New panel will test Diet's investigative abilities - The Daily Yomiuri

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The Yomiuri Shimbun

The Diet will establish its own panel to independently investigate the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, including its causes.

The Diet's investigative capabilities will be put to the test over whether it can pursue facts from a different viewpoint than the government and draw lessons from the crisis through its investigation.

A bill to establish a panel in the Diet to probe the crisis at the Fukushima plant passed the House of Representatives on Thursday. It was expected to be approved, and thereby enacted, in the House of Councillors on Friday.

Plans call for the investigative panel to be set up in the next extraordinary Diet session. Members will comprise 10 experts from the private sector, to be chosen on the recommendation of ruling and opposition parties.

The panel will compile a report within six months after summoning people concerned to testify as unsworn witnesses and analyzing related documents of the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the crippled nuclear power plant.

With this move, the Diet will take the significant step of tasking private-sector experts with the responsibility of investigating the crisis.

The government also is probing the accident by establishing the Nuclear Incident Investigation and Verification Committee, headed by Yotaro Hatamura, a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo. However, it remains unclear how much investigative authority the committee actually holds.

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Panel to have strong powers

However, a joint committee of both houses, a higher body of the investigative panel in the Diet, will be able to request the submission of documents from concerned parties based on a law concerning testimony before both houses of the Diet. This prevents the government and TEPCO from refusing to submit relevant documents without adequate reason.

As sought by the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party, the new panel will be independent from the government and carry strong authority.

The nuclear crisis involves a number of points that need to be clarified.

Why was TEPCO late in venting steam from the nuclear reactor vessel to release internal pressure following the outbreak of the crisis? Did former Prime Minister Naoto Kan's on-site inspection of the crippled plant affect TEPCO's handling of the accident in any way?

The new panel's investigation is expected to shed light on whether Kan made the right decisions and gave appropriate instructions to TEPCO and the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry.

Kan has stressed TEPCO's inappropriate handling of the incident as the reason the crisis was not contained at an early stage. But we believe it is necessary to look into whether the Kan administration contributed to the man-made disaster.

It also remains unclear why the government failed to promptly disclose information on the spread of radioactive materials. Furthermore, we wonder how well the government was able to utilize equipment and human resources offered by the United States and other countries.

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Delve into past

The government also must examine the responsibility of TEPCO, the industry ministry and the Nuclear Safety Commission for their inability to prevent the crisis, going back to the time of the coalition government of the LDP and New Komeito.

This will be the first time for the Diet to set up an investigative body comprising private-sector members based on a law. It is essential for the ruling and opposition parties to sufficiently communicate on how to manage the investigative panel and cooperate with each other to support it.

The ruling and opposition parties agreed prior to the submission of the bill that neither side should politically exploit the panel or exert political influence on it. The panel's investigations and verifications of the nuclear crisis must be objective so it will not end up as a political show.

If the investigative panel manages to achieve results through cooperation between ruling and opposition parties, it will certainly help restore public trust in the Diet.

(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Sept. 30, 2011)

(Oct. 1, 2011)

01 Oct, 2011

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