INTRODUCTION

Background information:

Tokaimura – a village located in Ibaraki, Japan, approximately 120km north of Tokyo on the
Pacific coast. A town associated with nuclear energy and nuclear technology research facilities.

JCO – a Japanese nuclear fuel cycle company established in 1979, site in Tokaimura, and also
close to the town of Naka-machi.

Tokaimura nuclear radiation exposure incident

The incident happened in 30th September, 1999, at 10.35am. 3 JCO workers were exposed to
high levels of radiation. Hisashi Ouchi, 35, died on December 21, 1999. Masato Shinohara, 40,
survived until April 27. Yutaka Tokogawa, 54, discharged from hospital on December 20, 1999.

At least 439 people, including plant workers, firemen, and others who responded to the
accident, and 207 local residents were exposed to elevated levels of radiation. In October 2000
the total number of people who received some radiation exposure from the accident was
revised upward to 667.

The Tokaimura accident is the third most serious accident in the history of nuclear power, after
the 1986 Chernobyl accident and the 1979 Three Miles Island accident.

Accident Chronology

The accident happened when workers preparing nuclear fuels mixed uranium oxide with nitric
acid using a stainless steel container instead of a mixing apparatus. This shortcut was described
in an illegal operating manual drafted by the company. The manual had never been approved
by the supervising ministry, as was legally required. The procedure violated some of the most
basic safety requirements that were well known in the nuclear industries since the early 1940s.
By circumventing the mixing apparatus an excessive amount of nuclear fuel could be inserted at
any one time, which lead to a nuclear chain reaction. The shortcut had been used for seven or
eight years before the accident happened. The three workers were performing this task for the
first time and were wearing t-shirts instead of protective clothing and the required film badges
to measure radioactive exposure.
The company did not have any emergency plans in place for handling such criticality accidents.
A foreign specialist said the plant "had the safety standards of a bakery and not a nuclear
facility." The Science and Technology Agency later revoked the operating license of the plant
owner. Critics pointed out nuclear facilities such as this fuel factory are rarely ever checked
once they receive the initial operating license.

Families living near the plant were temporarily evacuated and 300,000 people were asked to
stay indoors for more than a day. Later neighbours and employees were tested for radioactive
contamination. 63 people were identified as having been exposed, amongst them 14 workers of
JCO (who poured boron into the reaction vessel to help put out the nuclear chain reaction) and
the two victims who later died.

CONCLUSION

We strongly believe that there are some hidden factors leads to this accident. One of it
is the money factor. A company itself might want to save cost and neglect the safety facilities,
or the particular company does not have that much money to channel on their safety measures.

Safety cultural on the company its own also will be a factor. Japanese strongly holding
the spirit of ‘Kaizen’, which focus on the production improvement. Therefore they neglect the
importance of safety measures and only pay attention on making profit and improvement of
their service or product. The government also playing an important role in particular company
safety awareness. The lack of inspection and too much flexibility might cause the company
ignore the safety measures. Besides, others company in the same industry which did not take
the safety precautions also lead to the company to follow and do not be the first one to do
different by paying extra attention on safety measures.