Japan’s pro-nuclear government is to change some top officials at its nuclear regulator, officials said yesterday, in what critics charge is an attempt to remove opponents to the restarting of the country’s reactors.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration has told lawmakers it wants to switch two out of five commissioners at the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) when their term in office expires, an NRA official said.
“The personnel change is a blatant attempt to prompt resumption of nuclear plants,” said Hajime Matsukubo, spokesman for anti-nuclear group the Citizen’s Nuclear Information Center.
“The new composition of the commissioners will be four members who are nuclear experts and one non-nuclear expert,” he added.
The NRA, which was established in the aftermath of the triple meltdown at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant after the March 2011 quake and tsunami, has showed itself as a watchdog with teeth — far removed from the supine regulators in office when the disaster happened.
However, their rigorous enforcement of safety standards is proving an obstacle to Abe’s desired swift restarting of reactors, with commentators noting that it may be autumn at the earliest before Japan goes nuclear again to generate electricity.
One of those the prime minister wants to replace is Kunihiko Shimizu, a seismologist who has been cool on the idea of restarts in earthquake-prone Japan.
He has declared that at least two reactors sit on active faults, a judgement that appears likely to lead to the eventual scrapping of the units at huge cost to their operators and to the government.
Utility officials and some members of Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which has traditionally been close to the nuclear industry, have reportedly criticized Shimizu for his stance.
Shimizu’s term of office, along with that of Kenzo Oshima, a former UN undersecretary-general, will expire in September and the government will not reappoint them, the NRA official said.
Critics say the move is the latest example of Abe’s tendency to try to circumvent rules that he does not like on his way to accomplishing policy goals.
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