Shika plant on trial

October 5, 2012

Shika nuke shutdown trial kicks off

Kyodo

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20121005a9.html

KANAZAWA, Ishikawa Pref. — Hokuriku Electric Power Co. is seeking the dismissal of a lawsuit in which 120 people are demanding that reactor 2 at the Shika nuclear plant in Ishikawa Prefecture be suspended due to safety concerns.

As the trial got under way Wednesday at the Kanazawa District Court, the plaintiffs argued that a geological fault under the plant's adjacent No. 1 reactor is active and could result in a catastrophic accident, but the utility countered by assuring that "safety is sufficiently secured."

The suit was filed in June by residents of Ishikawa Prefecture and adjacent Toyama Prefecture. It claims the Fukushima disaster showed that nuclear plants can't be deemed safe merely because they are in compliance with the government's safety guidelines.

The now-defunct Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency ordered Hokuriku Electric in July to reinvestigate the fault.

"The existence of an active fault will be a major point of this suit. We will never accept a coverup of an active fault," Susumu Kitano, leader of the plaintiffs, told the court Wednesday.

The utility is scheduled to release the findings of its probe into the alleged fault under reactor 1 in January. If the government judges it is active, the unit could be decommissioned and Hokuriku Electric also could be forced to halt operations at reactor 2.

The government gave the green light to construct reactor 1 in August 1988 after Hokuriku Electric's underground surveys did not detect any active faults. The power station launched operations in July 1993.

This is not the first time residents near the Shika power station have sought a court order to close the facility. The Kanazawa District Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered the suspension of reactor 2 in 2006, but the Nagoya High Court's Kanazawa branch overturned the ruling three years later. The Supreme Court finalized it in 2010.