Dr.Dale Klein did a speech on March 11, 2014

Good morning, everyone, thank you very much for coming today. As I think you know, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Japan over the last few years, and I have come to feel very close to this country and to the Japanese people. I have been fortunate enough to work closely with TEPCO’s leadership and many other individuals in my capacity as chairman of the Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee, and prior to that, when I was with the U.S. government, I developed many fruitful relationships with my counterparts here.

Beyond the hospitality that has been extended to me, and the personal relationships we have developed, I have been impressed by the determination of the Japanese people to meet and overcome the terrible loss from the Great Japan Earthquake and tsunami, and the challenge posed by the accident at Fukushima Daiichi.

At TEPCO, from the most senior executive to individual workers, one cannot but be impressed by their commitment not only to recovery but also to building a better, safer future.

So, even as we mark the third anniversary of the Fukushima accident and reflect on the intervening years, it is that future that I want to especially focus on, as well as the people who are so determined to make it happen. They will continue to face many challenges, and as some recent experiences demonstrate, improvements must continue to be made. But it is a future about which I am optimistic, in part because of the changes I have seen at TEPCO, but even more because of the growing recognition I have seen on the part of Japan’s people that nuclear-generated power must remain a part of Japan’s future.

A Japan that tries to survive without nuclear energy would not be the Japan of today, and certainly would not be the thriving, growing, environmentally responsible Japan that we all want to see tomorrow.

And we do want to see Japan succeed. I can tell you from my many discussions with others in the U.S., and with my colleagues from other countries such as Lady Barbara Judge, who is the deputy chair of our Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee, that the world is watching.

And it wants you to succeed because people understand that if we are to successfully manage climate change and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, nuclear power will be an important part of the mix. But they also know that public confidence in that nuclear power can be enhanced, or diminished, by what happens here.

There has been great progress on many fronts at Fukushima Daiichi over these last three years.

The hastily assembled emergency methods that were being used to cool reactors in the immediate aftermath of the accident have given way to safer and more robust systems. The safe removal of fuel from the spent fuel pool at Unit 4 was made possible by a combination of innovative design and meticulous execution by the workers of TEPCO and its partners.

Progress has been made in getting our arms around the main challenge posed by Fukushima: removal of the once-molten fuel from Units 1, 2, and 3. And they are making progress, though not yet enough, on the long-term challenge posed by groundwater. I remain concerned about the technical talent to manage the water issues and the lack of a long-term plan for the disposition of the filtered water currently stored in the tanks at Fukushima. Of all of the many issues facing us, this is perhaps the simplest to solve but creates the most public anxiety.

With all the recent focus on the management of contaminated water, and the day-to-day ups and downs of water leaks, there is a tendency to divert attention – and resources – from addressing and solving the main challenge posed at Fukushima: How do we keep the molten fuel and the spent fuel cooled and how do we safely remove molten fuel from damaged containment vessels? As most of you know, removing the kind of molten fuel that exists at Fukushima Daiichi has never been done before. At Three Mile Island, the fuel melted but the containment vessel was not breached.

And at Chernobyl, where there was no containment vessel for that graphite reactor, the Soviets just built a concrete sarcophagus around it and essentially walked away.

I do not believe that Japan will walk away from Fukushima. Everything I have learned about your values, your commitment to the environment, and your determination to meet this challenge tells me this. Success will come as the result of many small learnings, and through the persistence of many individuals acting together. We are seeing those incremental learnings now.

Through the use of robotic cameras and other high technology, and with participation of its international partners, TEPCO is learning more about the condition and location of the fuel, the condition of the containment vessels, and this will eventually lead to the development of a strategy for removing that fuel. In its new business plan, TEPCO has set a goal of removing the fuel from at least one of the three reactors by the first half of FY2020. That is six years away, yet it is an ambitious goal given the fact that no one has ever faced such a challenge before.

So the progress being made there now, incremental as it may be, is very important.

I am encouraged by the decision TEPCO has taken to create a distinct entity focused exclusively on the decontamination and decommissioning work at Fukushima. As TEPCO President Hirose has said, this will provide for greater focus on Fukushima, it will provide for greater accountability, and it will incorporate at high-levels organizations like Hitachi and Toshiba that have broad technical resources and a considerable stake in a successful outcome.

