Although the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami wrecked the Fukushima No. 1 plant in Fukushima Prefecture, the younger Onagawa plant in neighboring in Miyagi was "remarkably undamaged" by the violent temblor and tsunami and safely shut down, experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday.
Given a quake of this magnitude, "we would have expected the plant to have more damage, and that was not the case," Sujit Samaddar, who led the 19-member team, told reporters in Tokyo, wrapping up their two-week on-site probe.
From its visual investigation, the IAEA team did not find any signs that cooling pipes or other critical equipment were damaged or caused coolant loss at the 28-year-old plant, said Samaddar, who heads the IAEA International Seismic Safety Centre.