Tepco Staff Urged To Fulfill Duties For Fukushima
The president of Tokyo Electric Power Company has apologized for the burden brought on the communities of Fukushima Prefecture by the devastating accident at its Fukushima Daiichi power plant on March 11, 2011.
The apologies came in a speech marking the tenth anniversary of the nuclear disaster caused by a massive quake and tsunami.
President Kobayakawa Tomoaki gave an address to TEPCO employees online on Thursday, and the employees offered a silent prayer at their workplaces this year to prevent coronavirus infections.
Kobayakawa expressed his apology for the burdens and concerns caused by the accident to Fukushima residents and people in all sectors of society.
He asked the employees to learn from the past, unite and do their best at their workplaces for the reconstruction and future of Fukushima.
He urged them to fulfill their duties for Fukushima without ever forgetting the accident.
Kobayakawa also stressed the need to review conventional practices, if necessary, and to establish a corporate culture of always pursuing improvements in safety and quality, pointing out that there were cases in which employees just followed those practices.
He cited a case last September when a worker entered a control room at TEPCO's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture using another worker's ID card. This incident was criticized by the nation's top nuclear regulator as a serious breach of security.
TEPCO has already used up a quarter of the time period of up to 40 years it is estimated to take to decommission the Fukushima Daiichi plant's reactors affected by the 2011 accident.
Removal of fuel debris from inside the reactors is said to be the biggest undertaking of the decommissioning process. No path is in sight toward developing a technology which is needed to accomplish the task due to extremely high radiation levels.