MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The NEA issued its nuclear plant safety report on Monday ahead of the fifth anniversary of the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that caused a partial meltdown in several of the Fukushima Daiichi’s reactors.
"The timely implementation of NPP operating experience is a continuous challenge for both regulators and operators. The challenge is to identify precursor events and the subsequent lessons learnt, and then to implement the related actions to enhance plant safety and prevent recurrence," the report stated.
"However, the combination and the severity of initiating events had never occurred before, and the evolution of the accident in three different units simultaneously was also new," the NEA said.
The report’s publication coincided with the indictment of three former Tokyo Electric Power Company executives for failing to predict that the tsunami would reach the nuclear power plant and for failing to take appropriate safety measures.
The earthquake and tsunami that led to the Fukushima accident killed over 15,000 and is considered the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
