Adviser urges Tepco to learn from Fukushima crisis mistakes

PanARMENIAN.Net - Tokyo Electric Power Co must adopt measures used in other Japanese industries to reform after acknowledging that it failed to anticipate and tackle the Fukushima disaster, the utility's newly installed outside adviser said on Saturday, Oct 13, Reuters reported.

Tokyo Electric, also known as Tepco, acknowledged for the first time on Friday that it failed in its response to the radiation crisis in March 2011 when three reactors melted down at its Fukushima Daiichi plant after it was hit by an earthquake and tsunami.

Dale Klein, appointed last week to head a panel of outside specialists overseeing the company's reforms, said in an interview that Tepco could look to other Japanese companies.

"We had some open and frank discussions with our committee and with the Tepco management," Klein, a former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told Reuters.

Klein said Japan "has demonstrated excellence in manufacturing. In that process any worker can stop the process, if he believes there is a defect. Tepco needs to do the same thing with their nuclear safety culture".

Klein, associate vice chancellor for research at the University of Texas, said the latest findings "will be a strong wake-up call for Tepco.

"There is a tendency among companies and individuals when the first is a problem of denial. So you try to justify your actions to either cover up, save face, whatever you want to call it," he said. "Fukushima Daiichi cannot be covered up."

In Tepco's draft plan for reform issued on Friday, the company said it could have undertaken better preparations, reversing its previous stand that the disaster was unavoidable because of the unexpected force of the tsunami.