Coronavirus response shows Japan still ‘paralyzed’ in crises, top Fukushima investigator says – Reuters

REUTERS

Nine years after the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, the government’s handling of the coronavirus epidemic shows it remains hamstrung in responding to crises, the head of the commission that investigated the Fukushima meltdown has said.

 

Kiyoshi Kurokawa chaired the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, which determined that the disaster was man-made due to regulatory failures and deficiencies in the government response.

A similar scenario is playing out now with a lack of leadership in the Diet and a bureaucracy that cannot adapt to unforeseen crises, Kurokawa said in an interview.

“Unless it’s written in law, their brains are paralyzed when something happens,” said Kurokawa, now an emeritus professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.

The March 11, 2011, disaster triggered the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant...

Read the rest of the article at the Japan Times...