjacent units.
<Media Report>
Fukushima No. 1 engineer’s warning to Taiwan: Nuclear power unstable (Japan Times)

Tags:news, politicians, Tiwan

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