NRA not pleased with Fukui injunction

Dossier 8

April 15, 2015

Nuclear watchdog hits out at injunction against restart of Takahama reactors

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/04/15/national/nuclear-watchdog-hits-out-at-injunction-against-restart-of-takahama-reactors/#.VS6AG5PwlLM

AFP-JIJI

The head of the nation’s nuclear watchdog said Wednesday a landmark court provisional injunction banning the restart of two atomic reactors was based on a judicial “misunderstanding” of basic facts.

Although I haven’t studied it in detail, many things that are based on misunderstandings are written in the verdict,” Shunichi Tanaka told reporters, when asked about the court injunction that was issued on Tuesday.

“It is internationally recognized that our new regulatory regime is one of the strictest . . . but that was apparently not understood (by the judge),” the Chairman of the Nuclear RegulationAuthority (NRA) told reporters.

Tanaka’s damning comments came a day after a district court in Fukui Prefecture granted a temporary stop order in response to a bid by local residents to halt the restart of the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at the Takahama nuclear power plant.

That came after the NRA said last December that Takahama’s reactors met tougher safety standards introduced after a powerful earthquake and tsunami triggered a triple meltdown at Tepco’s Fukushima No. 1 plant in 2011.

Pro-nuclear Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has backed an industry push to return to get the country’s reactors back online — which once supplied more than a quarter of Japan’s electricity — as companies squeal over the high cost of electricity produced from dollar-denominated fossil fuels.

But there has been a groundswell of public opposition to nuclear power since the Fukushima crisis — the worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl in 1986 — began.

Japn’s entire stable of reactors was gradually switched off following the disaster, and tens of thousands of people remain displaced from areas around Fukushima because of elevated levels of radioactivity.

The NRA was sold to the public as a watchdog with teeth after criticism that the last nuclear regulator was spineless and had facilitated a cozy relationship between power companies and the government.

But criticism of the body has grown in recent months, with claims that outspoken critics have been removed from its ranks.

Anti-nuclear campaigners saw the legal challenge as something of a Hail Mary that was unlikely to succeed in Japan’s usually meek courts.

But Tuesday’s verdict was a shot across the NRA’s bows, saying the body’s safety guidelines are “too loose” and “lacking in rationality”.

Presiding judge Hideaki Higuchi said the method of predicting the maximum size of future earthquakes that could hit the nuclear reactors “has lost credibility,” pointing out there have been five quakes in Japan that exceeded such predictions since 2005.

Tanaka said in greenlighting Takahama’s reactors, the NRA had taken into consideration past experience, including that at Fukushima.

“We have demanded utilities meet very strict guidelines . . . and take measures to prevent severe accidents even if an earthquake bigger than expected hits,” he said.

But he added that it was unreasonable to expect guarantees.

“There is no absolute safety in the world . . . a plane can fall and a train can overturn,” he said.