Today, President Kudo held a monthly press conference in Aomori city and talked about the “status of response to the New Regulatory Requirements”, “JNFL’s response on corrective actions for quality assurance activities”, and the “overview of FY2016 financial results”.

Status of Response to the New Regulatory Requirements

JNFL finished explaining about the Reprocessing Plant in the review meeting held on March 24, and on May 9, submitted an amendment to its application for activity modification permission. Reflecting on what the Secretariat of the Nuclear Regulation Authority had pointed out in a subsequent hearing, JNFL decided it needs to partially change its severe accident response policy and other items briefed in previous review meetings. Details of the partial change were explained on June 22 in a re-convened review meeting.

That briefing covered design standards and severe accident countermeasures. For the former topic, JNFL explained about preventing damage from external impacts; specifically, JFNL’s approach to tornado protection and aircraft crash probability estimations. The latter topic covered effectiveness assessments and concrete responses taken in the event of hydrogen explosion accidents and evaporation to dryness.

The Secretariat of the Nuclear Regulation Authority commented on the reliability of JNFL’s countermeasures. JNFL plans to carefully respond to these comments at hearings and other occasions.

JNFL has also finished explaining about the MOX Fuel Fabrication Plant in the review meeting held on March 24, and submitted an amendment to its application for activity modification permission on May 9. In a subsequent hearing, the Secretariat of the Nuclear Regulation Authority pointed out issues on fire-related severe accident countermeasures. In response, JNFL is looking into the indicated details and planning to carefully provide explanations in future hearings.

JNFL will be fully committed to reviewing its activities.

JNFL’s Response on Corrective Actions for Quality Assurance Activities

On June 23, JNFL convened a meeting of the Safety and Quality Reform Verification Committee, the aim of which is to provide JNFL with technical and objective third-party evaluations/advice on corrective actions.

Hachinohe Institute of Technology Professor Emeritus Shigetaka Fujita was appointed as Committee chair in the meeting. Committee members checked JNFL’s conduct of corrective actions and made valuable suggestions on actively delivering information on improvement activities to external parties and how to collect employee’s opinions. A brief summary of the proceedings of the Committee meeting will be posted on the JNFL website at a later date.

JNFL will continue to muster all its efforts for improvement activities.

Overview of FY2016 Financial Results

JNFL’s net sales totaled 308.7 billion yen, a 13.3-billion-yen increase from the previous year. The costs of goods sold were up 6.6 billion yen from last year, standing at 266.7 billion yen. Our gross profit consequently reached 42.0 billion yen and the operating profit, i.e. the gross profit with SGA deducted, stood at 22.1 billion yen, increasing 8.2 billion yen from the previous year.

Our ordinary profit, which reflects non-operating profit/loss, rose 9.4 billion yen year-on-year marking 12.0 billion yen. Meanwhile, the current net income, an amount excluding corporate taxes and such special losses as costs associated with the retirement of fixed assets, were up 7.1 billion yen from the previous year reaching 7.2 billion yen. Our final results accordingly indicated increases in both revenues and profits.

That’s our overview of FY2016 financial results.