Tokyo Electric Seeks Local Approval to Start Reactor

By Megumi Yamanaka

Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Tokyo Electric Power Co. will ask the local government in Niigata prefecture today for authority to restart the world’s biggest nuclear plant, which caught fire and leaked radiation in a 2007 earthquake.

Senior executives were scheduled to visit the prefecture today, according to a company statement released in Tokyo, after Japan’s government said this month that the first of the plant’s seven reactors to undergo additional quake-proofing is safe to restart. Seismologist Katsuhiko Ishibashi disagrees.

“People are still concerned because Tokyo Electric doesn’t have a good record,” said Ishibashi, who sits on a nuclear safety committee hosted by Niigata prefecture. “Local governments are aware of people’s concerns, and these opinions shouldn’t be ignored.”

Even before the earthquake, mistrust among local residents was stoked in 2002 when Tokyo Electric admitted to fabricating safety reports. The government ordered it to halt all its 17 nuclear plants, and the chairman and president resigned. In February 2007, five months before the earthquake, then-president Tsunehisa Katsumata said the company had found hundreds more incidents of faked safety data.

After the 6.8 magnitude temblor struck the Kariwa Kashiwazaki plant in July 2007 Tokyo Electric admitted it had known since 2003 that a fault running near the site was active, contradicting a previous survey submitted to the trade ministry.

The company’s latest estimate puts the maximum strength of a potential quake at magnitude 7, a calculation accepted by the central government. Ishibashi, formerly a seismology professor at Kobe University, said he believes the fault could trigger a magnitude 7.5 earthquake.

Trade Minister Toshihiro Nikai on Feb. 13 said the ministry’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency had examined and approved improvements to the reactor, and the cabinet’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Commission yesterday signed off on the trade ministry’s report.

Even with the central government’s approval, Tokyo Electric must get permission from three local governments before restarting the 1,356-megawatt No. 7 reactor.

Tokyo Electric Vice President Ichiro Takekuro was to meet Niigata Deputy Governor Kunio Mori in the northern prefecture today, Asia’s largest power supplier said in a statement. Vice President Norio Tsuzumi was scheduled to visit Kashiwazaki city and Kariwa village this afternoon, it said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Megumi Yamanaka in Tokyo at myamanaka@bloomberg.net.