The Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee launched by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), which caused the accident at the Fukushima I nuclear power station, held its first meeting on October 12.
The committee was set up as an advisory organization to TEPCO’s board of directors with the aim of promoting the utility’s internal reform. It will be responsible for monitoring and overseeing internal reform efforts aimed at transforming the utility into a company that has the world’s highest level of safety awareness, engineering capabilities and ability to maintain communication with society.
The committee’s chair Dale Klein, former chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, held a news conference after the meeting and said, “There is a good chance that TEPCO will reestablish itself in the future as a respected company having the highest level of safety culture in the world.” He expressed his determination to assist the utility’s reform with an independent and critical perspective.
Besides Klein, the five-member committee consists of Barbara Judge, honorary chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, Kenichi Ohmae, president of Business Breakthrough Inc., Masafumi Sakurai, former member of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission of the National Diet of Japan and former superintending prosecutor of the Nagoya High Public Prosecutors Office, and TEPCO chairman Kazuhiko Shimokobe.
At the first meeting, the members discussed the fundamental policy for pursuing TEPCO’s reform and agreed to set up four subcommittees overseen respectively by four of the monitoring committee members to examine individual issues: (1) TEPCO’s internal regulatory reform (Judge); (2) international operations and cooperation (Klein); (3) risk assessment (Ohmae); and (4) corporate ethics and emergency response (Sakurai).
The monitoring committee will meet every two to three months, and subcommittees will hold their meetings in between. The committee will also deliberate on the reform plans to be developed this year by TEPCO’s internal Nuclear Reform Special Task Force. Kazuhiro Suzuki, former TEPCO executive and president of Nuclear Fuel Transport, will serve as the committee’s chief secretariat.
