Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Monday began allowing journalists to view 150 hours of teleconferencing footage between its headquarters and the Fukushima No. 1 plant, showing how executives interacted with workers in the first five days of the meltdown crisis that erupted on March 11, 2011.
Some of the footage, which was finally disclosed after resistance from Tepco, portrayed the extreme tension and chaos that reigned as the crisis escalated toward hydrogen explosions in reactors 1 and 3, raising fears the primary containment vessels would give way.
The footage also showed Tepco Managing Director Akio Komori, one of the key executives involved in handling the crisis, urging others to decide the conditions for withdrawing the workers after the utility surmised that the fuel rods in reactor 2 were fully exposed at 6:22 p.m. on March 14.