Top Japanese cabinet ministers were warned of possible nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima hours after the tsunami hit last March, government papers have revealed, despite repeatedly denying the risk in public.
A summary of a government meeting held about four hours after a giant earthquake sent huge waves crashing into the atomic power station showed that one unidentified participant had cautioned of the risk of a meltdown.
"If the temperature of the reactor cores rises after eight hours, there is a possibility that a meltdown will occur," the person said, according to the summary released on Friday.
The revelation will add to the impression among the Japanese public that their political masters were less than transparent in their handling of the crisis.
Fukushima Daiichi, 220 kilometres (140 miles) northeast of Tokyo, spewed radiation after its cooling systems were knocked out by the tsunami when it crushed coastal communities, leaving more than 19,000 people dead or missing.
The meltdown warning came in the very first meeting of a task force chaired by the then prime minister Naoto Kan to deal with world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.
But the chief cabinet secretary at the time Yukio Edano, the public face of the government's response to the crisis, repeatedly denied the notion of a meltdown for weeks after March 11.
Posts
