海外のメディアは、福島第一原発の停電はネズミが原因だったというニュースがかなりお気に入りだったらしく、ネズミが丸焦げになった下の写真と共に一斉に伝えている。
しかし、通常、原発などの配電盤は、専門のオペレーターが使うとき以外は厳重にロックされ、仮に通りすがりの誰かが配電盤の中をさわろうとしても、できないようになっているはずなので、どうしてネズミが配電盤に入れたのかとても不思議だった。
実際は、今回停電となった３，４号機プールと共用プールの冷却装置がつながる配電盤は、3.11事故直後からトラックの荷台に仮設された配電盤が、そのまま使用されていたという。
日本で報道されているように、放射線の量が減っているなら、大切な冷却の心臓部である仮設配電盤をとっくの昔に本来の電源システムに切り替えていたはずだ。
恐らく、放射線が思うように下がらず、作業が大変なので、そのままにしておいたのだろう。又は、東電のことだから、単にめんどうくさいから、そのままにしておいたのかもしれない。
疑惑の犯人・・・・死んだネズミが仮設配電盤の中で見つかった。福島原発のオペレーターたちはネズミが冷却装置を止めた原因だと主張している。（ＮＹＴｉｍｅｓ）
Hungry rat blamed for Fukushima blackout
TOKYO: The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says it has found what it believes is the cause of an extended blackout that disabled vital cooling systems earlier this week: the charred body of a rat.
The operator, Tokyo Electric Power, said when its engineers looked inside a faulty switchboard, they found burn marks and the rodent's scorched body. The company said it appeared the rat had somehow short-circuited the switchboard, possibly by gnawing on cables.TEPCO has blamed problems with the switchboard for the power failure that began on Monday, cutting off the flow of cooling water to four pools used to store more than 8800 nuclear fuel rods. It took TEPCO almost a day to restore cooling to the first of the affected pools, with cooling of the final pool resuming early on Wednesday.
TEPCO said it would have taken several days for temperatures in the pools to have risen above the safe level of 65 degrees. Still, the blackout served as an uncomfortable reminder to many Japanese about the continuing vulnerability of the plant, which suffered a triple meltdown in March 2011 after a huge earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems. It was the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
Two years later, the Fukushima plant still relies on makeshift cooling systems, some of which were built as stopgap measures in the frantic weeks after the accident. The spent fuel pools have been a particular source of concern because they contain much more radioactive material than the three reactor cores that melted down two years ago, forcing the evacuation of 160,000 people.
A TEPCO spokesman, Masayuki Ono, said temperatures in the pools were cooling, though it would take several days for them to get back to their pre-blackout levels.
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