In retrospect I cannot but marvel at the extent of my naivety and ignorance then. But such was the mindset of almost everyone in my country in those fateful two weeks, after Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was plunged into “station blackout” by the impact of the tsunami of March 11 last year.
What I simply did not recognise was that Japan was on the edge of an existential crisis, as a cascading nuclear accident rapidly unfolded. For 48 hours from March 14, disaster seemed especially imminent. Officials in the prime minister’s office were gloomy if not desperate. Late on March 14 Masataka Shimizu, then president of Tepco, began telephoning officials and insinuating the company’s intentions to abandon the plant and evacuate workers – compelling the then prime minister, Naoto Kan, to intervene decisively: he stormed into Tepco headquarters and ordered senior managers not to abandon ship. He also implored that a “death squad” be formed to continue the battle and inject water into the reactor vessels.
The stakes, we now know, were extraordinarily high. Unbeknown to the public, Mr Kan also instructed Dr Shunsuke Kondo, chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), to draw up a “worst case scenario”. The resulting contingency document submitted on March 25 envisioned a hydrogen explosion in Unit 1 initiating a succession of meltdowns. The resulting plume of radiation could have led to the evacuation of Tokyo’s metropolitan area, the report projected.