The governors of Shiga and Kyoto prefectures are pushing the government to limit use of Fukui Prefecture’s Oi nuclear power plant to summer peak demand, reopening a rift among local leaders on the controversial idea of a “limited restart.”
The governors of Shiga and Kyoto prefectures are pushing the government to limit use of Fukui Prefecture’s Oi nuclear power plant to summer peak demand, reopening a rift among local leaders on the controversial idea of a “limited restart.”Fukui Governor Issei Nishikawa refuses to entertain the concept of running the plant only temporarily.Nishikawa is a central figure in talks with the central government on reactivating the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at Oi to avert a power crunch in the Kansai region this summer.“Operations of nuclear reactors are different from supermarkets’ bargain sales which are often held for limited periods,” Nishikawa said June 4 after a meeting with Goshi Hosono, the state minister in charge of the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant last year.The seven-point proposal by Shiga Governor Yukiko Kada and Kyoto Governor Keiji Yamada on June 6 backs the idea initially suggested by Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto.The joint proposal, submitted to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and two Cabinet members, represents the governors’ latest position in a dispuite with government on the restart in Fukui, which borders both their prefectures.It was compiled in response to a central government reply to an earlier seven-item proposal announced by the pair in April.In the document, the governors ask the government to limit the resumption of operations to a specified period, noting that the central government’s judgment and safety standards for the restart of nuclear reactors are provisional.In a different item, titled “Establishing neutrality,” the proposal also asks the government to legally stipulate that prefectures or municipalities located in urgent protective action planning zones (UPZ), which are within a radius of 30 kilometers of nuclear power plants, should be represented on the new nuclear power regulatory organization being debated in the Diet.The Union of Kansai Governments, which includes Kyoto and Shiga prefectures, issued a statement May 30 that effectively accepted the restart of operations of the two idle reactors at the Oi nuclear power plant.But Yamada told journalists June 6 that the statement only represented the “unified view of the Kansai region,” and that Kyoto and Shiga, which have districts very close to Oi, had specific concerns.Kada, the governor of Shiga Prefecture, said: “We, Shiga and Kyoto, want to remove anxieties from the people in our prefectures by taking part in the (new regulatory) system that monitors safety of nuclear power plants.”Responding to the joint proposal, Hashimoto told reporters on the evening of June 6 that he had “the same thought.”Hashimoto, who first aired the idea of limited operations in May at a meeting of the Union of Kansai Governments, said that the energy strategy council, an organization of experts jointly set up by the Osaka prefectural and Osaka city governments, would issue a statement this week calling for the Oi restart to be temporary.At the meeting of the Union of Kansai Governments in May, Hosono made clear that the central government rejected the idea of a limited restart.“We are not thinking that the restart of reactors at Oi plant will be provisional,” he said.But he acknowledged that the current safety standards are provisional and said the reactors could be suspended by the central government again if the standards were deemed insufficient under the reformed regulatory regime.After his meeting with Hosono on June 4, Nishikawa called on Noda to take a clear personal lead on restarting the nuclear reactors.