Dr.Klein did a speech at ACCJ

THE END OF THE BEGINNING: PROGRESS AT FUKUSHIMA AND THE ROAD AHEAD

It has been an extraordinary privilege to serve as the Chairman of TEPCO’s Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee. The Committee is an international group that meets quarterly to provide independent, candid advice – and occasionally criticism -- to TEPCO on its progress in implementing the Nuclear Safety Reform Plan adopted in 2013. We tell TEPCO what we think they should hear not always what they want to hear.

Through my many trips to Japan and the development of relationships with so many talented and dedicated people, I have gained an even greater respect and affection for the Japanese people – their determination, their resilience, their hard work ethic, and their extraordinary talents. Those of you who are Americans living in Japan have no doubt had this same experience. It really is a highlight of my career to be able to play a role in helping TEPCO and the people of Japan cope with the challenges that were posed by the Great Japan Earthquake, the tsunami, and the accident at Fukushima Daiichi.

I know that all of you care deeply about what is happening at Fukushima. Success there will help restore confidence not only in TEPCO but also in Japan’s economic progress. It will speed the revival of Japan’s nuclear power industry, which is essential to the continued reinvigoration of the Japanese economy.

And it will restore confidence and momentum to nuclear power globally, which is essential not only to the industry itself and those related to it, but to the world’s ability to develop sustainable strategies to address climate change and economic growth. The nuclear industry will learn many things as more technical information about the accident becomes available.

As you might imagine, the work that is going on at Fukushima Daiichi alone – to say nothing of TEPCO’s continuing responsibility to provide power for the 20 million or so people of the Kanto region – could easily take a few hours to describe. Don't worry – I won’t do that to you.

But what I do want to share with you in the 15 or so minutes we have today are two things: (1) a brief overview of the progress that’s been made at Fukushima along with a realistic assessment of what’s to come, and (2) some thoughts on the bigger picture.

At Fukushima, it is so easy to get bogged down into the engineering details or the periodic news reports of some technical problems, that one loses sight of the bigger picture. And the big picture is this: An important page has been turned. For the first two or three years after the accident, the focus was primarily on stabilization. It was, of necessity, an extended emergency response. The most important aspect after the accident was to keep both the fuel in the reactors and the spent fuel pools cooled and TEPCO achieved this task.

But last November, a new phase began. After extensive and remarkably innovative preparations, TEPCO – despite some very irresponsible predictions of disaster – began the safe removal of nuclear fuel assemblies from the spent fuel pool of Unit 4, a reactor that had not been operating at the time of the accident but whose outer building had exploded as the result of hydrogen buildup when cooling systems failed. This hydrogen originated in Unit 3 and there were initial incorrect claims that the spent fuel in Unit 4 had melted.

The safe removal of the spent fuel from Unit 4 was an enormous milestone. It represented a shift in focus from stabilization to actual decontamination work. It represented the successful collaboration of many different organizations. And it demonstrated that TEPCO was implementing the “safety culture” that our Monitoring Committee has emphasized is so essential to TEPCO’s future – not only at Fukushima but throughout the organization. An example of this was a total work stoppage after several spent fuel assemblies were removed to evaluate what went well and where safety enhancements might be recommended. Despite dire – and I might add scientifically ridiculous – predictions of disaster, TEPCO’s fuel removal efforts have proceeded smoothly and all the fuel will be removed from Unit 4 by the end of this year. Similar preparations are underway for the removal of spent fuel from the other three damaged Units.

All of this, of course, is preparation for the main event: the eventual removal of the fuel debris that melted in Units 1, 2, and 3. As you have no doubt read, that is an effort without precedent, and it will require great care, great ingenuity, and great safety preparations.

Indeed, organizations from Japan and the U.S. and around the world are collaborating on efforts including sophisticated robotics as we learn more about the exact condition of the fuel and the damaged containment vessels.

This will not happen overnight. TEPCO has committed to removing the debris from at least one of the three units by the end of their Fiscal Year 2020. I don’t have to remind you that’s the same year the Tokyo Olympics will focus the world’s attention on Japan. TEPCO is keenly aware of its responsibility to make progress while at the same time ensuring that the athletes and others who converge on Japan – and of course the people themselves who live near Fukushima -- will have complete confidence in their health and safety.

Full decontamination and decommissioning is expected to take between 30 and 40 years. In a world where it is difficult for business executives or government officials to think beyond the next quarter or the next election, this is an eternity. To their great credit, TEPCO and the government of Japan have, in fact, developed a long-term plan designed not only to clean up Fukushima but also restore TEPCO to economic health and ensure that it can continue to do its main job of providing safe electricity to fuel economic growth and enhance people’s lives.

