 My name is Naom Hirose. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It is my great pleasure to be here to speak to you today. I'd like to thank Stanford University for providing me this opportunity. It's been almost eight years since the accident of Fukushima Nuclear Power Station. Fortunately, the current plant condition is stable, and then situation of surrounding communities are getting better day by day. Although the accident itself was very, very severe one, but we have learned a lot since the accident, and we have experienced a lot since the accident. So it is my great pleasure to share some of the lessons and experiences today with you taking this opportunity. I taking this opportunity, I'd like to also thank people of the United States and the US government, DOE, NLC, and many, many expert helping us to start the decommissioning of the nuclear power plant. Today I have 40 minutes or so to speak, and then I'd like to answer to your question. I wonder how much you remember the accident because it's been eight years. So let me start with the brief explanation of what exactly happened eight years ago. So it was Friday afternoon at 2.46 March 11, 2011, the very, very big earthquake hit Japan, and the epicenter of the earthquake was 120 miles away southeast of our nuclear power plants. With the magnitude of 9.0, this is the biggest earthquake in Japan's recorded history. I heard that this is the fourth largest earthquake in the world record. At the time of the earthquake, what happened in the nuclear power plant was so-called scrum. Scrum means inserting control rods between the nuclear fuels, so that they stopped nuclear fission. Stopping nuclear fission means stopping power generation. So a nuclear power plant stopped producing power, so it needed power for itself. The power was supposed to come from outside through the power line, but unfortunately, one of the power pile fell down because of the earthquake. So we didn't receive any power from outside. So immediately after that, the self-generation power system, our emergency system started working, producing power by the turbine generators and then batteries. Then using that power, we control the power plant. I was in headquarters and then the first report that I received from the nuclear power plant was that the scrum was safely made and we control the power plant. I still remember I was very much relieved by this first report because Japan, we have a lot of big earthquakes, and then actually this scrum situation had before. So we had experienced this scrum situation before. So I thought that this is again one of those past events. But unfortunately, 50 minutes after this, at 3.36, devastating tsunami hit Japan's east coast. Probably you have seen many times on the news film or something, that the tsunami raves approaching to the Japan coast. It's like huge surfing raves. Unfortunately, there was nobody taking video of tsunami approaching to the nuclear power plants. There are many, many photos but no movies. I guess that they are very busy handling the power plants after the earthquake. But nobody was taking. But we found that the one guy in our thermal power plant was taking movie of the tsunami approaching to his thermal power plant. That thermal power plant is Hirano thermal power station, which is located 20 kilometers south of Fukushima Daiichi. So it's just a 12 mile south. So it's very close. So why don't we watch his video so that you can have some kind of the idea of what's going on in the nuclear power plants. This is Pacific Ocean. This side is North and this side is South. The tsunami actually came not directly from east. It came rather from a little bit south. So it comes like, excuse me, sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It started again, sorry. It comes from the little bit south. Again, this is a thermal power plant, not nuclear power plant. And please take a look at these automobiles. They look like leaves. So this is a tsunami heading thermal power plant. So I guess a similar situation was going on in our nuclear power plant. So hopefully you understand what was going on in our nuclear power plant. Okay, let's stop watching this. Actually, this is a map of Fukushima Daiichi. There are nuclear units, one, two, three, four, five, six. Six units were there. And this is a Pacific Ocean. This side is North, this side is South. Tokyo is that side. And then the blue area was inundated with seawater. They washed away turbine generators, electric boards and pumps and everything. You know that the nuclear fuel still keep a vast amount of heat even after the nuclear fission stopped. So we had to cool them down by recycling cooling water. But because of this tsunami, we lost the power completely. We lost the pumps completely. And then the power plant became the station blackout, SBO, no power at all. And then probably this also you know that nuclear fuel boards are covered with metal called zircoly. This material start melting at the temperature around 1500 degrees Celsius. So it's the temperature of the nuclear fuel went up because we couldn't cool them down. So the temperature went up and started melting. And the vast amount of hydrogen was formed by the chemical reaction with water and then melting zircoly. And then you know that the hydrogen is lighter than the