Third probe into Japan’s 2011 catastrophe shows nuclear accident was not only due to tsunami but the result of lack of governance by concerned parties

The nuclear accident at Fukushima last year was a “man-made disaster” and not only due to the tsunami, a Japanese parliamentary panel said yesterday in its final report on the catastrophe.

“The Tepco Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and Tepco, and the lack of governance by said parties,” said the report by the Diet’s Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission.

“They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents. Therefore, we conclude that the accident was clearly ‘man-made’.

“We believe that the root causes were the organisational and regulatory systems that supported faulty rationales for decisions and actions, rather than issues relating to the competency of any specific individual.”

The probe is the third of its kind in Japan since the world’s worst nuclear crisis in a generation.

An earlier report by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) had all but cleared the huge utility, saying the size of the earthquake and tsunami was beyond all expectations and could not reasonably have been foreseen.

But an independent group of scholars and journalists said Tepco could and should have done more.

They also said that had the company had its way, its staff would have been evacuated from the crippled plant and the catastrophe could have spiralled even further out of control. The findings published yesterday call for further investigation into the impact of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake − as opposed to the towering tsunami − on the reactors at Fukushima.

Nuclear power returned to Japan’s energy mix for the first time in two months yesterday.

Government officials and the utility that runs the Ohi plant announced last month that the No. 3 reactor had passed stringent safety checks and needed to be brought back online to ward off blackouts as Japan enters its high-demand summer months.

The government hopes to see the restart of more of Japan’s 50 working reactors as soon as possible.

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