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TEPCO has admitted for the first time that higher safety standards could have mitigated much of the damage caused during last year’s Fukushima disaster.

The admission marks a break with the company’s previous claims, which maintained that the severity of the earthquake and tsunami that caused the accident left the plant with little to no chance of avoiding disaster. Now, in a bid to convince the Japanese government that it has revitalised its safety culture, it has highlighted extensive failings that it pledges to avoid in future.

“When looking back on the accident, the problem was that preparations were not made in advance,” claims a team of internal investigators, headed by Tepco president Naomi Hirose.

The beleaguered Japanese operator says that it had ignored vital improvements to plant safety in the years leading up to the accident, ranging from disaster training for workers to stronger tsunami defences. Investigators claim the company feared that making any major upgrades would have led to plant closures, left it open to lawsuits and damaged its public image.

“There was concern that by implementing severe accident measures, it would exacerbate community and public anxiety, and add momentum to anti-nuclear movements,” the investigators say in their report, released late last week.

The company does not go as far as to say that the disaster, which saw three reactors suffer meltdowns, would have been avoided if it had introduced the safety measures. It does, however, admit that the impacts could have been “mitigated” by higher standards. As it was, the investigators claim, safety training was “just as a formality” at Tepco.

Only two of the 50 reactors remaining in Japan are currently online, both at the Oi plant in the west of the country. Until the Fukushima disaster struck early last year, Japan was the world’s third-biggest user of nuclear energy after the US and France.

Late last month, the Japanese government proposed plans that would see the country phase out nuclear power by 2040. However, the move was quickly blocked by the cabinet, which refused to completely endorse the scheme. Instead, it only agreed to take the proposals “into consideration.”