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The story
Chubu Electric Power has decided to withdraw its application to restart Units 3 and 4 of the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant (Omaezaki, Shizuoka Prefecture), after data falsification related to seismic design was discovered. In an unusual turn of events, more than a decade of review is being sent back to square one, and Chairman Tetsu Katsuno has reportedly signaled to those around him his intention to resign over responsibility for the misconduct. On 5channel, discussion ranged from views on former Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who ordered all of Hamaoka’s reactors shut down in 2011, to whether a restart should even proceed given the plant’s proximity to the earthquake’s expected epicenter, and why the stock price has stayed firm even after the withdrawal was announced.
It emerged on the 11th that Chubu Electric Power plans to withdraw its application to restart Units 3 and 4 of the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant (Omaezaki, Shizuoka Prefecture), where data falsification related to seismic design had come to light. A government source disclosed the information. It also emerged that Chubu Electric Chairman Tetsu Katsuno has signaled to those around him his intention to resign over responsibility for the misconduct. The same day, Chubu Electric announced it had received a report from the committee investigating the data falsification. On the 14th, President Kingo Hayashi will hold a press conference in Nagoya to explain the report’s contents and the company’s response. Attention is focused on the motive behind the falsification, whether it was organizationally sanctioned, and what decisions will be made about management’s future. Withdrawing an application after more than a decade of review pushes any restart even further away.
It would be highly unusual for a power company to withdraw such an application. The company may have judged that continuing the review was untenable once the reliability of the data underpinning the restart review had been undermined.
Chubu Electric disclosed the misconduct on January 5 and set up the investigative committee that same day. In announcing receipt of the report, the company commented, “We once again offer our deepest and most sincere apology for having caused such serious distrust.”
Source: 47news.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Kan Naoto is a hero
That administration almost seemed like it was formed just for the Great East Japan Earthquake
That's weird, isn't it
If they're pulling out of nuclear, of course the stock would rise
> But the stock price is doing great
Well of course — this has already been priced in at this point
It's been coming up again and again since around the start of the year
Even if the current top guy quits, another crook just sprouts up like bamboo shoots, so it's pointless
Apparently even within the power company, the nuclear division has no staff rotation with other departments and is a total black box
There's a chance even the top brass had no idea what was going on
Of course they should still take responsibility though
Unlike out-of-the-way Fukushima, this is Japan's main artery
Japan's main artery is further north, isn't it
We need to keep at least one nuclear plant around that would directly hit Tokyo in an accident
Ah I see, the westerlies would carry it right over there ♪ (referring to prevailing winds that could blow fallout toward Tokyo)
I get what you're saying
With Hamaoka around, even Tokyoites are forced to treat nuclear risk as their own problem
That beats building it out in the middle of nowhere, looking the other way, and letting the insular "nuclear village" get even more closed off
Could you even build a new plant on this site under today's standards?
That's exactly why they built that huge seawall as a precondition for operation
But the real problem being the people — the company itself — that's a blind spot nobody saw coming
Since the restart is premised on the plant being "safe," the review can't be allowed to produce a bad result
So they fudged the data instead to get an OK result — that's the story
If you go into a review already assuming "the safe reactor will restart," this is exactly what happens
The Tokai earthquake theory was made up
The guy who first proposed it has already fled the research field
But earthquake research has moved on
and it's now known to sit at the eastern edge of the Nankai Trough
so that's something at least
Isn't it basically designed just to harass applicants?
Kyushu Electric Power once called out an inspector for power harassment
Some people get a superiority complex once they're in a position of authority
Kyushu Electric is the company that staged fake support emails, so them calling anyone out has zero credibility (referring to a past scandal where the utility orchestrated planted pro-nuclear public comments)
Same thing happened with the Tomari plant
If you do it properly, the only conclusion you can reach is "dangerous" (or "unknown")
Japan's real-world nuclear accident rate works out to something like one incident per reactor every few hundred years
but the safety benchmark required is one in 100,000 years, so the real figure is off by two to three orders of magnitude
And accurately assessing risk for a complex system like this, without just extrapolating from accident rates, is beyond what modern science can actually do
But then you go and do this
There's no way it'll ever be approved, no matter how rationally the DPFP argues for restarting it
Japan is a country that will never approve anything that puts Tokyo at risk
Even then, half the contaminated area could be "hidden" by being over the sea
And it still turned into this mess
s://i.imgur.com/ddhrqOL.jpeg
If Hamaoka had an accident, the contaminated area would be on a whole different level
Wow, that's huge!
At some point they were always going to have to give up on restarting it and have management take responsibility
Once the misconduct came to light, it just became "well, now's as good a time as any"
In the end, Chubu Electric comes out ahead here, being first to reach zero-nuclear
Better for Chubu Electric to go under than for Japan to go under, after all
Since it's basically impossible to build a truly safe nuclear plant in disaster-prone Japan, I'd bet every utility fudges data to get through the review
The funding problems for decommissioning reactors 1 and 2, the overcharging on rates — other power companies are probably doing much the same
The fact that Chuden alone got its misconduct exposed so publicly is probably down to Tokyo, which is scared of a restart
Chubu Electric isn't actually going to go under though, right?
But it'd be pretty cool if it really was such a noble decision
Background and Key Points of the Discussion
Because Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant sits close to the expected epicenter of a Tokai earthquake, all of its reactors were shut down at the request of then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident, and the restart review had continued for more than a decade since. This time, data falsification involving the seismic design was uncovered, leading to the unusual decision by the utility itself to withdraw its review application. In the thread, opinions split between technical arguments over whether a restart even makes sense given the plant’s location directly above the expected epicenter, and arguments over management accountability. Some read the stock price staying firm even after the withdrawal announcement as a sign the market had already priced in a shift toward phasing out nuclear power. Note: claims comparing the number of falsification cases across different power companies were poorly substantiated and have been excluded from this summary.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5channel (Breaking News+) thread “[Chubu Electric] Hamaoka Nuclear Plant to Withdraw Restart Review Application; Chairman Katsuno Signals Intent to Resign.”
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