Overview

• Reiko Kanda, 63, took office on September 19 as an NRA commissioner, succeeding Nobuhiko Ban.
• Her portfolio covers radiation protection and nuclear disaster prevention for the duration of her five-year term.
• Kanda brings more than three decades in radiation protection and disaster medicine, including dose estimation after the 1999 JCO accident and public communication following Fukushima in 2011.
• In her first briefing, she stressed urgent knowledge transfer as Fukushima-era responders retire, warning that delay risks losing essential expertise.
• Ban retired on September 18 and cautioned that TEPCO’s entrenched culture requires continued improvement, citing security failures at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant.