A Japanese high court yesterday rejected an appeal by 77 residents demanding that the government revoke a decision to allow construction of a uranium enrichment plant in northern Japan, a court officials said.
The Sendai High Court upheld a lower court ruling and dismissed the appeal, said court spokesman Hiroki Kadowaki, who declined to provide any details of the ruling.
The government gave Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd a green light to operate the plant in Rokkasho village in Aomori prefecture in 1988, but residents filed a suit in 1989 saying the plant could pose dangers during strong earthquakes and other disasters.
The Aomori District Court in 2002 dismissed the case, and the residents appealed.
Yesterday, high court Judge Hiroshi Ohashi supported the earlier ruling that the government had conducted appropriate safety checks and there was no need to revoke the approval for the project, Kyodo News agency reported.
The plant is one of several facilities at the center of Japan's ambitions to use experimental fast breeder reactors to boost the country's self sufficiency in energy. The residents are also demanding that the government revoke its approval of other Rokkasho plants in separate lawsuits that are still pending.
Japan Nuclear Fuel started operating the uranium enrichment plant and two radioactive waste processing facilities in the 1990s, with the reprocessing plant due for completion next year.
The ¥2.19 trillion (US$19.7 billion) Rokkasho plant, which began operating in the early 1990s as a nuclear fuel storage site, is also a planned site to burn reprocessed nuclear fuel called mixed oxide, or MOX.
The reprocessing plant started a test-run in late March following delays by a radioactive water leak and public opposition.
The government has said it hopes to convert as many as 18 electricity-generating reactors to use MOX produced at Rokkasho as part of the country's transition to fast-breeder reactors.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but