Embattled Tepco faces its BP moment over Japan nuclear disaster

The Fukushima crisis has exposed Tokyo Electric Power Company to the unforgiving global scrutiny that BP faced

Guardian, The Observer, Terry Macalister, Sunday 20 March 2011

Children are checked for radiation after the Japan earthquake disaster
forced the evacuation of residents within 12 miles of the Fukushima nuclear
plant. Photograph: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), the operator of the Fukushima reactors, is the second energy company within a year to have its reputation damaged by a dramatic accident.

The similarities with BP and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster, although not complete, are obvious. Tepco's share price has halved and public confidence in its handling of the situation has dived.

The utility has already been severely criticised by Japan's prime minister, Naoto Kan, for failing to inform him immediately that a serious explosion had taken place following the earthquakes. "What the hell is going on?" asked Kan last week when he finally caught up with Tepco officials, in remarks picked up by a stray microphone. "Retreat is unthinkable," he told the firm, fearing that the decision to evacuate 740 staff from the stricken reactor site was the start of a complete abandonment.

BP felt the lash of Barack Obama's tongue last summer when he said that its then chief executive, Tony Hayward, would not still be on the payroll if he had worked at the White House, following Hayward's bungling performance over the oil spill.

Tepco directors have not yet been subjected to such personal criticism, but press conferences have degenerated into slanging matches as the company fails to come up with information or explanations. Asked about the cause of a fire that had broken out at the fourth reactor, despite announcements that a similar fire had been put out the day before, company officials said: "We'll check."

And when they did provide more information, it was couched in terms apparently designed to infuriate. Asked about the chance of meltdown, the company's answered with the memorable "the possibility of recriticality is not zero".

BP bombarded the media with a stream of visual, diagrammatic and other information as Hayward toured the degraded beaches of the southern US to show his concern. Tepco officials, by contrast, have kept a lower profile – certainly around Fukushima – but the Japanese utility shares some of the difficulties experienced by the British-based oil major. BP went into the Gulf spill haunted by previous mishaps at the Texas City refinery and Prudhoe Bay gas pipeline; similarly, Tepco's reputation was already tarnished by past mistakes.

It was severely criticised after the 2007 earthquake in the Niigata Chuetsu-Oki area when it was forced to shut down a plant, admitting that it had not been designed to cope with such tremors. That plant has never reopened. Five years earlier, Tepco was found to have falsified nuclear safety data at least 200 times between 1977 and 2002. All 17 of the company's boiling water reactors were shut down for inspections after the government provided evidence that Tepco had been concealing incidents. This forced the president, Nobuya Minami, and a number of board members to step down. It was 2005 before the firm was allowed to restart all its reactors.

Tepco is now run by Masataka Shimizu, who as well as being the new president is also head of the risk management committee. But he is another Tepco lifer and there have been few signs that the world's fourth-largest utility has been transformed.

US embassy cables released by the WikiLeaks website revealed deep unease about all the different nuclear power companies operating in Japan, of which Tepco is the largest.

Taro Kono, an MP, claimed in talks with US diplomats that these firms were "hiding the costs and safety problems associated with nuclear energy". He accused Japan's ministry of economy, trade and industry of "covering up nuclear accidents".

Inevitably, given that the situation at Fukushima remains highly uncertain, no one has yet got round to working out the cost of the incident. The Deepwater Horizon spill has cost BP more than $30bn (£19bn) so far but the group can earn more than $20bn in a good year and can easily sell off non-core global assets to fund the bill. Tepco made a profit of ¥134bn (£1bn) and is said by the ratings agency Moody's to face "potentially massive costs". And that is not counting the damage to reputation.

Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing
Director Akio Komiri weeps as Japanese officials
finally admit that radiation leak is serious enough
to kill people. (Mar 18, 2011)

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