Tokai, Japan Accident
Sept. 30, 1999

March 6, 2000 - According to Kyodo News, the JCO Co. is expected to pay at least $93 million in compensation claims from the Sept. 30, 1999 nuclear accident at its facility in Tokai.

Exposed Japanese worker dies

December 22, 1999

One of three JCO Co. workers exposed to massive radiation in September in the nation's worst nuclear accident died of organ failure at a Tokyo hospital late Tuesday night, becoming the first fatality of his kind in Japan.

Hisashi Ouchi, 35, was critically injured during an accident Sept. 30 at the JCO uranium processing plant in the village of Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, where hundreds were forced to evacuate or stay indoors as an uncontrolled chain reaction spewed forth radiative particles.

The amount of energy that hit him is thought to be equivalent to that at the hypocenter of the Hiroshima atomic bombing. He died at 11:21 p.m., the Science and Technology Agency said.

His death, which comes 83 days after the incident in Tokaimura, is expected to rekindle opposition to Japan's controversial nuclear power program, which has been tainted by a spate of accidents and coverup scandals in recent years.

Ouchi is the second Japanese to die of acute radiation-related injuries since 1954, when U.S. fallout from thermonuclear testing in the Bikini Atolls of the Marshall Islands claimed 40-year-old Aikichi Kuboyama, who was exposed on the fishing boat Fukuryu-maru No. 5.

Tokai Mayor Tatsuo Murayama, however, portrayed Ouchi as the "victim of the safety myth" surrounding Japan's nuclear energy program, now more than 40 years old.

Ouchi was part of a crew that had sidestepped safety procedures and used a bucket to pour a highly excessive amount of uranium into a processing tank, triggering a self-sustained nuclear chain reaction that neither he, his company, nor the government had thought possible at such a facility. It is suspected that their actions were accepted, if not condoned.

In a matter of minutes, Ouchi had been exposed to an estimated 17 sieverts of radiation, or about 17,000 times the maximum annual permissible exposure level set by the Japanese government.

The accident effectively destroyed Ouchi's immune system by sending his white blood cell count plummeting to nearly zero.

As his condition worsened, the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba, Chiba Prefecture, transferred him to University of Tokyo Hospital, where he reportedly underwent the world's first transfusion of peripheral stem cells on Oct. 6 and 7.

Doctors kept Ouchi alive by pumping huge amounts of blood and fluids into him on a daily basis and treating him with drugs normally unavailable in Japan, indicating the high priority the government placed on his survival, observers said.

A group of top experts was assembled from Japan and abroad to treat him, with some of the sources saying they felt "silent pressure" from no particular person or body to treat his quick death as a matter of national dignity.

The accident also exposed at least 66 other people to lesser amounts of radiation. Thousands of people living near the plant were forced indoors or evacuated.

Meanwhile, Ibaraki police said they plan to step up their investigation into the criminal liability of JCO and its parent company, Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., for the accident.

Japan relies on atomic energy for about one-third of its electricity.


From Japan Times Dec. 22, 1999.  www.japantimes.com and AP reports

Worst Ever Accident Within Japan at Tokai, Ibaraki

September 30, 1999

There was a nuclear accident at a test facility in the JCO Ltd.'s uranium processing plant located in Tokai, Ibaraki. It happened at 10:35 am Japanese Standard Time (+900) on 30 September, 1999.

Initially, an atmospheric radiation count of 0.84 mSv/hour (10,000 times of the annual dose limit) was monitored, but the local government has announced that the radiation count is back to normal. The Science and Technology Agency (STA) has announced that it was a criticality accident.

Three workers were exposed because of the accident, and the exposed workers taken to a local hospital were later transferred by a helicopter to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba City, east of Tokyo, in order to treat the acute radiation injuries. They seem to have inhaled high concentration uranium gas. Two of the three exposed workers are reported to be in a critical condition.

The facility in which the accident occurred is a commercial plant where enriched UF6 gas is converted into UO2 powder for further processing. The pellet fabrication is done in another plant nearby.

Police has declared the area of 200m radius of the site to be an off-limit zone. The local government (Tokai-mura asministration) issued an evacutaion request to the residents of the surrounding 350m radius of the site. All the villagers residing outside the 350m radius were asked to stay indoors.

School children are ordered not to go home, but remain indoors at each school. Naka-machi, a town next to Tokai mura, also advised the residents to remain indoors.

The cause and details of the accident has not yet been disclosed. CNIC will release a statement as soon as enough materials are collected, however, we will keep people post on any further details gathered.

Japan Nuclear Accident Raises Safety Fears

September 30, 1999

By Yvonne Chang

TOKYO (Reuters) - An accident at a Japanese nuclear fuel facility Thursday exposed three workers to radiation and prompted authorities to evacuate the vicinity, raising fresh concerns about the nation's nuclear safety.

Government officials said there may have been a "criticality incident" at a uranium processing plant in the village of Tokaimura in Ibaraki Prefecture, about 87 miles northeast of Tokyo.

Criticality is the point at which a nuclear chain reaction becomes self-sustaining, similar to what occurs inside a nuclear reactor.

Toshio Okazaki, vice minister at the Science and Technology Agency, told a news conference that a "criticality incident" may have caused the accident, which temporarily caused radiation levels to race up 4,000 times higher than normal.

Later Thursday, conflicting reports emerged on whether these levels had returned to normal or were remaining high. Officials were unable to clarify the discrepancies.

Authorities at Tokaimura advised some 50 households living within 380 yards of the processing plant to evacuate and others were advised in radio broadcasts to stay home.

All three workers were taken to hospital and later transferred by helicopter to a specialized hospital in Chiba Prefecture east of Tokyo, officials said.

A doctor who treated the three workers told a televised news conference: "Judging from the symptoms, they appeared to have received quite a substantial amount of radiation and we will need to keep a close eye on their conditions."

Makoto Ujihara, an executive at JCO Ltd, the private company which operates the plant, told a separate news conference that the workers had seen a blue flash -- said by experts to be a sign of a "criticality incident" -- and then began to feel ill.

The village of Tokaimura, with a population of around 33,802 people, is home to 15 nuclear-related facilities and was the scene of Japan's worst nuclear plant accident in which 35 workers suffered radiation contamination in 1997.

Japan's nuclear power program has been plagued by a number of accidents and cover-ups.

In the 1997 Tokaimura accident at a nuclear reprocessing plant, a fire that caused radiation to escape was not extinguished properly and caused an explosion hours later.

The accident exposed 37 staff to radiation in what was later declared Japan's worst nuclear accident. The plant was closed.

Greenpeace said in a statement that Thursday's accident "confirms our fears. The entire safety culture within Japan is in crisis."

Chihiro Kamisawa, a nuclear expert at the anti-nuclear group Citizen's Nuclear Information Center, told Reuters that preventing a "criticality incident" was top priority for nuclear safety and that Thursday's accident would cast doubt on Japan's entire nuclear program.

He said the accident could force a postponement of the plan to restart the nuclear reprocessing plant in Tokaimura as well as affect Japan's MOX fuel program.

The first shipment of MOX nuclear fuel -- a mix of uranium and plutonium recycled from spent nuclear fuel -- docked in Fukui Prefecture north of Japan Monday and a second shipment is destined for unloading at another location soon.

Greenpeace has warned that the shipments could have been converted into 60 nuclear bombs if the two ships had been hijacked at sea.

Japan is heavily dependent on nuclear power, with its 51 commercial nuclear power reactors providing one-third of the country's electricity.


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