Commissioners say that geological faults make some reactors too dangerous to restart.
Plans to restart some of Japan’s 50 nuclear reactors, which have been idle since the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in March 2011, have hit an obstacle — and his name is Kunihiko Shimazaki. Buoyed by a new cabinet keen on nuclear power, the nuclear industry wants to get the plants back online to meet the country’s energy demands. But before it can do so, Shimazaki and a group of 16 other geophysicists working for the country’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) must confirm the industry’s claims that the plants do not face a serious earthquake threat.
To judge by his initial reports, Shimazaki won’t accept the claims lightly. On 28 January, Shimazaki, an NRA commissioner who warned in 2004 that Fukushima’s coast was more vulnerable to tsunamis than regulators had claimed, angered proponents of nuclear energy by reporting his group’s conclusion that there is probably an active fault under the Tsuruga nuclear plant, which was due to restart. If, as expected, the NRA endorses that finding, the plant won’t be allowed to operate.
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The Tsuruga plant’s reactors, for example, are 250 metres from a known fault. Excavations by the plant’s owner, the Japan Atomic Power Company, showed that the ground had shifted across the fault, suggesting that the fault had been active. But the company’s experts had concluded that the movement had happened before the 120,000-year threshold.
When Shimazaki’s experts examined the company’s trench, they found signs of more recent movement, and evidence that an extension of the fault runs directly beneath one of the reactors. “If you look at the displacement and slant, it looks like it’s a continuation” of a fracture running under the reactor, he says.
Read more at Quake fears rise at Japan’s reactors
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