福岛之觞：揭秘核泄露内幕

    在任何地方的行政系统中，吉田的行为都算是不折不扣的抗命。更何况是在日本，吉田的做法基本上是不可想象的。因为在日本，层级决定了一切，它甚至决定了你在见到别人的时候应该鞠多少度的躬。（去年11月底，吉田被降职为现场经理，后来因为一种没有向外界透露的疾病入院。）

    吉田在面对危机时的决定，说明了当时的情形有多绝望。核电顾问佐藤表示：“他的做法完全是正确的。”

福岛死士

    调查人员发现，在地震和海啸后的几个小时和几天里，东电员工们也犯了一些重大错误，其中的一些错误至今也没有得到解释。

    其中的一个错误涉及一个叫做隔离冷凝器的重要设备，即便在失去外部电力的时候，它也能保持反应堆内的水位稳定。福岛第一核电站的操作人员不知为什么迟报了这个设备的故障，直到3月11日晚上，他们才承认隔离冷凝器没有运转。而且后来他们曾试图手动打开一个之前关闭的阀门，但却以失败而告终。东电总部推迟做出“泄压”的决定，也是由于他们认为隔离冷凝器还在工作。在日本政府的报告看来，正是这个错误导致了3月12日一号反应堆出现第一次巨大的氢气爆炸。

    船桥委员会的报告也质疑道，为什么从菅直人首相批准泄压计划，到福岛第一核电站首次泄压，中间相隔了整整7个小时。而在这期间不停地有更多的氢气泄入反应堆保护壳。

    核电站内的艰难情形，以及核电站外的混乱局面，可能是导致东电没有采取更迅速的行动的主要原因。

    吉田在午夜过后就命令他的团队准备给1号和2号反应堆泄压，菅直人首相在午夜1点30分左右批准了泄压计划。

    不过核电站事先并没有制定在失去电力的情况下操作泄压阀的流程，因此吉田手下的操作人员们必须火速想出手动操作泄压阀的办法，然后冒着生命危险去给反应堆泄压。

    与此同时，政府也想确保福岛第一核电站附近的居民都已被疏散。这可能得需要好几个小时，尤其是因为居民们不知道该往哪个方向逃难。

    3月12日9点刚过，吉田派出了两个小组去执行任务。他们明知反应堆里的辐射水平非常危险，但仍然志愿进入反应堆。每个小组分别负责打开几个重要阀门。第一小组成功地执行了任务，然后迅速撤了出来。但第二小组刚一进入反应堆，他们的“辐射剂量”——也就是辐射暴露水平立刻激增。其中一名操作人员立即暴露在106毫希的辐射中，超过了东电规定的100毫希的“应急剂量限制”。

    In any chain of command situation anywhere, it was nothing less than insubordination. In a Japanese context, what Yoshida did is practically unthinkable. Hierarchy is everything in Japan. It literally dictates how low you should bow when meeting someone else. (In late November, Yoshida stepped down as site manager, having been hospitalized with an undisclosed illness.)

    Yoshida's decision in the face of crisis speaks volumes as to just how desperate the situation was then. "It was exactly the right thing to do," says Sato, the consultant.

Into the Fire

    In the first hours and days following the earthquake and tsunami, investigators have found TEPCO personnel made also critical mistakes—a couple of which are still unexplained.

    One involved a critical piece of equipment, known as an isolation condenser, which keeps the water level in the reactor constant even if offsite electricity is lost. On the night of March 11, TEPCO operators at the plant site belatedly recognized that the system was not functioning, and then once they did, tried and failed to open up manually a valve that had been closed.

    The assumption that the system was working delayed the decision to "vent", or depressurize, the reactor unit, a mistake that, in the eyes of the government's interim report, led to the first huge hydrogen explosion at reactor one the afternoon of March 12.

    The independent Funabashi report also questions why it took seven hours from the time Prime Minister Kan approved the plan to vent to the first attempt to execute it. All the while, more hydrogen was leaking into the reactor building.

    Conditions inside the plant—and confusion just outside of it— may have precluded swifter action.

    Yoshida had ordered his team to make preparations to vent reactors one and two shortly after midnight, and Kan, the Prime Minister, approved the plan at around 1:30am.

    But there was no procedure to operate the vent valves without power, so Yoshida's operators had to figure out on the fly how to do so manually—and then take potentially fatal risks to try to make it work.

    At the same time, the government wanted to make sure residents who still remained in the area around of the plant were evacuated. It would be several hours before that happened, in part because the residents had no idea in which direction they were to flee.

    Shortly after 9 in the morning of March 12, Yoshida dispatched the two teams. Both had volunteered to go into the reactor, knowing that radiation levels were dangerously high. Each headed to different sections to open critical valves.