Japanese Officials Ignored Nuclear Safety Concerns

Over the years collision between the government (until 2009 the Liberal Democratic Party), independent nuclear regulators and the nuclear industry has slowly come to light What no realized was that the judiciary long thought to free of involvement in this type of corruption may have helped the government and its nuclear industry backers from facing public scrutiny over failures to insure that Japan's nuclear facilities were safe.

The nuclear power plant, lawyers argued, could not withstand the kind of major earthquake that new seismic research now suggested was likely.
If such a quake struck, electrical power could fail, along with backup generators, crippling the cooling system, the lawyers predicted. The reactors would then suffer a meltdown and start spewing radiation into the air and sea. Tens of thousands in the area would be forced to flee.

One may believe they were indicating the threats residents around Fukushima might face it such an even were to occur. You would be incorrect. The lawsuit in question was brought to prevent the building of the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka which is built directly over a known earthquake fault.

The lawsuits reveal a disturbing pattern in which operators underestimated or hid seismic dangers to avoid costly upgrades and keep operating. And the fact that virtually all these suits were unsuccessful reinforces the widespread belief in Japan that a culture of collusion supporting nuclear power, including the government, nuclear regulators and plant operators, extends to the courts as well.

While courts in Japan are not known for ground breaking decisions they been until now to be fair in dealing with such issues.

1976

That year, as Hamaoka’s No. 1 reactor started operating and No. 2 was under construction, Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a seismologist and now professor emeritus at Kobe University, publicized research showing that the plant lay directly above an active earthquake zone where two tectonic plates met. Over the years, further research would back up Mr. Ishibashi’s assessment, culminating in a prediction last year by the government’s own experts that there was a nearly 90 percent chance that a magnitude 8.0 quake would hit this area within the next 30 years.