air. So it went up, up, up, up. And then you know that the nuclear power buildings has no windows, no anything. It's sealed completely. So that the hydrogen went up and then accumulated inside the top of the building. And we still do not know what ignited. But obviously there are many, many aftershocks after that big earthquake. And then those lights, Bob might fall down or some pipes fall down. Anything could happen. So something ignited. And then hydrogen explosion took place at unit one, unit three, and unit four. Probably you have seen these pictures before that this is a miserable situation. And then most of the buildings, the top of the building exploded. So it's kind of the open air situation. And the radioactive materials went outside the building. And when a father outside the nuclear power plant site and to the local community. And this map, left-hand side map shows that the radiation dosage level of the local community. Because obviously the wind came from southeast to northwest. This is a power plant. So that the contaminated air area spread toward the northwest direction. This is as of April 2011, so it's one month after the accident. So this map shows as of November 2017 to six and a half years after the accident. It looks much, much, much better now. Because we did a lot of decontamination works. And then as you know that the radiation level goes down as time goes by naturally. So that it looks much, much better now. And then this is the evacuation zone. Immediately after the accident, government designated the evacuation zone within 20 kilometer radius of the 20 kilometers. It's a 12 mile radius. So that somewhere in this area was the evacuation zone. But as you saw that the radiation level is getting better. So as the evacuation zone, they're getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And now still two towns left remain as an evacuation zone. And this is a number of the people who used to live in this evacuation zone. But now still 20,000 people cannot go home even if they want to. Again, but this is a number of the people who used to live in this evacuation zone. So this is not the actual number of the people left their homes and living outside. Because those people living around here were forced to evacuate and then moved to the different places. But seven, eight years since the accident, primary school kids now go to college. They changed the whole lifestyle. So I would say 100% people will not come back. But so the actual number of the people who left their homes, hometowns, now something like nearly 50,000. And this 20,000 people means that those people who cannot go home even if they want to. So this is a number of the people in this region. This is about the story of what happened eight years ago and thereafter. Let me talk about the current situation of the power plant, Fukushima Daiichi. As I said that plants are now cold, shut down, stable condition. The cooling water is being recycled into the reactors and then spent fuel pools. And then temperatures and then other parameters are also monitored continuously 24 seven. And then the plant itself is very stable now. And let me talk about the condition of the working place. This red area, green area is the site of the actual site of the Fukushima Daiichi. It's a huge site. In early days, it's all red area. Red area means we have to wear, we had to wear this kind of the protective gear. Full face masks, three pairs of gloves and two pairs of socks. And this kind of very bizarre, scary costume that we had to wear. But now 96% of the area is what we call green zone. Where you don't have to wear any special costume like this. So you can visit Fukushima Daiichi now in your clothes, in your regular clothes. So that much improvement was made so far. And there is a cafeteria that the people work there can have hot meals. And a convenience store there. And they can even take shower now in some of the buildings. So I think that the working condition has been very much improved now. But still, I would say there are two major difficult challenges ahead of us. One is removing spent fuels from spent fuel pool. And the other one is taking out the fuel debris, molten fuels out of the plant building. Those are the two difficult tasks. And let me talk about spent fuel first. Spent fuel pool is on the upper right hand side of each unit here. Please take a look at unit number four. Unit number four was not operation on March 11, 2011. So all the fuels had been removed from the reactor to the spent fuel pools. That's why there were that many fuel rods in the spent fuel pool. 1535 bundles were in this spent fuel pool. So we first took them out four years ago, taking one year. But we successfully took them out. So now, as far as the unit number four is concerned, there is no nuclear material in unit number four. There is nothing in the reactor, nothing in a spent fuel pool. So as far as unit number four is concerned, the risk level is very, very low now. So now we are trying to take these 566 fuel bundles out of unit number three. This is top of the building of the unit number three. Because of the hydrogen explosion, it was a mess. So first we had to take those rubbles out of the top of the building. Then we built this cylinder shaped structure on top of the building. Inside, we installed the crane