Japanese engineer says he covered up flaw at shut reactor.

[MoonRiver]

One of the reactors in the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant may have been relying on flawed steel to hold the radiation in its core, according to an engineer who helped build its containment vessel four decades ago.

Mitsuhiko Tanaka says he helped conceal a manufacturing defect in the $250 million steel vessel installed at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 4 reactor while working for a unit of Hitachi Ltd. (6501) in 1974. The reactor, which Tanaka has called a “time bomb,” was shut for maintenance when the March 11 earthquake triggered a 7-meter (23-foot) tsunami that disabled cooling systems at the plant, leading to explosions and radiation leaks.

“Who knows what would have happened if that reactor had been running?” Tanaka, who turned his back on the nuclear industry after the Chernobyl disaster, said in an interview last week. “I have no idea if it could withstand an earthquake like this. It’s got a faulty reactor inside.”

Tanaka’s allegations, which he says he brought to the attention of Japan’s Trade Ministry in 1988 and chronicled in a book two years later called “Why Nuclear Power is Dangerous,” have resurfaced after Japan’s worst nuclear accident on record. The No. 4 reactor was hit by explosions and a fire that spread from adjacent units as the crisis deepened.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-23/fukushima-engineer-says-he-covered-up-flaw-at-shut-reactor.html

[Urban Prairie]

1. That is an excellent example of why I am opposed to building new reactors

Slipshod subcontracted work, substandard materials, cost-cutting/flawed designs, skipped/fudged structural support tests, and of course the potential of bribes/payoffs to those government officials/agencies responsible for overseeing/ensuring proper nuclear reactor construction rules, policies, practices and codes are being followed.

[MoonRiver]

2. And the horrible thing is that the same corrupt, shoddy work

is probably going on here.

[Zoeisright]

3. Yep. People lie all the time. Especially about money.

And in one of the stupidest posts ever here, someone compared the tsunami deaths to the nuclear accident deaths (so far) as though they're comparable. Completely ignoring, of course, the fact that tsunamis are acts of nature. And nuclear reactors are accidents waiting to happen.