Today, as the year rapidly draws to a close, I would like to thank the members of the Energy Press Club for their support and attention since my inauguration as FEPC chairman. I am most grateful to you all.

I would also like to take this opportunity to reflect on the events of the past year. An overview of the year's events is shown in Reference Document 1.

First of all, with regard to nuclear power, there was the unforgivable and extremely regrettable loss of public trust that resulted from various nuclear power problems. These problems shook the industry to its foundations, and were, I believe, the most serious we have ever experienced.

As has already been announced, each FEPC member company conducted a voluntary review of its nuclear power-generating facilities, and submitted an interim report to the government on the 15th of last month. Final reports are currently being prepared and will be submitted in March.

Simultaneous with the review process, a Trust Restoration Committee composed of the presidents of the 13 companies involved in nuclear power generation was created to restore public trust in the industry at the most basic level. The committee is currently doing what it can, and is consulting with industry outsiders as it continues to address the issues.

I will report on the results of today's committee meeting in greater detail later, but I would just like to say here that the committee is committed to the restoration of public trust, and that it will work to ensure information exchange on issues that are shared by all of the power companies. And, as I have said many times before, we will work to increase awareness of the fact that the trust of customers and power-generating facility site residents are the foundation on which our management is built.

It was recently announced that "kaeru," the character for "return," was selected as the kanji character that best symbolizes the events of 2002. In the same spirit, we have "returned" to our roots and rededicated ourselves to the task of regaining the public trust.

I would now like to turn to the subject of market deregulation, which was debated by the Electricity Industry Committee of the Advisory Committee for Natural Resources and Energy for about one year. Although there were admittedly times when it seemed that a conclusion would never be reached, in the end, a five-point package for discussion was agreed upon. Despite considerable divergence of opinion, I believe that overall agreement on the direction we should take was reached. In addition, it was also generally agreed that the purpose of competition is to benefit the customer, and that it is extremely important to determine who will ultimately be responsible for the provision of a stable power supply, both of which points we have stressed for many years.

It is also clear that the promotion of nuclear power -- including back-end fuel reprocessing -- is essential to ensure energy security and a stable power supply, and to address environmental issues. In the future, these issues should be debated within the context of the Advisory Committee for Natural Resources and Energy and linked with Electricity Industry Committee discussions. This is also something that we have stressed for many years.

The past year also saw many developments in energy and the environment. A Basic Energy Policy Law was passed, a Outline for Promotion of Efforts to Prevent Global Warming was established to deal with the issue of global warming, Japan hosted its first OPEC summit meeting, and the Johannesburg summit was held -- all of which served to reaffirm the importance of nuclear power.

The 21st century will be a century in which the world begins to reach the limits of its energy and environmental resources. If Japan is to secure a stable, long-term power supply that does not produce CO2, and that is not dependent on the availability of oil from the Middle East, then it is clear we must position nuclear power as a pillar of our national energy policy.

I would now like to turn to the subject of the second meeting of the Trust Restoration Committee, which was held today. Details of the meeting results are shown in Reference Document 2. At the meeting, the FEPC Action Guidelines were revised for the first time in five years. The FEPC Action Guidelines were established in October 1997 to strengthen public trust and promote healthy growth of the electric power industry.

In light of the problems that have damaged public trust in nuclear power and the electric power industry, the decision was made to revise the Action Guidelines. Details of the revisions are shown in Reference Document 2-2. In brief, the focus is on strengthened compliance with regulatory and ethical standards. Section 2 of the guidelines now addresses the industry's responsibility to earn the public trust, and emphasizes the need for every employee to work to restore that trust. It also strengthens the terms of management responsibility and legal compliance. To make the guidelines easier to implement in actual practice, specific Basic Policies have also been compiled for each section.

With this revision of the Action Guidelines, we believe we have taken a step forward in regaining the public trust, and have clearly indicated our commitment to comply with the new guidelines. We know the trust we have lost cannot be regained overnight, but we pledge that every member of the electric power industry will strive to ensure that we regain it as soon as possible.

A new year is at hand -- a year in which the industry will work as one to regain the public trust and overcome the greatest crisis in its history -- and I humbly ask the members of the Energy Press Club for their assistance in helping us achieve that goal.