Oops

Another nuclear reactor on an active fault?

A panel under the Nuclear Regulation Authority on Wednesday concluded that a geologic fault running beneath a reactor in western Japan is active, raising the possibility of the unit’s permanent shutdown.

The move is expected to lead NRA commissioners to decide that the No. 2 unit of Japan Atomic Power Co.’s Tsuruga plant does not meet the conditions for undergoing a safety assessment that the country’s reactors need to clear in order to resume operations in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi complex disaster.

[…] The panel, consisting of NRA commissioner Kunihiko Shimazaki and four academics from outside, had agreed at its first gathering in December after a field survey that the No. 2 reactor is likely to be sitting above an active fault.

But it spent five more months on further discussions amid criticism from Japan Atomic Power and some ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers that the panel had not sufficiently listened to the arguments of the plant operator.

Thanks to Price Benowitz LLP, Maryland Wrongful Death.