I believe it also demonstrates that TEPCO recognizes that the talents, skills and organizational structure for D&D work are not necessarily the same as those needed to run a power company. So much of what the D&D team will encounter will be things no one has ever encountered before, and it will require people with a wide range of technical abilities, diagnostic skills, and critical thinking ability. It is essential that TEPCO staff the new entity with people who have those attributes, and if you do not find the necessary technical talent in Japan that you look world-wide for the necessary talent to do it right and to do it safely.

Of course, even the most successful cleanup work at Fukushima will not by itself restore the future of nuclear energy – and with it, Japan’s energy and economic future. While continued safe progress at Fukushima is vital to restoring public confidence, it cannot by itself restore Japan’s other 50 or so nuclear power stations to again operate (and, not coincidentally, put back into standby the old fossil fuel burning plants pressed into service in their place).

For that, it will be necessary to ensure that nuclear facilities like TEPCO’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility and others like it can be operated with a very high margin of safety.

I have visited KK and reviewed in depth the safety enhancements that have been made there, and I must say they are impressive. They include greater redundancy in the methods to keep cooling water on the spent fuel pools and reactor cores in the event of a failure, more robust capabilities in the event of an electrical blackout, more portable emergency equipment.

They even include providing for gravity-fed water from a lake in the mountain, in the event power to the pumps fails. These, and other enhancements, represent what we refer to as “defense in depth.”

But the most important changes go beyond these physical enhancements, important as they are. They are the changes in people’s attitudes and behaviors that, taken together, constitute a “safety culture.” And it is the creation of this “safety culture” within TEPCO that has been perhaps the greatest focus of our Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee. The Japanese members of the Nuclear Reform Committee have been very helpful in providing suggestions for improvement.

I’m often asked, “what do you mean by ‘safety culture?’ Do you mean that TEPCO didn’t have safety manuals, or rules, or that they didn’t care about safety?” It’s a good question. Of course TEPCO had manuals, and rules, and it’s clear to me that they care about their people’s safety.

But what we mean by “safety culture” is more than that. It is a greater emphasis on training and having a questioning attitude. Especially, it is a greater emphasis on communication within the organization, not just from the top down but even more from the bottom up and among all the employees.

It is quite literally a culture, one in which we want every worker to come to work every day thinking of safety in everything they do.

It is this kind of culture that I believe TEPCO did not pay enough attention, and which it is now building.

Let me give you an example: In 2008, engineers at Fukushima Daiichi came up with a hypothetical tsunami of 16 meters, and management said the idea was not credible. To be fair, so did just about everyone else. And so, as a result, some precautions weren’t taken against flooding the emergency generators.

Had those precautions been taken – perhaps moving those generators out of the basement, or augmenting them with another line of defense – history might have been very different.

Now, it’s fair to ask, how far can you take that? After all, if you had to prepare for every conceivable calamity that might occur to an overanxious mind, you’d never be able to build anything – not just nuclear power plants but other things like airplanes as well.

And it’s also complicated by the fact that the public does tend to overestimate the risks associated with nuclear energy, and underestimate those associated with fossil fuels.

Indeed, that’s why the “culture” part of “safety culture” is so important. There is no precise formula to tell you when you’ve planned sufficiently. Rather, it’s a way of thinking, of critically assessing every risk. You say, “I don’t think this would happen, but if it did, this is what I would do.”

And the key to establishing this culture is people. People who are trained. People who are responsible. People who are motivated. Who think critically. Who are focused on outcomes as well as processes. Who are prepared for the unexpected and empowered to deal with it. Yes, technology will be important but never as important as well trained people. For every robot there is a person who needs to operate it. But for every valve, every pump, and every switch, there have to be people who understand what each one means to plant safety and operation. In the end, it is the people who will make the difference, technology will only help them do their jobs better.

TEPCO is making substantial progress toward the creation of this culture. It doesn’t happen overnight, and old habits can be hard to overcome. But I believe TEPCO’s leadership is committed to making it happen, and that they understand the necessity of succeeding. I am encouraged by the fact that their Nuclear Reform Plan incorporates extensive changes in management structure as well as training and communications, all with the focus on establishing this safety culture.

And I believe we have seen it play out in the meticulous planning for and execution of the fuel removal from Unit 4, despite the dire predictions that so many had made about how it would turn out.