and then fuel handling machines. And then we are about to start taking that 566 fuel bundles from unit number three. We will start probably next month in March. We will start taking out. Probably it takes more than one and a half years. Because at unit number four, the radiation level was not very, very high. So that people could go there and then manipulate the machine. But unit number three inside this still has a little bit higher radiation level. So I do not want the people go in and then operate the machine. So that this operation will be completely, remotely controlled very. So it's difficult. It's like a game center machine type things. And then pick them up things. But of course, this operation itself is a routine operation for us. Because every time we change the nuclear fuel, so we pick up things. But again, this is a remotely controlled. So it will take more time than unit number four. But anyway, we're going to do this next month. Let me talk about the fuel debris. So the unit one, two, three all had meltdown, so-called. And then this is a, this capsule type structure is a reactor. So nuclear fuel was supposed to be here, standing. But all three units, we had all the nuclear fuel mold. And then, and then dropped. And then went through this reactor. And then stopped at the bottom of the reactor vessel. And of course, each condition of each unit is different. So we had to prepare, we had to develop the different shapes of the robotics to let them go in and then research what's going on inside. And for the unit number one, we had to go through the small penetration pipes. So we developed the snake shape robotics and go through it. And then after they went through, they changed shape. And then it moves more stable. This is a unit number four, one. And unit number two, because the penetration right here is so small, it's like four inches of diameter. So we developed the fishing rod, fishing line type robotics. And the end of the fishing line, we put the TV camera and then some monitoring device where they check the radiation level or temperature or any other things. And unit four, unit number three. Because unit number three is filled with a lot of water. So the robot has to swim so that we developed this robot with a screw. And then they went to, and then took a picture or so. And for unit number two, about a year ago, we put the fishing rod and line. And then the top of the end of the fishing line, we took a picture of these things from the above. And this is a picture of that. This was taken about a year ago. So we are watching these things from the above, this. I don't know what it is, but there are many things were molten and then dropped. So probably inside this mess, it's lava, it looks lava. But inside that some molten fuels in it. And last week, we did another exploitation. And then we put the kind of magic hand things and then we touched the surface of this last week exactly. And then we picked up some of the things as kind of pebble. And we now know that we could pick up something by magic hand. But on the other hand, at the same time, we found out some of these face surface is very stiff. So we tried to scratch things, but we couldn't. It means that we have to develop some kind of the, I don't know, some kind of the scissors. So chop up things and then pick up something. And then we will pick up some small portion of this within this year, in 12 months. And then pick up something out of this reactor and then to find out what's inside or the kind of check the ingredients inside. So and then we will develop different types of robots to chop them up or something. So we are on that stage now. So this is about the current situation of the nuclear power plant. Let me explain about the typical financial position. This is the historical profit and losses of our company. Because of the accident, for three consecutive fiscal years, we recorded a huge losses for three years. But after that, we have successfully recorded some profit, so so good amount of profit after these five consecutive years. And then before the accident and then after the accident, it looks the same, doesn't it? So it means that it looks good, doesn't it? But it isn't. Because this is the total estimated cost of the accident. The government was made this estimation. So actually nobody knows how much actually it costs. But this is one of the estimation. It consists with three parts. One is a nuclear damage compensation, money for the local people, local businesses. And then decontamination of the surrounding communities. And then decommissioning costs. So total is 200 billion US dollar, 200 billion. And then among that, three quarters of that is typical's responsibility. So 145 billion is typical's responsibility. So we have to make a lot of money to cover this cost of the accident. But 145 billion is too big to imagine or to understand, right? So let me put it this way. Fortunately, we don't need this much money in cash right now. Because as you know, the decommissioning takes slightly to 40 years. So we don't need this much money right now. So let me divide this 145 billion by 30 years. So it ends up is 5 billion dollar a year, right? Still big money. Let me check that our performance is in the past several years. In fiscal year 2015, 16, 17 and probably 18, fiscal 2018 will be