Warnings of nuclear disaster not heeded, claims former governor

By David McNeill in Tokyo
23 April 2011 The former governor of Fukushima province has spoken of his frustration at the failure of the Japanese authorities to heed his warnings over the safety of the power plant that was stricken by the country’s recent earthquake. The story of Japan’s epic disaster comes with a generous cast of Cassandra figures, the seismologists, conservationists and whistle-blowers ignored by the national nuclear planners. But 71-year-old Eisako Sato may be pre-eminent among them. As governor of Fukushima Prefecture from 1988-2006 – “roughly half the life of the plant”, he told journalists at Tokyo’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club earlier this week – he was initially an enthusiastic supporter of nuclear power, swayed like his predecessors after the government and utility giant Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) brought his prefecture jobs, subsidies and a chance to contribute to the national good. In 1998 he conditionally agreed the controversial use of mixed oxide plutonium uranium (MOX) fuel at the plant. But he withdrew it after discovering a cover-up of reactor malfunctions and cracks. Later his doubts would grow. “Between 2002 and 2006, 21 problems at the Fukushima plant were reported to my office,” he said. The whistleblowers, including some employees at the plant, bypassed both Tepco and Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) because they feared, rightly, that their information would go straight to Tepco. Sato became an increasingly bitter critic of the plant and Japan’s entire energy policy, directed by NISA’s powerful government overseer, the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry. In 2006, he was forced to step down and was prosecuted and convicted in 2008 on bribery charges that he claims were politically motivated. Embittered, he wrote a biography called Annihilating a Governor explaining his concerns about nuclear power and how he was set up and wrongfully convicted by the prosecution. Largely ignored until March 11, the book is now at the top of the sales list. “Unfortunately, it took this tragedy to make it a bestseller,” he laments. …