Indeed, I believe that the fuel removal from Unit 4 is a genuine milestone. It represents the first major step in actual removal of nuclear material after the accident, and at the same time demonstrates the extent to which the safety culture is taking hold. I believe we will see that safety culture take root at KK, and that whenever Japan decides it is an appropriate time to restart KK, we will see it take root as KK and Japan’s other nuclear plants reclaim their crucial role in powering Japan’s economy and its way of life.

As a former U.S. nuclear regulator, and now as the associate vice chancellor for research at the University of Texas System, I travel extensively. Everywhere I go, whether in the U.S., Asia, Europe – truly, wherever – I am asked about Fukushima.

“How are they doing?” “Can they fix it?” “Have they got it under control.” People are intensely interested; some of them are sophisticated nuclear engineers, others are ordinary citizens.

And I tell them the same thing I am telling you: great progress is being made, I am optimistic about the future, but it will not be a straight line forward and there will be setbacks along the way.

At Fukushima, difficult decisions remain to be made about what to do with the 400 tons of contaminated water that are accumulating daily on the site, and inevitably more difficult decisions will need to be made about dealing with the debris of Units 1, 2 and 3. In the coming decades, we will surely encounter the unexpected more than once, and by creating the new D&D entity – and adopting the safety culture – TEPCO is establishing a robust structure that will be able to cope effectively when things don’t go strictly according to plan.

It is important for Japan to realize there will be future problems as the cleanup progresses – what is important is that there is the technical talent and the safety culture to address these problems.

I noted before that the world is watching, and that is true. But it is doing more than watching, it is helping. I have found my work on the Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee to be among the most rewarding of my career. We are aware of how important this work is, and how much it means to the people of Japan.

We have been gratified by the reception we have been given and by the openness of our colleagues at TEPCO to true reform and especially the contribution of the members of the Nuclear Reform Committee from Japan. The Nuclear Reform Committee has not always been kind in our assessments, and we intend to continue to offer our thoughts on how things can be improved.

We will continue to provide whatever assistance we can in the coming years, and I am confident that the Japanese people have the resources, technical sophistication, and determination to succeed.

But even as we help, we are also learning. We are learning about how to make nuclear power plants even safer than they already are. And we are learning invaluable lessons about D&D work that will be useful in the coming decades as older nuclear power plants must be retired or replaced.

Even though we hope those retirements will not come as the result of the kind of accident experienced at Fukushima, the technical and engineering experience gained at Fukushima will make a huge contribution to the safe closure of those plants.

Indeed, it is reasonable to believe that the D&D capability you are developing will become a valuable and exportable asset for Japan.

The world, not just Japan, needs nuclear energy as part of the overall mix of sources of our electricity. It makes little sense to have “green” cars, or “green” electric trains if we pollute the air with tons of carbon emissions to generate the electricity they will need. Renewables are important, but Japan and other countries need a reliable supply of base load electricity. As you know, significant numbers of people who once opposed nuclear power now support it precisely because they recognize that the risks of dependence on fossil fuels are so much greater.

Japan’s success in overcoming the challenges of Fukushima will play an important role in building public confidence all over the world in the role of nuclear energy in our common future. So we are cheering for your success.

In a speech a few weeks ago, TEPCO President Hirose noted that the third anniversary of the Fukushima accident marks a time both of reflection on the past and of rededication to creating a better future. I believe he is exactly right.

It is an appropriate time to pause and reflect on the suffering and dislocation visited on so many people by the earthquake, the tsunami, and the accident at Fukushima Daiichi. It is also an appropriate time to reflect on the last three years, which, whatever their frustrations and occasional setbacks, have brought important progress.

And it is an appropriate time to rededicate ourselves to the future. It is a future I believe is bright, and one with energy security and economic vitality for the Japanese people.

No matter how much we rely on process and technology, it is people who will be responsible for achieving these goals. TEPCO will have challenges ahead and there will be setbacks. It is important that TEPCO continues to reform, does not become complacent and continues to make progress on the Fukushima Daiichi clean-up. And I have every confidence that the people of this extraordinary nation will meet that challenge.

At every crucial moment they have done so, and I believe they will continue to do so, through the combination of great effort, teamwork, and technical sophistication for which Japan is renowned. It has been, and remains, a great privilege to have been invited to play a small role in this great national effort.

Thank you.