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Japan, TEPCO accused of ignoring nuke risks

Japanese officials and Tokyo Electric Power ignored the risk of an atomic accident because they believed in the ‘myth of nuclear safety’, a government-backed report on the Fukushima crisis said on Monday. The study, compiled by a panel of scholars, journalists, lawyers and engineers, also said officials were poorly trained to deal with the crisis after the plant’s reactors went into meltdown last year.

‘The fundamental problem lies in the fact that utilities, including TEPCO and the government, have failed to see the danger as reality,’ it said, adding that ‘they were bound by a myth of nuclear safety and the notion that severe accidents do not happen at nuclear plants in our country.’ The 450-page report is the fourth inquiry into the worst nuclear accident in a generation, which happened after the huge tsunami of March 2011 crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.

Reactors went into meltdown, sending clouds of radiation over a wide area, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes, some possibly for the rest of their lives. A damning parliamentary study that said the disaster was ‘man-made’ was released earlier this month, following a private report by a group of journalists and scholars.

Tokyo Electric Power, or TEPCO, the operator of the crippled plant, largely cleared itself of blame, saying the size of the earthquake and tsunami was beyond all expectations.
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