A third-party panel set up by the government to investigate the accidents at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant issued Monday an interim report based on interviews with 456 people. It emerges from the report that before the March 11 disaster both Tepco and the government had ruled out the possibility of a worst-case scenario taking place at the nuclear plant and had been totally unprepared to cope with such a situation. They not only failed to take sufficient measures to minimize the chance that a worst-case scenario could occur, but also lacked the ability to imagine what such a situation would be like and what actions they should take if it happened. In short, they acted utterly irresponsibly.

Meltdown occurred in the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 reactors at the Fukushima plant and hydrogen explosions occurred in the Nos. 1, 3 and 4 reactors. The radioactive substances released by the nuclear fiasco has made a large area of land inhabitable for tens of thousands of Fukushima residents. These facts and the committee's findings will make people wonder whether it is safe to let the nuclear power establishment continue its activities.

After the magnitude-9 quake shook the Fukushima plant at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, tsunami with a maximum height of more than 15 meters hit it at 3:27 p.m. and 3:35 p.m. On the basis of a 2002 study, Tepco had expected the maximum height of a possible tsunami to be 5.7 meters. But the report says that although Tepco's own simulation in 2008 showed that a tsunami with a maximum height of 15.7 meters could strike, Mr. Sakae Muto (who became vice president by the time of the crisis) and Mr. Masao Yoshida (who became head of the plant by the time of the crisis) dismissed the study, saying that such a tsunami would not occur.