A very important component of that plan is something that our committee recommended: the creation of a distinct entity within TEPCO to take responsibility for Fukushima Daiichi. Why did we believe that was so important? Because we recognized, and TEPCO’s leadership recognized, that the skills needed for long-term D&D activity are quite different from those needed to operate the rest of the company. A distinct entity would assemble the right skills, have the necessary long-term focus, and provide the essential accountability to get the job done safely.

Acting on this recommendation, TEPCO established the Fukushima D&D Engineering Company and placed at its helm Naohiro Masuda. Masuda-san, as you probably know, has been credited with his leadership in keeping the Fukushima Daini plant intact after the tsunami and brought the plant to a safe shut down condition. I believe he is bringing the vision, the leadership and focus that the work at Fukushima Daiichi requires. The D&D Engineering Company is a collaboration with Japan’s nuclear industry, and truly represents a national commitment to this long-term effort.

Because D&D will be such a long-term project, the public may become frustrated at what they perceive is a slow pace of progress. For this and other reasons, the Monitoring Committee is encouraging TEPCO to be as transparent and proactive as possible in communicating the many intermediate milestones and achievements on the road to ultimate success. This also includes transparency when plans do not go smoothly. And we have emphasized the importance of communicating this not only within Japan but to the international community as well, and with the help of a U.S.-based company TEPCO is making great strides in doing this. It is extremely important for TEPCO to have a timely communication program both within Japan and internationally.

Serious challenges remain. The most immediate challenge involves the management of water at the Daiichi site, which sits directly between the mountains and the sea. In Japan as elsewhere, water runs downhill, and until all the nuclear debris is removed from the reactor buildings – something that won’t happen for years – TEPCO will need to deal with a challenge that essentially has three parts:

(1) Preventing as much water as possible from entering the facility as possible.

(2) Preventing the water within the facility from becoming contaminated through contact with the debris or with other contaminated water; and

(3) Cleaning, and safely disposing of the contaminated water.

Any of you who have ever had a roof leak or a pipe burst or a basement flood knows what a relentless and insidious challenge water can represent. At Fukushima Daiichi, the challenge is complex. The major challenge for TEPCO is to manage the water safely and to communicate accurately the risks of this water.

Most obviously, there is the need to protect the environment, though even now the constant monitoring of seawater shows that, especially outside the mostly enclosed port area of the plant, radiation levels are extremely low and in most instances would even meet World Health Organization standards for drinking water. However, we all recognize how sensitive the issue of contaminated water is in Japan and the entire world.

But beyond the environmental and health issues, the reality is that TEPCO’s water management has taken on symbolic importance. Leaks and other mishaps, however trivial, are reported loudly in the media, contributing, fairly or not, to perceptions about TEPCO’s overall ability to manage the D&D effort.

For all of these reasons, it is essential for TEPCO to succeed in all of the categories I mentioned before – diversion, isolation, treatment, storage, and disposal – so that the water situation at Fukushima Daiichi becomes sustainable.

Make no mistake: this is a tall order. And there is no one magic bullet. Each of those three categories involves multiple approaches – groundwater bypass, physical barriers, treatment facilities, and more. In a few minutes, my colleague Dr. Lake Barrett will describe these to you in greater detail, from the perspective of someone who experienced some of these challenges when he was the senior government official involved in cleaning up Three Mile Island after the accident in Pennsylvania.

I will simply say that while progress is being made, TEPCO isn’t there yet. Contaminated water continues to accumulate at the rate of about 300-400 tons per day, a rate that must be reduced. There have been too many mishaps in handling the stored water. There have been setbacks in developing and operating the ALPS water treatment system. And I have previously expressed my reservations about how effective the frozen soil wall will be in keeping water out of the reactor building basements. But I remain hopeful that the improvements to treatment capacity along with other strategies to reduce that rate of accumulation will reduce the quantity of contaminated water.

At some point, however, Japan will have to make politically difficult decisions about what to do with the water after it has been cleaned. Storage capacity cannot be expanded indefinitely. As Lake will explain, we have a very high degree of confidence that the water can be cleaned to the point where it can be very safely returned to the ocean. But we also recognize this is a deeply divisive and sensitive issue for the people of Japan, and while we can advise on the science, only the Japanese people can decide the ultimate course of action. TEPCO and the government of Japan will need to educate the public on the real risks and they will have to counter considerable misinformation.

Now I want to turn for the last few minutes of my remarks to a discussion about the broader future for TEPCO and nuclear power in Japan. Again, this is an issue only the Japanese people can decide for themselves. But I am confident that science and the need for a balanced energy policy, one that enables Japan to meet its commitments under the Kyoto protocols, will prevail.

Approval has been given for the Sendai nuclear power plant in Western Japan to resume operations, and I believe this will pave the way for bringing more of the country’s nearly 50 idle nuclear power stations online, which will enable the country to return many old fossil-fuel burning plants to a standby status and dramatically reduce the country’s carbon emissions. In addition, the restart of the nuclear plants will reduce the extremely high volume of fossil fuel imports.

Two of those plants, of course, belong to TEPCO. Fukushima Daiini will remain in safe “cold shutdown” for the foreseeable future, but the world’s largest nuclear power station, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa in Niigata Prefecture on the west coast of Honshu, is being readied for a return to operation. There are many things that have been done to improve safety at KK – physical improvements, such as a higher wall to protect against tsunamis; better contingency planning, such as emergency power sources that can’t be flooded as they were in Fukushima; worker training; stronger management practices, and so on. I have visited KK several times and have been impressed by the safety enhancements implemented at this site.

But beyond all that is this concept of “safety culture,” which is so important to our Reform Committee. A nuclear safety culture is more than just the sum of all the physical improvements that have been made to KK or elsewhere within TEPCO. It is, indeed, a “culture.” It is a way of thinking and an attitude that recognizes that safety is more than following manuals or checking boxes on a checklist. It is a culture that is open to questioning. That empowers workers to speak up and express concerns. That re-examines conventional wisdom and recognizes that ensuring safety is an unending process that requires constant diligence and critical thinking. Every worker at a nuclear plant needs to think safety in all the actions they take, every day, every hour and every minute.

These qualities, frankly, did not come easily to TEPCO. And I think all of you would agree that changing the culture of any company, especially one with TEPCO’s long and proud traditions, is difficult. It does not happen immediately, and it will not happen immediately at TEPCO.

But it is clear that great progress is being made. President Hirose has on many occasions underscored and demonstrated his commitment to a nuclear safety culture. A new approach to management accountability has been put in place that emphasizes a safety culture throughout the company. Chairman Sudo, who comes to TEPCO from the steel industry, brings a commitment both to safety and the need to meet high international expectations.

To help maintain management focus on building a stronger safety culture, TEPCO has adopted another one of our committee’s recommendations: Establishment of a Nuclear Safety Oversight Office, headed by Dr. John Crofts of the U.K. and reporting directly to TEPCO’s Board. In addition, TEPCO is collaborating with international partners, including the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. nuclear plants, Britain’s Sellafield plant to the IAEA to enhance safety.

Ultimately, safety culture is not just about engineering and technology. It is about people, and I would like to conclude my remarks by talking about them.

The people of TEPCO, the people who are out there every day under difficult conditions at Fukushima, the ones working so hard to bring KK back online, the workers enduring cramped consolidated offices at headquarters in Tokyo, deserve more recognition than they have received.

In the immediate aftermath of the accident, many workers who were once proud to say they worked at TEPCO found themselves ostracized. Press accounts – falsely, as it turned out – maligned the people who had heroically regained control of Fukushima Daiichi after the tsunami. But recently, this has begun to change. The media have now recognized the Fukushima workers for their courage and dedication. Those now engaged in D&D work can justly take pride in the progress they are making in fuel removal, implementing water management strategies, and in other aspects of the cleanup.

This is not only gratifying and just. It is an important component of a successful safety culture; good morale and good safety go hand in hand. For this reason, and also as a demonstration of the U.S. commitment to Japan, I cannot overstate how much Ambassador Kennedy’s visit to Fukushima Daiichi and the surrounding communities meant to the people there.

Her visit evoked an especially warm response because she is not, after all, just any ambassador. She is Caroline Kennedy, JFK’s daughter. Her father, when he was running for president, was fond of ending his campaign speeches with the closing lines of one of Robert Frost’s best-loved poems:

“I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”

So it may be said of Fukushima Daiichi. Great progress has been made, and continues to be made. But there are many miles to go. To paraphrase President Kennedy’s inaugural address, the work will not be finished in a thousand days, nor even perhaps in our lifetime. But it has begun, and I have every confidence that the Japanese people, whose rich and ancient culture measures time on a much longer scale than we impatient Americans, will see it through to the end.