Resumption of Nuclear Reactors in Hamaoka Cancelled

Chubu Electric Power (CEP) considers cancelling its request to resume reactors #3 and #4 of Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant which revealed a series of false activities including fabrication of data for safety. The chairman of CEP is going to step down to take responsibility for the scandals. The CEP lost its hope to resume nuclear power generation for the time being. 

After the severe accident in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, the government of Japan stopped all the reactors in Japan and applied a stricter regulation for safety on them to resume their operation. The CEP requested resumption of reactors #3 and #4 of Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant, the only nuclear power plant of the company, to prove their capability to safely operate the reactors in 2014 and 2015.

 

However, it was revealed that the examination was based on wrong data for safety in January. The reactors should have a strength to endure certain seismic power. The CEP manipulated that possible seismic power lower than actual assumption. According to a third-party report, the staffs in the CEP was too confident on the safety of their system to report true endurance of the reactors.

 

To make matters worse, the company failed in abiding by request of the Nuclear Regulation Authority to reconsider the estimation about depth of possible earthquake and decided to manipulate the data in a cherry-picking way. The report indicated that the CEP had a culture of ignoring advices of someone out of the company. It can be said as an intentional action of the CEP to deceive regulatory authority of the government.

 

Although it is not clear how board members were involved in the data manipulation, the CEP chairman, Satoru Katsuno, reportedly made up his mind to resign. In his press conference in early September, Katsuno admitted that his company had lost confidence of the public on their behavior. The president of CEP, Kingo Hayashi, is also going to make his responsibility clear after his press conference in September 14th.

 

Wrong management in the CEP is not only manipulation of data on safety. The company had not settled its payment for construction for safety measures in Hamaoka plant, which was found in 2025. It manipulated the request of cost for decommissioning reactors #1 and #2. One of CEP’s subsidiaries had levied the users too much fee for consuming electric power. The company faces fundamental skepticisms on its management.

 

It is highly unusual for a power company to cancel its examination for its own nuclear reactor to resume. While it assumed 400 billion yen for the safety measures in Hamaoka, it became unsure whether the CEP can resume the reactors in Hamaoka, which was expected to improve its finance. The failure can also affect other power companies to resume their reactors, with growing public skepticisms on the management of nuclear power generation.

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