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NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, March-April 2014
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-level
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.
Safety Culture
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 mothballs
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 (KK) 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 that
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 lacked, and which it is now
building.
Let me give you an example: In
1999, 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
for every robot there is a person who
needs to operate it. In the end, it is the
people who will make the difference.
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
A Questioning...
