Japan court gives go-ahead for restart of 2 nuke reactors

FUKUI, Japan, Dec 24 A Japanese court on Thursday cleared the way for Kansai Electric Power Co to restart four nuclear reactors, rejecting legal claims against Japan’s second-biggest utility to keep the reactors idled over safety concerns. It is slated to be the third Japanese reactor to restart under post-Fukushima safety rules.

The utility plans to go ahead with loading fuel rods into the No. 3 reactor within days, and go through final safety checks before putting the reactor back online late January.

Mainly at issue in the trial was Kansai Electric’s assumptions of the levels of ground acceleration at the nuclear plant site in the event of an natural disaster.

A Japanese court has paved the way for two more of the country’s nuclear reactors to be restarted.

Lawyers Hiroyuki Kawai and Yuichi Kaido, co-leaders of a legal team representing the plaintiffs, criticized the ruling as “a done deal taking into account a resumption schedule” for the Takahama reactors and said they would appeal. The court said the authority’s guidelines were “too loose”.

Also on Thursday, the Fukui court dismissed five individuals’ pleas for its preliminary injunction ordering Kansai Electric not to reactivate the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at its Oi nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture.

In the ruling, the judge said the NRA has a system to scrutinize power firms’ safety check applications from a neutral stance based on technical grounds, noting that the authority’s decision to approve Kansai Electric’s assumptions of ground acceleration was therefore reasonable. Investors were taking profits on bets that anticipated the favourable ruling for the company, traders said.

Judge Hayashi said the NRA’s decision that the reactors meet the new standards was “not unreasonable”.

But with the injunction nullified, Kansai Electric is expected to accelerate moves to bring the Takahama reactors back online.

It had already obtained approval of the safety regulators and town and prefectural assemblies.

Opposition to nuclear restarts remains strong among the public after the meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi station north of Tokyo in March 2011 following an quake and tsunami.

It is Japan’s second most important economic region where companies including Panasonic and Sharp are headquartered.

“Restarting its nuclear fleet is critical to restoring the health of Kansai’s balance sheet”, Mr O’Sullivan said.