Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) should convene a panel of international nuclear
power plant operators from outside Japan to review its safety standards
even if it obtains clearance by regulators to restart the world’s
largest nuclear plant, an adviser to the utility said on Tuesday.
Dale Klein, a former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission and the chairman of a third-party panel commissioned by Tokyo
Electric to oversee the reform of its nuclear division, said such a
step would provide additional assurance that the utility could be
trusted to run a nuclear plant safely after the March 2011 meltdowns at
the Fukushima DaiIchi plant.
Klein, who was in Tokyo for a meeting of Tokyo Electric’s nuclear
reform panel, said representatives of U.S. nuclear operators such as
Southern Co, Exelon Corp and Pinnacle West Capital Corp’s Arizona Public
Service subsidiary could be sent in as advisers to TEPCO.
“I would like to see what I call a readiness review,” Klein told
Reuters in an interview. “You’ve got regulatory aspects - Do you meet
everything? Do you have right training? - and then, I think, because of
Fukushima DaiIchi, the Japanese public would feel better if another
group came in and said operationally they are ready. I have been pushing
for that.”
TEPCO has applied to Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority to restart its Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant in Niigata Prefecture.
But the prospects for a restart remain uncertain, in part because of
opposition from Niigata Governor Hirohiko Izumida, a strident critic of
TEPCO and its response to the Fukushima disaster.
Klein said he believed TEPCO was making progress in developing a
culture of safety, modeled on the manufacturing controls pioneered by
Japanese companies such as Toyota Motor Co to ensure quality in
production. He said completing that process could take years.
“It’s going slower than I would like,” he said.
Klein said he had asked TEPCO executives to brief his reform panel
early next year on progress it has made to ensure workers involved in
the clean-up of the Fukushima plant are being properly employed by
subcontractors and protected from radiation hazards.
Klein, who was NRC chairman from 2006 to 2009, also serves on the board of Phoenix-based Pinnacle West.
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2014.
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