Poor standards

February 15, 2012

N-safety panel apologizes for defective standards

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120215_30.html

The head of the government's nuclear safety commission says government guidelines for nuclear safety need to be reviewed.

Haruki Madarame made the remark on Wednesday in response to questions at the Independent Investigation Commission of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident, a panel established in the Diet.

Madarame said he has to admit that the government guidelines for nuclear safety are defective in many ways.

He apologized for insufficient wording in the guidelines for taking measures against the danger of a tsunami and for inappropriate wording stipulating that it is not necessary to prepare for long-time power loss.

Madarame also spoke about the handling of data from a system to predict the spread of radioactive substances. He said it is a misunderstanding to argue that more swift evacuation would have been possible if the data had been made public more quickly. But he said the data should have been disclosed at an earlier stage of the accident.

The Industrial Safety Agency's former chairman Nobuaki Terasaka was also present at the meeting to answer questions.

Terasaka said he feels sorry that the government task force on the nuclear disaster did not make minutes of its meetings. Terasaka was the secretary general of the task force in the wake of the nuclear disaster.

He added that work is underway to reproduce records of the meetings based on summaries of memorandums that are available.