over next month. So probably in 2018 too. We spent compensation money around 1.3 billion dollar each year. And we also spend decommissioning expenses similar amount, 1.7 billion dollar a year. So we, after spending almost 3 billion dollar a year, we still recorded the ordinary profit of something like 2 billion. So total is almost 5 billion dollar a year. So I'm not saying we can do this or it's not difficult. It is difficult because we have to do this, keep this for another 26, 27 years. It's not easy things. It's very, very difficult. But as CEO, for me, it was a very important number, benchmark. Because 145 is too big to handle, to manage. So every year I think if we can make 5 billion dollar or so, it's a very important benchmark. If it's over 5 billion dollar, it's good. But if it's less than 5 billion dollar, we have to catch up in the next year or so. So this is a very important benchmark, 5 billion dollar a year. Okay, let's talk about, let me talk about the outside activities of the power plant. As I said, we want the local community rehabilitated or revitalized. But in order to told the people to come back, that the compensation money is not enough. Because the 80 years means much, very much. So their houses are a mess. Wild animal running around, just messing up the houses, their properties. And so in order for them to come back, for example, weeding the plants, glasses are necessary. The snow shoveling in winter is necessary. And then cleaning up their houses, property also necessary, right? So we need to do those jobs. And then typical employee, our colleagues are doing this kind of activities on a voluntary basis. Of course as CEO, I ask them to help to do those things. But basically, this is a voluntary activities. So for example, the people in the branch offices, our offices in Tokyo, Metro, Britain area, Fukushima is not, there is no office in Fukushima for typical. So people in the field office visit Fukushima and did those things. And sometimes met local people, evacuated, and had a very difficult conversation with them. And then they experienced many things there. And then after they came back to their field offices in Tokyo, they did tell what they saw, what they did, what kind of conversation they had with the local people to their colleagues. And then one or two colleagues started raising their hands. I'm going to do, I'm going to go to Fukushima next week. That's kind of the chain reaction continues. And then total number of the person days spent in Fukushima by our employees reached over 450,000 person days in the past six, seven years. So a number of our employees now is a little bit over 30,000. So it's everybody in calculation. Everybody went to, has spent 15 days or so in Fukushima doing, reading or snow shoveling. I know this is very, very Japanese way of taking responsibility. Probably some of you don't, we don't believe this is a voluntary basis activity. But we need these activities for the people evacuated to come back. And then I am very, very proud of them doing these things voluntarily. Okay, so I'm running out of time. So let me explain about the lessons we learned. I categorized in three parts. One is safety culture. Because we had that big severe accident, we got to learn a lot about safety, right? And then second thing is communication. We learned a lot that the importance of the communication internally, both internally and externally. And the third thing is building solidarity. I know I'm running out of time, but let me quickly explain this safety culture. The one thing I keep saying to my people, the lesson, the most important lesson that we learned from this accident is, do not ever think this is safe enough. It's difficult. People are easy to understand, but it's actually difficult. You spend so much money to reinforce your safety or improve your safety. And still do not think this is enough. It's really difficult. So in order to remember that things, benchmarking the best practice is very important. You just keep your eyes wide open, your ears wide open, and then find out a very good example, a better example than yours, so that you think this is not enough. There is much more room for us to do more betterment of the safety. And this is very important. But still, it's really difficult to... We keep saying that safety first, safety first, safety first. Everybody is just sick of hearing safety first things. But still, it's really difficult thing I learned is that people in the field tend to think safety and meeting budget and meeting schedule do not stand together. They probably, you think so, right? So based on that kind of thought, ultimately, no matter how much you are told safety first, you choose meeting budget than safety, right? So I thought that as far as they think this is a trade-off situation, they, ultimately, they might choose meeting budget first and safety second. So what I'm going to, what I'm telling them is this is a trade-off situation. They balance, try to balance. But now I keep saying that seek for the search for the optimal way. For example, if your job is moving these things from here to there, this is your operation. But if you do these things using two hands or three hands or five hands, and then doing this, and then I mean here, sorry, it takes time. And put here. If you find out this