TOKYO―The crippled Japanese power plant at the heart of the world's worst nuclear crisis in a quarter-century has a history of operational and mechanical flaws, including a recent incident in which workers used the wrong plans to work on a reactor.
The findings came as the plant's operator and the Japanese government continued Thursday to attempt to gain control of the earthquake-damaged plant's reactors, as steam blasts and serious injuries to workers further delayed efforts to cool fuel rods, restart cooling pumps and stanch radiation leaks.
According to Japanese regulatory records, in August 2010, employees at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima Daiichi power plant, armed with plans for work on the complex's No. 6 reactor, instead began conducting work on the facility's No. 5 unit. They then altered work plans on their own, according to the records, leading to a mistake that rendered the unit's cooling system inoperable.
Regulators looking into the issue discovered a cable for controlling the cooling system had mistakenly been removed, an error that wasn't discovered for more than two weeks
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703784004576220534048548412.html
The findings came as the plant's operator and the Japanese government continued Thursday to attempt to gain control of the earthquake-damaged plant's reactors, as steam blasts and serious injuries to workers further delayed efforts to cool fuel rods, restart cooling pumps and stanch radiation leaks.
According to Japanese regulatory records, in August 2010, employees at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima Daiichi power plant, armed with plans for work on the complex's No. 6 reactor, instead began conducting work on the facility's No. 5 unit. They then altered work plans on their own, according to the records, leading to a mistake that rendered the unit's cooling system inoperable.
Regulators looking into the issue discovered a cable for controlling the cooling system had mistakenly been removed, an error that wasn't discovered for more than two weeks
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703784004576220534048548412.html