25 Mar (NucNet): The US has offered help decommission the four damaged reactors at Fukushima-Daiichi and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will “work closely” with Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) to carry out joint research on safety and security, a Japanese nuclear industry group has said.
Takuya Hattori, president of the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (JAIF), told NucNet that the NRC and NRA are planning to hold meetings twice a year to exchange information.
He said such meetings would provide a forum to exchange technical information and carry out joint research to secure the safety of nuclear plants.
The two countries will also be able to discuss a wide range of potential areas in which to cooperate. Working groups could be set up for high priority issues, he said.
Mr Hattori also said he believes “a major international initiative” is needed on the decommissioning of nuclear reactors, including units that were damaged following the earthquake and tsunami at Fukushima-Daiichi in March 2011.
He said the ageing of hundreds of nuclear facilities worldwide demands attention that should not just be limited to the country where the facilities are based.
Mr Hattori said only an international initiative could succeed in completing the planning for, and safe and cost-effective implementation of decommissioning.
Units 1 to 4 at the six-unit Fukushima-Daiichi plant will be permanently decommissioned, a task that could take up to 50 years.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company’s decommissioning roadmap for the units is in three phases with the final phase taking up to 40 years. However, this phase might not begin for another 10 years, allowing time for the removal of spent fuel and other debris.
Mr Hattori said it could take up to 10 years to remove spent fuel from the plant’s spent fuel pools.
Mr Hattori said public confidence in nuclear power among Japanese people is still to be restored two years after the Fukushima-Daiichi accident. He said restoring this confidence was “the most difficult task” for the industry.
But he did not rule out the construction of new nuclear plants in Japan and said he was confident nuclear still had a role to play in meeting the energy needs of Japan and the rest of the world.
“Yes, the public do not want us to depend so much on nuclear energy, but I think they still understand the necessity for nuclear power,” he said.
Mr Hattori said “lack of preparation and imagination” was one of the causes of the disaster, adding, “never again must we be so complacent.” He said plant managers and nuclear safety experts in Japan showed they could not imagine scenarios that have a very low probability such as the combination of earthquake and tsunami that gave rise to the accident at Fukushima-Daiichi.
“The accident was not the result of nuclear technology itself, but the inevitable result of management systems that had built-in institutional defects,” he said.
Asked whether or not the stress tests being carried out in Japan based on similar tests in Europe would solve any potential safety issues with Japan’s nuclear plants, he said “in safety, nothing is enough”.
He said: “If some countries or someone thinks ‘we have passed the stress-test, we are safe’, that is a problem. That is the starting point in the loss of the safety culture.”
Mr Hattori said management systems need to be improved and those involved in nuclear safety need to have “a questioning attitude”.
“We need to know how to be prepared for a severe situation and how to manage any severe situation. We need to improve communication between the nuclear site and the support centres. We need to improve information for the general public.
Asked about the cost of improvements to nuclear plants following the Fukushima-Daiichi accident, Mr Hattori said you could not put a cost on safety.
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