Article: TEPCO's Bad Management is the CAUSE of Worsening Fukushima Crisis

Poor crisis management continues with TEPCO.

Slow and making bad judgment calls, the management of TEPCO has wasted precious time setting off foreseeable detrimental consequences - as being played out in the chain events and the escalation of radiation and the release of radioactive substances into the environment.

Instead of having all manpower from various nuclear power plants of TEPCO, including workers from other nuclear power plant companies close to the region to assist on multiple actions at the same time in order to contain the crisis from the beginning, TEPCO is now dealing with problem after problem in a chain reaction.

Knowing how grave the possibility of nuclear meltdown right after the tsunami devastation, TEPCO didn't divulge important information to the public or ask for international nuclear experts for help right away. Without accurate assessment of the whole nuclear plant's damages,TEPCO tried to do piecemeal fixes.

Even though the American nuclear experts' assessment on March 26 suggested ways to stabilize the nuclear reaction within the cores, TEPCO waited a week to inject nitrogen into the containment structures in an attempt to purge them of hydrogen and oxygen - when combined could produce explosions - which had already happened to several reactors. With this type of slackened attitude towards taking preventive measures, TEPCO is setting itself for more problems to follow.

The missteps are many in the ongoing fiasco: using seawater instead of fresh water for cooling the spent fuel rods which led to overflow of radioactive contaminated water in turbine buildings that leaked into the sea; sending workers into the dangerous nuclear plants without the appropriate footwear to protect themselves from radiation resulting in 2 workers being exposed; failure in plugging the radioactive leaks from Reactor 2 because of poor assessment of leak location, etc.

With the slow, ineffective moves and lacking foresight by TEPCO management, you wonder why the Japanese government continues to trust them to handle things. The crisis is getting worse by the day.

It's time to pull the plug on the TEPCO management team and have outside experts to make the decisions and handle the situation.