Draw lessons from Fukushima?

US panel to study Fukushima nuclear accident

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120720_22.html

The US National Academy of Sciences has set up a committee to study the lessons from last year's accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan.

Representatives of the government's Nuclear Regulatory Commission, nuclear experts and officials of the US nuclear power industry took part in the first meeting in Washington on Thursday.

NRC officials said they took steps to ensure that nuclear plants have emergency power backup systems after the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001. They said the commission has intensified these measures since the Fukushima disaster in March last year.

A participant said excessive confidence in the safety of nuclear power plants was partly to blame for the Fukushima disaster. NRC officials said they will examine whether safety is being overestimated in the US.

Another participant pointed out that the Japanese government meddled with the operator's attempts to deal with the accident immediately after it occurred.
The participants agreed to discuss ways to prevent a recurrence of this problem in the US.

The committee plans to compile proposals to improve the safety of nuclear plants in the US and submit the report to Congress by mid-2014.