The operator of Japan 's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is still failing to sufficiently ensure the safety of its nuclear operations, a government-appointed panel looking into the causes of last year's disastrous accident said Monday.

But in a final report that largely traced the argument of an interim version released in June, no new light was shed on the many questions that remain unanswered about the disaster, an indication of the difficulty of getting to the bottom of the ongoing crisis. While the panel confirmed that the biggest leakage of radioactive materials occurred at Unit 2, it acknowledged it was no closer to finding out exactly how, when and where it happened.

"High levels of radiation were obviously the biggest obstacle to our investigation. They kept us from conducting an actual examination of the damaged facilities," a panel member said at a press conference.

At the Fukushima Daiichi's six reactors, three suffered meltdowns, spewing deadly radioactive materials inside and outside unit buildings. Accessing the reactors is expected to remain difficult for years or even decades to come.

The latest report said Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501.TO) still doesn't have the ability to respond flexibly to unexpected situations. The company also isn't trying hard enough to figure out what went wrong after March 11 last year, when a massive earthquake and tsunami knocked out power and sent reactors spinning out of control, the report said.

The 448-page report, compiled by a 10-member panel with support from a team of public prosecutors and government experts, said that "even more than a year after the disaster, Tepco isn't showing a sufficient amount of willingness to investigate the accident thoroughly in order to avoid a recurrence of such disasters."

The report also argued that Tepco, a monopoly utility, responded to the disaster only according to a manual, showing little ingenuity or flexibility in dealing with the rapidly unfolding crisis.

These problems are so entrenched in the utility's corporate culture that "it may be necessary to create a totally new organization rather than try to fix the problems," Yotaro Hatamura, panel chairman and professor emeritus of engineering at the University of Tokyo, said at the press conference.

Tepco said that while it is aware of the report it needs to examine its contents carefully before commenting.

The panel had some tough words for government regulators. Noting an earlier attempt by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency to play down the possibility of reactor meltdowns, the report said government officials made "misleading" remarks early in the crisis that were "extremely inappropriate."

Unlike a report released earlier this month by a panel of parliamentary-appointed experts, however, the government report held on to its view that the magnitude-9 earthquake was not a direct cause of the meltdowns and the radiation releases at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

"The report is tough on Tepco but weak on identifying problems with the regulators," said Tetsuo Sawada, assistant professor of reactor engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

The earlier report from the parliamentary investigation panel pointed to a cozy relationship between the regulators and utilities as a fundamental cause for the crisis, since it allowed Tepco to cut corners on natural disaster prevention.

But the government report barely touched on the issue of regulatory capture, instead making "Tepco appear the only bad guy in this crisis," Mr. Sawada said. This raises the question of whether a new regulatory agency, expected to be established by the government this autumn, will be any different from the current overseers, he warned.

Set up in May last year, the panel interviewed 772 people for a total of 1,479 hours, including former Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yukio Edano, who was the government's top spokesman at the time of the accident.

By assessing other plants impacted by the March 2011 tsunami and earthquake, such as the nearby Fukushima Daini plant, the panel came to the conclusion that Tepco's handling of the crisis was more problematic at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, even while acknowledging that Daiichi was the company's oldest plant, with the most outdated safety designs and no external power supplies during the crisis.

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