TepCo wanted to evacuate ALL workers - Gov'mt said no way

[jannyk]

23.36 Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) asked the Japanese government earlier this week to permit a full withdrawal of its employees from the Fukushima plant, a Japanese daily newspaper has said. TEPCO had first concluded that it would be "difficult" for its workers to continue to restore the Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant, where high levels of radiation have been monitored, the Mainichi Shimbun said.

But Prime Minister Naoto Kan turned down the request, telling TEPCO: "Withdrawal is impossible. It's not a matter of whether TEPCO collapses. It's a matter of whether Japan goes wrong," according to Mainichi. An unnamed official related to TEPCO, however, was quoted by Mainichi as saying:

Opinion If withdrawal is unacceptable, it's as if (Kan) said 'Do it until you are exposed to radiation and die.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8375373/Japan-earthquake-live.html?service=artBody

[ReturnoftheDjedi]

1. this explains how the full evacuation from the other night turned into a temporary one.

[Junkdrawer]

2. The events of Tuesday night will be the subject of many, many books....

It was an historic night.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. So tuesday they did pulll out

and AJE did not get the translation wrong...

Not a good thing.

that said, that order from the PM fits the culture to a T.

[Selatius]

4. If TEPCO was allowed to evacuate all plant personnel, this situation would be ten times worse.

Because all of those reactors and the spent fuel rod pools would be exploding or on fire, and the fires would push that fallout high into the air, and the fallout will drift many miles, killing and poisoning everything in its path.