By MARI YAMAGUCHI
By MARI YAMAGUCHI
Associated Press
TOKYO — Just four hours after a tsunami swept into the Fukushima nuclear power plant, Japan’s leaders knew the damage was so severe that the reactors could melt down, but they kept their knowledge secret for months. Five days into the crisis, then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan voiced his fears that it could turn worse than Chernobyl.
The revelations were in documents released Friday, almost a year after the disaster. The minutes of the government’s crisis management meetings from March 11 the day the earthquake and tsunami struck until late December were not recorded and had to be reconstructed retroactively.
They illustrate the confusion, lack of information and delayed response among government, affected towns and plant officials, as some ministers expressed the sense that nobody was in charge when the plant conditions quickly deteriorated.
The minutes quoted an unidentified official explaining that cooling functions of the reactors were kept running only by batteries that would last just eight hours.
Apparently the government tried to play down the severity of the damage. A spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency was replaced after he slipped out a possibility of meltdown during a news conference March 12.