A Japanese court yesterday upheld an order to keep two reactors at the Takahama nuclear power plant closed, operator Kansai Electric Power said, leaving efforts to get a struggling nuclear industry up and running in limbo.
The court decision, upholding a petition from residents living near the plant concerned about safety, keeps the legal battle center stage in a struggle by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government to restore nuclear power five years after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster.
The Otsu District Court on March 9 ordered Kansai Electric, Japan’s second-biggest utility, to shut down the reactors in Fukui Prefecture west of Tokyo, in the country’s first injunction to halt an operating nuclear plant.
The nuclear industry has only recently started to get reactors in a nuclear sector, which used to supply about one-third of the country’s power, back online amid widespread public opposition after the meltdowns at Fukushima in 2011.
Yesterday’s decision denied the utility’s attempt to temporarily halt the shutdown order.
Kansai has separately requested that the court revoke the injunction and a decision on that is expected to come sometime soon, possibly by next month.
“It is very regrettable that the petition for stay of execution was not approved,” Kansai Electric said in a statement, adding that it hoped that the court would cancel the injunction soon.
Should Kansai Electric lose this legal fight, it would be left with the option of appealing to a higher court. That could mean months, or possibly a year, of delays and extra purchases of oil, gas or coal to replace nuclear power generation.
Japanese lower courts sometimes hand down contentious verdicts that are then overturned by higher courts, where judges tend to be more attuned to political implications, judicial experts said.
Amid mounting public skepticism over nuclear safety, local residents have lodged injunctions against nuclear plants across Japan.
Japan has 42 operating reactors, but Kyushu Electric Power is the only utility that has been generating nuclear power after it was cleared to restart two reactors in southwestern Japan.
In this case, legal action by residents failed to prevent the restarts of those reactors.
A Kansai Electric spokesman said the losses from the shutdown of the two Takahama reactors amounted to ¥10 billion (US$95.9 million) per month because of higher fossil fuel consumption and other factors.
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