New York Times Asia Pacific
Hiroko Tabuchi
TOKYO — In surprisingly frank public testimony on Wednesday,Japan’s nuclear safety chief said the country’s regulations were fundamentally flawed and laid out a somber picture of a nuclear industry shaped by freewheeling power companies, toothless regulators and a government more interested in promoting nuclear energy than in safeguarding the health of its citizens.
The disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, stricken by an earthquake and a tsunami last March, has led to widespread criticism of nuclear officials for their lax approach to safety, as well as for a bungled response that allowed meltdowns to occur at three of the plant’s six reactors.