Japan ignores protests to resume nuclear power

Japan’s energy firms say they fear they will not be able to provide sufficient
energy to meet demand in Japan’s notoriously hot summer months.

Kazuhiko Shimokobe, the new chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator
of the Fukushima plant, said on Thursday that the company should be
permitted to restart its undamaged plants as a “building block” in
the company’s efforts to rebuild its business.

An estimated 40,000 people protested against the planned restart of the Oi
reactor outside the official residence of Yoshihiko Noda, the prime
minister, on June 22 and organisers expect an even larger crowd for another
rally on Friday.

The biggest concern, they say, is that new tests indicate that the Oi reactors
sit atop active seismic faults that have only just been identified.

“It’s crazy to restart Oi before we have made sure that it is absolutely safe
to do so,” Aileen Mioko Smith, executive director of Green Action, told The
Daily Telegraph.

Mitsuhisa Watanabe, a professor of tectonic geomorphology at Tokyo University,
carried out an inspection of the plant on Wednesday and has identified three
locations where test equipment should be set up, Smith said. Those tests
would take around three weeks.

Politicians at the national and local level support calls for the tests to go
ahead before the reactor is returned to service, she said, but the
government is refusing to heed their warnings.

She also claimed that design drawings from the 1980s confirmed the presence of
the active fault line beneath the Oi plant but were “suppressed” in recent
government hearings on restarting the reactor.

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