Government is to save your life. This turned out to be totally an illusion.
At least Fukushima local government was more afraid of losing their human tax farm than losing the lives of the people.
Around 13:20 of 3/14/2012, just after reactor3 exploded, Sato, Fukushima governor required Tepco to announce
“there was no concern that radiation from reactor3 may affect human body because the wind blows from North-West.”
on the press release about the explosion of reactor3.
Public relations department of Tepco reported it to the disaster headquarters in the head office, but they rejected to mention the effect on human health.
“Plume can come back on the wind. It may be less concentrated as it spreads, but it is risky to assert it is not harmful for human health.”
After all, the required comment was not included to the press release.
This conversation was revealed from Tepco’s non-released video material of 150 hours.
(cf. Tepco released video of emergency TV meeting “99.3% cut off, 1665 beep sounds, 29 image concealment” [Link])
According to SPEEDI data, wind blew from west before afternoon of 3/14 but it changed to be from south at midnight. In the afternoon of 3/15/2011, wind blew from east or south east.
If people followed the announcement of Fukushima local government, they would have been directly hit by the wind with plume.
(cf. Fukushima prefecture started saving SPEEDI data by their own USB since 1 hr before reactor3 exploded [Link])
However, Nuclear safety department of Fukushima prefecture doesn’t admit their responsibility at all.
“We don’t know the situation of that time,but it is assumed that we were based on the radiation monitoring data of Tepco. Generally speaking, we can sometimes give Tepco advice about the contents of press release or simply our opinion.”
Here you can sense the traditional cozy relationship between Tepco and Fukushima local government, but not with Fukushima citizens.
Iori Mochizuki