Japanese nuclear plant sparks panic after ticking wrong box on fax in wake of earthquake

Staff at the largest nuclear power plant in the world ticked the wrong box on a fax message and triggered an atomic scare after a strong earthquake struck northern Japan on Tuesday evening.

The magnitude 6.7 quake shook large parts of the country at 10.22pm on Tuesday and employees of Tokyo Electric Power Co. stationed at the company’s Kashiwazak-Kariwa nuclear plant, in Niigata Prefecture, responded by following established protocol in the event of a natural disaster.

A form was faxed to the local government to reassure them that the plant had suffered no damage and was operating normally. Unfortunately, TEPCO staff had ticked the wrong box on the form and informed prefectural authorities that an anomaly had been detected in the reactors.

The document was handed to Masahiro Sakurai, the mayor of Kashiwazaki, who - with the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant still fresh in the memory - immediately ordered his staff to determine the scale of the problem and the measures that TEPCO was taking.

Seventeen minutes after the fax was sent, officials at TEPCO’s headquarters in Tokyo noticed the error and released a correction emphasising that the reactors had not been damaged.

TEPCO - which also operated the Fukushima plant and was widely criticised in subsequent inquiries into the 2011 disaster - has confirmed that the initial message had been checked by another official at the plant before it was sent, but there has been no explanation as to how the error was not noticed.

Despite being one of the most technologically advanced countries on the planet, many Japanese firms still prefer to communicate via fax.

In a statement to The Telegraph, TEPCO confirmed that employees “mistakenly shared incorrect information when they checked a box indicating there was a power supply abnormality related to the cooling of the spent fuel pool when, in fact, there was no such abnormality.

“We sincerely regret the error. TEPCO is looking into the cause and will consider measures going forward”.

Mr Sakurai has condemned the operator’s errors.

“When a real earthquake is happening, not a drill, this is a massive error”, he told local reporters.

“It is extremely poor on their part to make errors with the most important and basic information at a time of crisis”, the Asahi Shimbun reported.

TEPCO has issued an apology and stated that it will not make the same mistake again.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant was only 12 miles from the epicentre of a magnitude 6.6 quake in July 2007 that shook the facility beyond its design capabilities, causing widespread damage but no leak of nuclear material.

The plant was shut for 21 months and underwent seismic upgrades, although it has again been shut down for additional improvements and assessments since the Fukushima disaster.

Tuesday’s earthquake left 26 people injured and caused damage to buildings and infrastructure in towns along the Sea of Japan coast. Meteorological authorities issued a tsunami warning but the alert was lifted after waves of around 4 inches were recorded.