Hokuriku Electric Power Co. in late August refused a request by Social Democratic Party leader Mizuho Fukushima and other party officials to tour the Shika nuclear power plant in Ishikawa Prefecture because they support a phasing out of nuclear power, sources said.
Hokuriku Electric Power Co. in late August refused a request by Social Democratic Party leader Mizuho Fukushima and other party officials to tour the Shika nuclear power plant in Ishikawa Prefecture because they support a phasing out of nuclear power, sources said.The Toyama-based utility told the SDP officials that they "could not afford to deal with people who did not share the understanding for the need of atomic energy," according to the sources."We are receiving so many requests for tours," said an official at Hokuriku Electric's community relations and development division. "Workers on the ground are very busy. We declined the request because we concluded it was low on our list of priorities. We feel that even if we granted a tour to officials of a political party that espouses a phase-out of nuclear energy, we were not likely to win their support for nuclear power.""We asked Hokuriku Electric officials for a further explanation of what the problem is," said an SDP official who filed the request for an inspection tour. "But they said they didn't even want us to come and ask questions as long as we were not pro-nuclear. We will be sending Hokuriku Electric a letter of request in the name of our party."