KAGOSHIMA--A court here on April 22 rejected a request by local residents to halt the restarts of two reactors at the Sendai nuclear power plant, saying new, stricter safety standards are "not unreasonable.”
KAGOSHIMA--A court here on April 22 rejected a request by local residents to halt the restarts of two reactors at the Sendai nuclear power plant, saying new, stricter safety standards are "not unreasonable.”
Twelve plaintiffs plan to immediately appeal the Kagoshima District Court's ruling to the Fukuoka High Court. Kyushu Electric Power Co. is seeking to resume operation of its No. 1 and No. 2 reactors at the facility in Satsuma-Sendai, Kagoshima Prefecture.
Twenty-three residents from Kagoshima, Kumamoto and Miyazaki prefectures originally filed the suit, 11 of whom later left the group.
The rejection follows an injunction issued April 14 by the Fukui District Court in a separate case that put on hold Kansai Electric Power Co.’s plans to restart reactors at its Takahama nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture. The court there called the new safety requirements inadequate.
The updated safety measures were introduced after the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami triggered a triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The key issue argued by the plaintiffs was whether the largest possible seismic movement generated by an earthquake planned for the Sendai plant in a worst-case scenario is sufficient.
The suit noted that five earthquakes have exceeded the maximum expected levels at four nuclear power plants since 2005. It claimed that Kyushu Electric, which set the maximum quake level at 620 gals, has underestimated the size of tremors that could strike the Sendai plant, endangering the lives of people living near the facility.
A gal is a unit of acceleration used to measure the extent of seismic waves produced by earthquakes.
However, Presiding Judge Ikumasa Maeda said the new restrictions were created after taking into account “regional differences,” and rejected the request for an injunction.
The plaintiffs argued there is also a danger that a pyroclastic flow of ejecta and gas generated by a catastrophic volcanic eruption in Kyushu could reach the Sendai plant. They said there is no way to rule out the possibility because there is no technology in place to predict such an event.
Maeda dismissed the idea, noting that most volcanologists have not said risks have increased for such large-scale eruptions.
Last September, the Nuclear Regulation Authority ruled that the Sendai facility complied with its updated requirements, the first such decision in the country since the March 2011 disaster.
Kyushu Electric, which has since won consent from local governments and assemblies for the restart, plans to resume operations at the plant’s No. 1 reactor in early July.