Shizuoka – The Shizuoka District Court on Tuesday rejected a lawsuit seeking an injunction against the operation of the No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5 reactors at Chubu Electric Power’s Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka Prefecture. The court found that the lawsuit has effectively lost its meaning because the Nuclear Regulation Authority is now unlikely to approve the restart of the reactors due to Chubu Electric’s data manipulation scandal. The lawsuit was filed by 31 people, including local residents, in 2011 after the Great East Japan Earthquake earlier that year triggered the country’s worst nuclear accident.
The main issue in the lawsuit was the safety of the plant, which stands in an area expected to be severely affected by a possible Nankai Trough megaquake off the Pacific coast of central to southwestern Japan. However, the court did not make a substantive judgment on this issue. In January this year, it was discovered that Chubu Electric had cherry-picked data related to the assumed level of earthquake shaking, known as seismic ground motion, in its safety review applications to restart the Hamaoka No. 3 and No. 4 reactors.
Last month, Chubu Electric withdrew the applications. On Tuesday, presiding Judge Kaoru Hirayama said that the malpractice cast doubt on the company’s technical capability. The judge also said that the plant’s safety measures, which should have been the main issue, have yet to be finalized, leaving the court unable to make a judgment.
Meanwhile, the court ordered the plaintiffs and the defendant to split litigation costs equally, in light of Chubu Electric’s misconduct. In civil lawsuits, the losing side is usually required to bear such costs. At a news conference later on Tuesday, Masayuki Aoyama, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, criticized the ruling for “abandoning the judiciary’s role” and indicated plans to appeal the ruling and include a plea for the decommissioning of the reactors.
Chubu Electric said at a separate news conference that it will scrutinize the content of the ruling.
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