Dogs and Demons_ Tales From the Dark Side of Japan - Kerr [53]
The level of sheer fiction in Japan's nuclear industry can be gauged from the story of how Donen misused most of its budget for renovation work between 1993 and 1997. The problem lay in 2,000 drums of low-level radioactive waste stored at Tokai, which began rusting in pits filled with rainwater. Records show that the problem dated to the 1970s, but only in 1993 did Donen begin to take action, asking for money to remove the drums from the pits and to build sheds for temporary storage. So far so good. Four years and ¥1 billion later, ponen still had not taken the drums out of the pits or built the sheds. Nobody knows where the money went-semipublic agencies like Donen are not required to make their budgets public – but the suspicion was that Donen secretly spent it doing patchwork waterproofing in the pits to hide evidence of radioactive leakage. There is no problem, the agency said. One official remarked, «The water level has not dropped, so radioactive material is not leaking outside.»
Donen went on to request more money for 1998, stating that renovation was going smoothly, and asking for ¥71 million to remove the sheds it had never built! It even attached drawings to show how it was reinforcing the inner walls of the storage pits. The Donen official in charge of technology to protect the environment from radioactive waste said, «It's true that the storage pits will eventually be reinforced. So I thought it would be all right if details of the project were different from what we had stated in our request for budgetary approval.»
When Donen gets money from the government to remove sheds it never built and shore up the walls of pits it never drained, we are definitely moving into the territory of Escher and Kafka. A final surreal touch is provided by an animated video produced by Donen to show children that plutonium isn't as dangerous as activists say. «A small character named Pu (the chemical symbol of plutonium), who looks like an extra from 'The Jetsons,' gives his friend a glass of plutonium water and says it's safe to drink. His friend, duly impressed, drinks no less than six cups of the substance before declaring, 'I feel refreshed!' »
There is a lesson to be learned from Donen's madness, and it is that if you disguise the truth long enough you eventually lose touch with reality yourself. This happened at MOF, which can no longer figure out the true state of bank finances, and it happened to the nuclear industry, which doesn't know the standard techniques of nuclear-plant management common elsewhere in the world. Why invest in technology when with a stroke of the pen an official can bring fires under control and make leaks dry up? At Tokai in 1997, so unconcerned were Donen officials that seven maintenance employees played golf on the day of the fire – and went back to play another round the day after.
Japan is like the spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The computer Hal runs all life systems aboard the ship with benevolent wisdom, speaking to the crew through the public-address system in a resolutely calm and cheerful manner. Later, when Hal goes mad and starts murdering people, he continues to placidly assure crew members in an unwaveringly upbeat voice that all is well, wishing them a good day. In Japan, articles in magazines paid for by the bureaucrats who cement over rivers and lakes assure the public that their natural environment is still beautiful. Bureaucrats at Donen instruct children that plutonium is safe to drink. Every day in Japan we hear