A Japanese court ruled against allowing the restart of a nuclear power plant west of Tokyo yesterday, its operator said, a rare case in which anti-nuclear plaintiffs have won a ruling to shut down reactors.
The court in Fukui Prefecture ruled against allowing Kansai Electric Power Co to restart reactors No. 3 and No. 4 at its Ohi nuclear plant, the utility said in a statement, adding it would appeal against the decision.
Ohi, like all of Japan’s nuclear plants, has been idled for safety checks in the wake of the 2011 disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co’s (TEPCO) Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, pending safety checks.
The court ruling is likely to be another spanner in the works for the return to operations of reactors, with the safety checks bogged down by paperwork and disputes over interpreting new guidelines.
“Plaintiffs have rarely won. This is right in the middle of the restart process ... it could have very well have repercussions,” said Aileen Mioko Smith, executive director of Green Action, which this month had a lawsuit to close the Ohi reactors rejected by a court in Osaka.
Meanwhile, the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant has begun releasing groundwater from the least contaminated areas of the facility into the ocean so it does not run into contaminated areas and create more toxic water amid storage space limitations.
Yesterday’s release of 508 tonnes involves ground water pumped from 12 wells dug upstream of the plant’s damaged reactors. The water, temporarily stored in a tank, has been deemed clean enough to pump into the ocean without treatment.
The release of groundwater in a so-called “bypass system” is a key part of the plant’s contaminated water management as the volume of the water continues to grow.
The system had been delayed due to a series of problems involving contaminated water, including major leaks from storage tanks located near the pump-up wells for the bypass system, which have triggered concerns among local fishermen and residents.
TEPCO and the government are also preparing to build a largely untested frozen underground wall around the four damaged reactors to isolate the area and block groundwater movement. TEPCO has also been building more tanks, including larger ones, to increase storage capacity.
However, nuclear experts and officials say the space is running out and that the contaminated water must eventually be released into the sea after careful treatment and local consent, but that plan has met strong resistance from the public.
Plant head Naohiro Masuda said in a statement that tackling the contaminated water problem is critical to the decommissioning of Fukushima Dai-ichi, which officials say would take decades. He promised to watch the safety and water quality in groundwater released to the sea.
TEPCO spokeswoman Mayumi Yoshida said the plant is continuing to pump groundwater, but it is temporarily stored in tanks.
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