The Herald Palladium, Aug. 20, 2014 (emphasis added): Fukushima ‘a very sobering place’ — Cook chief paints bleak picture of site [...] Larry Weber, chief nuclear officer at the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant… visited the six-unit Fukushima Daiichi… “It’s a very sobering place,” said Weber, one of a number of American nuclear officers who visited… The U.S. nuclear industry learns from problems [and] responded to Fukushima by changing thinking about disasters and accidents so that any possibility is considered, Weber said.

First Energy’s Chief Nuclear Officer Peter Sena discusses recent trip to Fukushima: Why are we here, what did we learn, what did we see? I start back with the basic fundamentals of being in this business — what we do is raise the standards of living for millions of people across the country… We may not be heart surgeons, but without us, heart surgery is not possible. And we do it in an environmentally clean manner. That’s important to me because I consider myself an environmentalist. It’s a legacy that we’re leaving for our children and our children’s children, a green planet. But this past week… I got to see the dark side of nuclear power. It was sad for me because I’m a firm believer in what nuclear power can do… abandoned homes, abandoned schools, abandoned storefronts… it’s emotional because I believe in this product. I saw TEPCO executives having to apologize… for the pain that they’ve inflicted. These are lives that have been impacted forever, and these are innocent lives – children… My children live within the evacuation zone of the Beaver Valley power plant. I can never put myself in a situation that I have to apologize to my friends and neighbors that they can never go home again. I need to relay this message to all 3,000 of my workers… We should always have safety in the forefront… This is no longer just a business, it’s now personal.

Eric Leeds, NRC’s Director of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Mar. 13, 2014: I wanted to offer a few personal insights from what I found to be a profound experience… Tomioka… is now empty, uninhabitable because of radiological contamination… Thinking about the people who, for all this time, have lost their homes, lost their jobs, and lost their community leaves me feeling sick to my stomach… When we reached the site… it struck me that everyone was wearing full anti-Cs, respirators, and helmets. It left me with an eerie feeling, as if I were in a science fiction movie… I am more convinced than ever that the Fukushima lessons learned we are requiring the industry to implement are critical… We are… responsible for protecting the American public. It’s our job. For me, it’s personal. It’s what I’m here to do.

How ‘personal’ have ‘lessons learned’ from Fukushima been taken by US nuclear officials?

Law360, June 4, 2014: [Senator] Slams Tardy NRC Response To Fukushima Report [calling it a] “scandalous” response to a staff report on the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi reactor meltdown [-- The NRC has] yet to require U.S. nuclear plant operators to implement a single recommendation… 12 recommendations for improving the safety of U.S. nuclear plants [were issued in July 2011]… the commission at the time had promised to act on within 90 days and fully implement within five years… But the NRC… has not yet required nuclear plant operators to implement even a single one… with some plants still not meeting even the standards that were required before the disaster, Boxer said. “This is unacceptable, this delay, and it puts the safety of the American people at risk,” she said.

Watch Sena describe his Fukushima experience here

Published: August 22nd, 2014 at 1:57 am ET By ENENews