Jeffrey Immelt was speaking in Tokyo after meeting Japanese officials, as Tokyo Electric Power continued efforts to resolve a crisis at its stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant where three reactors were built or partly built by GE.

Immelt and Hiroaki Nakanishi, president of GE's nuclear power business partner Hitachi, met Japanese industry minister Banri Kaieda to discuss the situation at the site of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.

More than three weeks on from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the crisis at Fukushima Daiichi remains unresolved after its reactor cooling systems were knocked out, triggering explosions, fires and releasing radiation.

"This is an industry that's had an extremely safe track record for more than 40 years," said Immelt.

"We will continue in the short, medium and long term to work with TEPCO due to this horrific disaster," said Immelt, who has been GE chairman since 2001.

GE built the plant's 40-year old number one reactor and co-built reactors two and six with Toshiba. Toshiba built reactors three and five, and Hitachi built reactor number four.

When asked about potential liability as the manufacturer of some of the crippled reactors at the plant, Hitachi's Nakanishi replied: "The work we are doing now is meant to fulfil such a responsibility".

Radiation from the plant northeast of Tokyo has wafted into the air, contaminating farm produce and drinking water, and seeped into the Pacific Ocean, although officials stress there is no imminent health threat.

Some analysts estimate TEPCO could face compensation claims of more than 10 trillion yen (120 billion US dollars).

Immelt added that GE was shipping over gas turbines to help TEPCO alleviate its supply crunch issues after facilities were damaged in the quake.

One of the world's biggest power companies, TEPCO boasts 44.6 million customers -- more than one third of the population of Japan -- in the Kanto region of the main island of Honshu, including Tokyo.

A trade ministry official said that Goshi Hosono, adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, also attended Monday's meeting. "Hosono told them that restoring the cooling systems is the challenge that needs to be most urgently addressed."

The official declined to comment further on what kind of assistance GE and Hitachi have offered.

earlier related report
No 'business as usual' on nuclear after Fukushima: IAEA
Vienna (AFP) April 4, 2011 - The world cannot take a "business as usual" approach to nuclear power in the wake of the disaster in Japan, UN atomic watchdog chief Yukiya Amano said Monday.

Amano suggested however that not enough was learned from an earlier incident in Japan where another nuclear power plant was damaged in an earthquake smaller than the one that caused last month's disaster.

"Thinking retrospectively, the measures taken by the operators as a safety measure (were) not sufficient to prevent this accident," Amano told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting on the Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS).

The CNS is a treaty -- currently with 72 signatory countries -- drawn up after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster to ensure the safety of the world's atomic reactors.

Amano said the crisis in Japan caused by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami "has enormous implications for nuclear power and confronts all of us with a major challenge."

"We cannot take a 'business as usual' approach," he said.

The ageing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, 250 kilometres (155 miles) northeast of Tokyo, was hit by a 14-metre (46-foot) tsunami on March 11, triggering the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

It is not the first such incident in quake-prone Japan: in 2007, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant was also damaged in an earthquake.

"That earthquake was much smaller than this one. And this time, the earthquake was followed by a huge tsunami," Amano said.

"I believe there are certainly ways to avoid the repetition of such an accident and for that purpose we are now thinking collectively and that is why we are preparing a ministerial meeting to launch the process."

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is to host the conference with its 151 member states from June 20 to 24 to discuss lessons to be learned from the Fukushima disaster.

Li Ganjie of China's National Nuclear Safety Administration agreed that the Fukushima incident "has left an impact on global nuclear power development and has become a major event in nuclear history."

It had triggered "heated discussion on whether we should develop nuclear power."

IAEA chief Amano said that while the immediate priority at Fukushima "is to overcome the crisis and stabilise the reactors ... we must also begin the process of reflection and evaluation."

"The worries of millions of people throughout the world about whether nuclear energy is safe must be taken seriously," he said.

The Vienna-based IAEA, set up in 1957, is responsible for drawing up international safety standards for nuclear power plants, even if it has no powers to legally enforce those standards.

It has already dispatched expert teams to help monitor radiation release from the damaged reactors and sent two reactor experts to the plant to get first-hand information.

Amano said "more needs to be done to strengthen the safety of nuclear power plants so that the risk of a future accident is significantly reduced."

Many countries are reviewing their plans to set up nuclear power programmes in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

But Amano insisted that the basic drivers behind the interest in nuclear power -- which included rising global energy demand, concerns about climate change, volatile fossil fuel prices and energy security -- "have not changed as a result of Fukushima."

He said he was "confident that valuable lessons will be learned from the Fukushima Daiichi accident which will result in substantial improvements in nuclear operating safety, regulation and the overall safety culture."

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