On October 29, Mr. Lake Barrett (Decommissioning member) gave the following speech to the staffs at New Office in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here, at your place of work at the site, to share with you a conversation that I had yesterday with President Hirose and Chairman Sudo.

Dr. Dale Klein and I are here in Japan for a Reform Meeting with Chairman Sudo and the top management of TEPCO. We discussed the work that you do here, its importance, and the external perception of it. We discussed the actual importance of what you do here every single day and the importance of it to all the people in Japan and all the people in the world.

From personal experience, I mentioned that it was that it was difficult when you are in the field, at the site working very hard every single day, that all you read in the news media are negative things. No one, in the media ever says “Thank you” for what you are doing.

So today, I have the honor to humbly stand in front you, on behalf of international community, to say thank you very much for what you do every single day here at the site.

In yesterday’s conversation with President Hirose, I explained to him some personal history from early in my career when I was assigned to work at the cleanup of the Three Mile Island reactor accident. I personally never intended to do cleanup work at all. When the accident at Three Mile Island happened; I was chosen and told to go do cleanup work. I was originally trained to be a reactor test engineer and reactor designer. I thought at that time that cleanup work would be a bad thing for my career. But I was wrong.

Many of my university colleagues said I should leave the nuclear industry and go work in the aerospace industry and do exciting space station or airplane work. I chose to stay in nuclear clean up area and I encouraged my friends do the same. It was the best decision that I think I have ever made.

The accident at TMI and the situation here in Fukushima has put you in the same place that I was. So we are in the same positions.

I don’t think you ever expected to be here. But, like me, with the time, I believe you will hopefully start to more appreciate what you are doing and learning. You are on the cutting edge of the most advanced challenging technology activities in the world.

Overtime, one of the most satisfying things for me, and also my staff that worked at TMI, was that we gained the appreciation of the value of what we were doing and overcame the negative things that were said in the news media. We became proud as the creators of the work that we actually did at the end of the day.

So what I’d like to state to you is that despite all the hard work and frustrations that you endure every day, that your efforts are appreciated. Someday in a far future, you, like me, will be proud to tell your Grandchildren about what you are doing here today for them. It is okay. Thank you again for all what you are doing.