The nuclear industry has learned nothing from Fukushima

The analysis and feedback from this accident, which we must not underestimate and which was preventable, made it possible to improve the level of safety of nuclear reactors, in Japan and worldwide, with the active and immediate participation of the global nuclear industry.

The significant feedback from the accident made it possible to further improve nuclear safety in Japan and the rest of the world. 

After the Fukushima accident, the Japanese nuclear safety agency was dissolved and then refounded. [1] New safety standards were presented in July 2013, concerning the design of reactors, protection against earthquakes and tsunamis, as well as limiting the consequences of serious accidents. [2]

In the minutes following the accident, the global nuclear industry provided assistance, whether for the necessary expertise, crisis management after the accident, or logistical resources that were lacking due to the scale of the earthquake and tsunami.

In the months that followed, all operators, safety authorities, R&D centers, and suppliers of equipment and services were mobilized with a two-part goal: take the immediate measures that were missing from the Fukushima-Daiichi operator’s response (protective devices against emissions into the atmosphere and the explosion of hydrogen) and launch additional safety studies to analyze the reasons for the accident, in particular concerning the consideration of major external hazards. [2] These studies resulted in the establishment of new measures to be implemented on existing facilities, most of which have been deployed, with the remaining actions in progress.

Since the accident, improvements have been made to existing plants around the world and feedback has been integrated into newly designed reactors such as the EPR. In particular, the French Nuclear Safety Authority had already imposed, following the Chernobyl accident, safety upgrades of reactors in operation which brought them closer to the level adopted in the EPR design, which is a particularly ambitious and exemplary objective. This objective was reinforced, after Fukushima, by a program designed by Electricité de France (EDF) to handle an accident of the "external hazard" type, which consisted of equipping all power plants with emergency backup systems and creating the Nuclear Rapid Action Force (FARN), capable of intervening on any site in less than 24 hours. This program, now part of the plant improvement work for operation after 40 years, is scheduled to be completed in 2034.