A high court rejected an appeal on Wednesday filed by residents seeking to stop the operations of the Nos. 1 and 2 reactors of the Sendai nuclear power plant, the only nuclear power plant still running in Japan.
Presiding Judge Tomoichiro Nishikawa of the Fukuoka High Court’s Miyazaki branch upheld a ruling by the Kagoshima District Court in April last year, which had also turned down the appeal, which was filed by 12 local residents.
The plaintiffs demanded the court issue a temporary injunction to stop the reactors at the plant, operated by Kyushu Electric Power Co., in Satsuma-Sendai, Kagoshima Prefecture.
Nishikawa said the new safety standards for nuclear power plants set by the Nuclear Regulation Authority, and the body’s safety screening results stating the reactors satisfy the standards, cannot be regarded as irrational.
Nishikawa therefore concluded that there is “no concrete risk that the plaintiffs and others would suffer serious damage.”
The Sendai ruling amounts to a marked departure from the judgment reached by the Otsu District Court in March, which ordered Kansai Electric Power Co. to cease operating its Takahama nuclear power plant’s Nos. 3 and 4 reactors in Fukui Prefecture. The development rules out the possibility that Japan could have had zero nuclear power plants in operation in the near future.
In the wake of the Sendai ruling, the residents will consider applying for an appeal with permission or other actions for filing complaints to be able to take the case to the Supreme Court.
The Fukuoka High Court said the new safety standards are “based on the latest scientific and technological findings. Regarding a point over securing safety and resistance against earthquakes, they are highly rational.”
The high court also acknowledged that the maximum scale of predictable quake tremors, which are used to design the quake-resistance capabilities of nuclear power plants, was evaluated based on sufficient research. It said the NRA’s judgment that the reactors meet the new safety guidelines also cannot be regarded as irrational.
But the high court pointed out irrational points in the NRA’s guidelines for assessing the effects of volcanic activity on nuclear plants, given that Sakurajima and other volcanoes sit near the Sendai plant, although it acknowledged the difficulty of predicting the time and scale of volcanic eruptions.
Since the possibility of catastrophic volcanic eruptions that could seriously affect the nuclear power plant has not been presented in a detailed manner, the judge ruled that it cannot be said that the nuclear power plant lacks safety levels from objective perspectives.
As for evacuation plans for residents near the nuclear power plant, the high court said they had been “approved as rational and practical by the government’s Nuclear Emergency Preparedness Commission.”
The temporary injunction was filed in May 2014 by 12 residents in the prefectures of Kagoshima, Kumamoto and Miyazaki, who were among about 2,600 plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit demanding that operations of the Sendai nuclear power plant be stopped.
The Kagoshima District Court rejected the appeal in April last year, on the grounds that there were no irrational points in the NRA’s new standards as well as the NRA’s judgment that the Sendai plant meets the standards. The plaintiffs immediately appealed against the decision, taking the case to the high court.
Among lawsuits over nuclear power plants following the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in 2011, there are three rulings that judged nuclear power plant operations should be stopped, including a ruling by the Otsu District Court in March.
In the wake of the ruling by the Otsu District Court, the Takahama nuclear power plant has been idled. The Fukuoka High Court’s ruling has garnered much attention since the reactors at the Sendai nuclear power plant are the first in Japan that have been reactivated under the new safety standards.Speech(The Yomiuri Shimbun)
Link: http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0002854024
20
