By YOREE KOH
TOKYO—The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident exposed flaws in the Japanese government's measures to guard the country's reactors against earthquakes and tsunamis. U.S. officials in recent years also have worried that Japanese officials haven't taken enough precautions to protect the facilities from terrorist attacks, according to diplomatic documents released over the weekend on the WikiLeaks website.
A series of cables released by WikiLeaks shows U.S. officials repeatedly prodded their Japanese counterparts to beef up security—and were regularly rebuffed.
The crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is seen in Fukushima Prefecture in this undated handout photo released by Tokyo Electric Power Co.
The U.S. State Department declined to comment. Japanese government officials couldn't be reached for comment Sunday.
A message sent from the U.S. embassy in Tokyo on Feb. 26, 2007, informed the State Department about "U.S. concerns about physical protection of nuclear facilities." In response to those concerns, officials from the nuclear-safety division within Japan's ministry of education told U.S. representatives that "an assessment of local needs and resources had indicated that there was not a sufficient threat to justify armed police at the site," according to the wire.
The site in question was the nuclear reprocessing plant in Tokaimura, Ibaraki prefecture, which doubles as a plutonium-storage station.
While Japan installed armed national police at some nuclear facilities, some of the security detail at the country's 54 nuclear plants, including the Tokaimura facility, didn't carry weapons, if they were privately contracted guards, according to the documents. The ministry officials explained that the national and local police, and the plant operator determined whether threat levels warranted armed guards, according to the cable. Japanese law forbids civilian guards to carry weapons.
The same cable said Japan rejected U.S. demands for background checks on all nuclear-plant employees with access to sensitive information. While some operators voluntarily inspect worker history, such checks couldn't be legally enforced because of Japan's constitution, and the government "wishes to avoid raising what is a deeply sensitive privacy issue for Japanese society," the cable said. Still, the ministry officials conceded that "unofficial" government checks may be in place.
Fears over an increasingly unstable and aggressive North Korea, and Japan's role in the U.S.-led missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, prompted Tokyo to strengthen security measures in recent years. But even as Japan intensified physical protection on some fronts, cables from the Tokyo embassy detailed what American diplomats considered to be shortcomings.
For example, while Japan conducted a spate of large-scale emergency nuclear drills to practice how to respond to possible attacks, the carefully scripted plots diluted the realistic nature of the exercise, according to the U.S. officials who observed the drills and later described them in messages sent in 2006.
The country conducted the first-ever government-mandated nuclear terrorism drill in November 2005, involving nearly 2,000 participants, at the Mihama nuclear-power plant. The facility is surrounded by water on three sides, and sits on an outlet jutting out from Fukui prefecture.
In a Jan. 27, 2006, cable regarding that drill, Tokyo embassy officials said that in a visit prior to the exercise, prefectural authorities expressed concerns about the plant's vulnerability to North Korea, noting that Pyongyang-operated submarines had been detected in the area in the past. A U.S. official said that "during that time, security was present, but appeared to have shortcomings." He said that, on the day of their visit, Americans "spotted the typical police presence at commercial nuclear facilities—a lightly armored police vehicle with up to six police officers—some of them fast asleep."
And in other instances, some Japanese nuclear-industry leaders doubted the value of conducting such tests when they started in 2005.
One cable said the head of Tokaimura "commented that, in his view, the release of radioactive materials is a more realistic threat to local residents than terrorism. Therefore, he wondered which scenario should have been given higher priority," wrote a U.S. official in the Tokyo embassy in a Nov. 2, 2006, cable following a drill in September 2006.
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