operation, you have to have kaizen, you have to review things. And then you have to find out optimal best way to move these things from here to here. And then let them understand there is an optimal way so that this optimal way is the safest and then firstest and cheapest. So you have to find out that you have to have the optimal, extremely optimal way. So search for that way so that they try to improve the things further and further. But I'm not saying it is not easy. I agree. It's not easy. But this kind of the concept has to be shared with field worker. Otherwise they would choose. Right. And this is one lesson I learned. The second thing is effective communication. We have made several serious mistakes in terms of communication because something bad happens in the field. People tend to reveal, disclose that fact after they found out the reason. Again, this is very understandable for you. People, particularly in the field, technical people would like to reveal. We would like to report this happens because this and this was wrong or something. Unless they understand what the real cause is, they try to find out the reason. And then disclose is delayed. And then every time the mass media accused us, technical tried to hide things again. We made a serious mistake many times. So again, I keep saying that do not afraid of saying I still do not know. For example, if something bad happens 30 minutes later, you can be at the press conference and then the mass media would be beating you. But if it's 30 minutes later, you can say I'm still checking or I'm still trying to find out the real causes of this malfunction or something. But if it's one day after, you can't say I'm still checking or it's hard to say I'm still checking. So people have to understand this situation so that we can avoid the hard media's bashing. So again, this is not easy things, but this is one of the lessons we had. The third lesson is building solidarity. As a CEO, I would say this is the most important thing when you have a very difficult situation. Under the very difficult situation, your organization has to have solidarity, being together and feeling togetherness or united. As I said, we have to make five billion dollars a year. But before the accident, the number of employees of TEPCO was nearly 40,000. And among them, only 10%, less than 10% of the people belong to the nuclear-rated sections. So 90% of the people had nothing to do with nuclear. Most of them climb up the electric pole and fixing wire, other jobs. So it's very natural and it's kind of inevitable for 90% of people feel that how come my salary's cut? This is a nuclear accident. I had nothing to do with nuclear. How come my salary was cut? This is very natural. I would have said so if I were in that position. But as I said, we have to make five billion dollars a year. We have to reading classes or snow shoveling and cleaning up the houses in local communities. Only 10% people cannot make it. That's definitely. We need all the support of our employees. And that's why this is, I would say, this is most important. Whenever you have in deep trouble, deep disaster or anything, get together. Feeling of the togetherness is very important. I would say the most important thing. So what I did to have solidarity, I visited field offices or power stations as many times as possible. Please remember that CEO of Tokyo Electric Power Company is very, very busy, very busy. Actually I was called to testify at diet committee, parliamentary committees for 200 times. 200 times. They called me the day before, around four o'clock in the afternoon. You are called to testify tomorrow. So all the schedules cancel. But anyway, no matter how short or no matter how much time, if I have a relatively free time, I visited field office. And then saw the people as many as possible and then try to have a direct face-to-face communication. There, I talked about rather severe reality. I didn't talk about bright, rosy future of TEPCO. I rather talked about reality. Very difficult about reality. And tried them to understand how the situation is difficult. But at the end, I added always we can do that. We can cope with this difficulty. I don't know how much this kind of things worked. I tried to be frank as possible, as frank as possible. I tried to answer any kind of the question they asked me. But fortunately, as I said, I am very proud of them. And I just say that the sense of the responsibility, morale, and the motivation of their job, still I would say very high. So that the difficulty is ahead of us a lot and takes long time. But we will make every effort to take responsibility of the accident. Thank you very much. Thank you for sharing that, Frank. And very interesting story with this. I greatly admire your courage in sticking with it and the integrity you've exhibited. So now we have time, maybe 10 minutes for questions. Let's start with a few student ones first. So you had mentioned that you were working on reducing the radiation that was in the surrounding affected areas. So what kind of activities did you generally perform to decontaminate the areas? Well, basically, much of them are farming land. So that we, how do you say, scoop maybe one inch of the surface of the ground so that the cesium is a mostly contaminated thing. So the cesium stays on the top