TEPCO provided radiation map to U.S. before Japanese public
The government's new radiation contamination map site is seen in this screen capture taken on Oct. 18. (Mainichi)
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Tokyo Electric Power Co. provided a contamination survey map of its crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant to the U.S. nuclear regulator nearly a month before its official disclosure to the public in Japan in late April last year, company officials said.
The revelation follows a series of revelations that the government data from the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information and the Japan Meteorological Agency's data on the projected radiation spread were provided to the United States and other international institutes before disclosure of the information in Japan.
TEPCO started making the map which described the amount of radiation at up to 150 spots around the buildings in the power plant site on March 22 and provided it the same day to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the request of its staff members dispatched to Japan after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami triggered the nuclear crisis, the officials said.
TEPCO officials and NRC staffers continued to share updated versions of the map almost every day via e-mail, they said.
This satellite file image taken on March 14, 2011, and provided by DigitalGlobe shows the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan. (AP Photo/DigitalGlobe)
TEPCO only started providing the data to Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency on March 23. It waited until April 24 to make the map public, only after the media reported details of the map a day before.
An official at TEPCO's public relations department said the company had provided data on the radiation amount at the Fukushima No. 1 complex at press conferences even before the official disclosure of the map, adding the utility "received advice" from the NRC.
(Mainichi Japan) February 12, 2012
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