Report on the findings of the Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee to the Board of TEPCO on the progress of the Nuclear Safety Reform Plan

The Committee held its 6th meeting today, at which it received a report from TEPCO on the status of initiatives undertaken over the past year and plans for future improvements. Although TEPCO's Nuclear Safety Reform Plan is making steady progress, we believe efforts need to be intensified to meet world-class standards for nuclear safety. To accelerate the reforms much further, the Committee will make recommendations as follows.

• Safety culture at the highest level is making significant progress, with the “Nuclear Safety Oversight Office (NSOO)” and the TEPCO Board giving the executives comprehensive directions (Ten demands for action) based on NSOO's recommendations. We expect that NSOO will continue to function to enhance nuclear safety at TEPCO.
• Different safety controls and management approach is required in two completely different areas: "decommissioning of disabled reactors" at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and "operation of power reactors" at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station. The decommissioning of disabled reactors is a completely new challenge with which TEPCO has no previous experience. We applaud TEPCO for establishing the “Fukushima Daiichi D&D Engineering Company” as a means to concentrate its resources and skills to tackle this new challenge.
  Contaminated water problems frequently occur at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and the company needs to improve without delay a safety management structure suitable for the task of decommissioning disabled reactors. Toward that end, the company should benchmark the operations and safety controls of similar cleanup facilities abroad and make the greatest possible use of outside support in order to make urgent improvements. Additionally, TEPCO needs to work together with the central government and the local communities concerned to develop a comprehensive and integrated management plan toward fundamentally resolving the contaminated water issue.
  At the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station, multiple safety measures based on the lessons of the Fukushima Daiichi accident are steadily being implemented. Emergency training exercises are being repeatedly carried out, along with more diligent efforts to discover and correct problems. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station is steadily improving its operation to a seriously higher safety standard than ever before. Constant efforts should continue to be made to improve safety further by, for example, carrying out joint emergency drills repeatedly with outside parties.
• We applaud TEPCO for establishing the “Social Communication Office” to improve communications with domestic and international audiences. It will focus on increased transparency, timeliness, comprehensibility, and clarity of message. TEPCO needs to continue its effort to engage thoroughly in the foregoing, while also implementing more proactive and strategic communications. Work also needs to be done together with technical staff to explore all risk scenarios and to carry out practical drills in terms of risk communication. While improvements in communication has occurred, additional improvements are still needed.
• TEPCO needs to advance continuous reform to attain world class nuclear safety, as safety enhancements are endless. The Board of TEPCO needs to accelerate reform through detailed discussions with the executive in determining specific key performance indicators (KPI) as soon as possible in order to measure the progress of the reform and the degree to which safety culture has penetrated the organization. TEPCO also needs to set up necessary organization to conduct this.

This Committee will continue to regularly check on the status of the reform initiatives being undertaken by communicating with the board and the executive at TEPCO and publish its findings to the public.