At a spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Aomori Prefecture, the president of the company, Japan Nuclear Fuel, attends a Nuclear Regulation Authority meeting to discuss an issue where the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) was temporarily unable to carry out monitoring operations due to equipment lights going out. ``What I didn't realize was that there were so many points of surveillance.''
In January last year, at a reprocessing plant in Rokkasho Village, Aomori Prefecture, some light bulbs went out and the lights went out in a room that is subject to monitoring operations carried out by the IAEA to prevent nuclear material from being diverted to nuclear weapons. , camera monitoring was temporarily unavailable.
Regarding this issue, Japan Nuclear Fuel's President Naohiro Masuda attended a Nuclear Regulation Authority meeting on the 18th and explained the cause and countermeasures.
In this discussion, President Masuda explained that he did not understand what kind of response was necessary on the ground regarding the IAEA's monitoring operations, and that standards for equipment maintenance and management were not clear.
He then stated, ``I greatly regret that I was not aware that there were so many monitoring points,'' and expressed his intention to personally go into the field and take steps to prevent a recurrence.
In response, a member of the Regulatory Commission stated that, given that the reprocessing plant is targeted for completion in the first half of next fiscal year, ``Once the plant is operational, there will be a lot of work going on, and monitoring duties will need to be taken care of. Opinions were raised pointing out the issues, such as, ``We need to take action, and there is an urgent need to develop human resources.''