A worst-case scenario sketched out by the Japanese government foresaw the end of Tokyo in a chain of nuclear explosions as the Fukushima crisis erupted, an independent panel said Tuesday. Chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano told investigators: “I had this demonic scenario in my head” that nuclear reactors could break down one after another.”If that happens Tokyo will be finished”. Plans were drawn up for the mass evacuation of the capital as Edano — the government’s point man on the nuclear crisis — fretted that reactors along the coast could go into meltdown and engulf the city of 13 million people. The revelation came in an independent report published Tuesday by a panel of experts who were given free rein to probe the events surrounding the world’s worst nuclear crisis in a generation. The panel said as the situation on Japan’s tsunami-wrecked coast worsened Fukushima operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) had wanted to abandon the plant, evacuating its workers. But the utility, which refused to co-operate with the study, had been ordered to keep men on site by then Prime Minister Naoto Kan. Experts concluded that if the premier had not stuck to his guns, Fukushima would have spiralled further out of control, with catastrophic consequences.
