Today, President Kenji Kudo held a monthly press conference in Aomori City and talked about “The Amendment Bill to the Spent Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Fund Act,” “Management Mechanism Reform and New Management Executives,” and  "Status of response to the New Regulatory Requirements.”

The Amendment Bill to the Spent Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Fund Act

The plenary session of House of Councilors passed the Amendment Bill to the Spent Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Fund Act on May 11th, and the legislation was in turn enacted.

The nuclear fuel cycle is critical in terms of reducing both the volume and toxicity of waste, along with effectively using uranium resources. It is of significance that a bill geared toward continuously and steadily facilitating the nuclear fuel cycle had passed amid the liberalization of the electric power market and other such drastically changing management environments. JNFL is regarding the legislation’s approval with sincerity.

Management Mechanism Reform and New Management Executives

JNFL and utilities alike are facing extremely difficult management conditions. Under such circumstances, JNFL is to reform its management mechanism with the intent to strengthen its corporate governance.

In an effort to reinforce the supervisory function of the company’s board meeting, JNFL will invite three outside members of the board from domains unrelated to the electricity industry, and have them supervise JNFL’s Executive Officers from a neutral standpoint. A total of 10 utility management executives will continue to serve as outside members of the board, and they will take part in the management of JNFL.

Meanwhile, in-house members of the board will be scaled down to four from the current 12. These four members will be held accountable as executives both for corporate governance and in making technology-related decisions.

Accordingly, the total board members will be slimmed down to 17 from 22, and over half of them, i.e. 13 members, are to be served by outside board members. JNFL will work to strengthen its board meeting’s supervisory function, make efforts to breathe new life into discussions, and enhance the objectivity in decision-makings.

Moreover, two non-electricity industry personnel will take over as auditors, one of whom is an expert on the local economy and the other a legal specialist.

JNFL will also reform its organization as a step to further strengthen its corporate governance.

The company will merge its Corporate Quality Assurance and Administration Office and Safety Management Division to set company-wide safety goals and policies as well as to scale up the safety of JNFL in its entirety by harnessing the quality management system.

To ensure the further heightened independence of auditing functions, the reform initiative will also include detaching the audit sector, which previously was part of the Corporate Quality Assurance and Administration Office .

Moreover, JNFL will render it easier to cooperate with local residents and to reflect their opinions into our operations by integrating the General Administration Division, which is responsible for a wide array of businesses, and the Public Relations Division, i.e. the contact point with residents.

Status of Response to the New Regulatory Requirements

In terms of the review on seismic safety, the examination on April 15 about the exceedance probability of the design-basis seismic ground motion has, in effect, marked an end to items on setting design-basis seismic ground motions. On May 13, reviews were conducted on tsunami assessments.

On May 30, a review meeting on the Uranium Enrichment Plant took place, in which JNFL explained about such natural phenomena as earthquakes and tornadoes along with external fire countermeasures.

A review meeting on the Reprocessing Plant and the MOX Fuel Fabrication Plant will be convened on May 31. By using the separation building as an example, JNFL is planning to explain accidents that occur under more severe conditions than designed conditions for the Reprocessing Plant. This briefing will be based on the “overall map,” which organizes countermeasures and anticipated accidents on a per-facility basis, and will refer to concrete steps to cope with cases in which several types of accidents, such as hydrogen explosions, occur simultaneously.

With regard to the MOX Fuel Fabrication Plant, JNFL is planning to describe the preconditions of accidents that occur under more severe conditions than designed conditions.