of the ground, so we scoop them and then get together them and then store the interium storage things. It says it costs some 20 billion dollars. Oh, this is it. So this is the interium storage place. So we put those soil or leaves, radioactivity stays there. So that's the most thing. Let's go on the aisle here and then one back there and then Alex up here. You mentioned a new focus on fence and depth capabilities. So I was wondering, are any additional modifications being made to other nuclear plants that Tepco owns? Are any additional modifications being made to existing Tepco plants to prevent like a nuclear power plant? Yes, we learned a lot. So for example, we have, I admit that we didn't prepare much for the water invasion. And so we sealed all the doors and we built a wall against the tsunami things. And those are the lessons. And then we are now incorporating existing power plants. We still haven't restarted any plants, but we did a lot of construction work. And then also that the newly introduced safety standard by the regulatory body was very, very severe one. It got to be very severe because we had that big accident. So we did a lot of things. Nuclear industry for a couple of years and I observed that nuclear safety and innovation are often opposites, which I think drives away a lot of engineering talent from the industry. Do you see that at Tepco and what do you do? Yes, it's a good question also. Well, the present challenges for us is restarting existing power plants. So as I said that we incorporated a lot of lessons learned from this accident. But yes, innovation is also very, very good, very, very necessary. But I would say at this moment in Japan, the big innovation is to come. Because like a small modular reactor type things would be coming in the future. I would say definitely we will. But at this moment all the nuclear operators are busy restarting their existing plants. So a lot of reinforcement work are going on now. So to meet the newly introduced safety standard. So it takes a long time. But anyway, yes, maybe true that the innovation and then safety is don't exist together maybe. I wouldn't buy that argument, but I still stick to it that we have to have both at the same time. Okay, Alex, and then back up there. Yes, can I make you a line? Yes. I have a little question here, as you said something. So you're familiar with the report from the diet then in 2012, certainly. So you are aware as former CEO that TEPCO colluded with the government and the former regulator, which is now gone, to the event construction of a proper high sea wall to remove 25 meters of natural elevation from the site before the plant was built at sea level. And to have the emergency generators vulnerable to athletic. So it was interesting to see your approach here in this presentation. But TEPCO and the regulator and the government caused the deficit. Well, you know that because of all the 40 or so reactors running at the moment of the earthquake and tsunami, you're free there for the only ones that fail. And we know also that the government allowed thousands of people to die, 16,000 roughly, from tsunami in a known tsunami zone, where there are tsunami memorial stumps at every town, saying, don't build here. So what is the government doing? I know the regulator is now very good, but what is the government doing about the land use policy in such a region where they know there's tsunamis every 150 years? Yes, good question. Of course, this plant was built about 50 years ago, mid-70s. And at that time, of course, the research was made. And then, of course, this was approved by the regulatory body and government too. But unfortunately, we didn't forecast that high tsunami. And then actually, there is a Fukushima Daini. This is 12 kilometers south of Fukushima Daiichi. But this was also damaged heavily by tsunami. But fortunately, one power line alive so that their heroic activities helped this power plant. And yeah, looking back from now, now we knew that the tsunami height is 16 meters. So now we can say anything. But I don't know. I don't know. There are many, many discussions and many research was made, of course, beforehand. And then there was some report that the tsunami could have been higher than that. And then we started researching that theory if it's accurate or not. And then the tsunami hit. So it's very unfortunate. But I would say that the things that we can do now is how much we can learn from this accident. So of course, we should have done this or we could have done that. There are many, many things from looking back from now. But I would say that the most important thing is how much we can learn from this accident. And then how much we can incorporate this lessons into the new reactors. That's one thing. I don't know how the government was thinking about this one before the accident. Because everybody didn't anticipate that. And then you write more than 80,000 people died by tsunami. Fortunately, nobody died in this accident itself. But so I don't know. It's a really difficult question to answer. All I can do is learn a lot from this accident. And then never have to try not to happen again. Thank you. Maybe we should take one more question in the back. With that said, I guess that was a great place to end. So thanks again for very. Thank you very much.