Green Action: Japanese citizens sue, saying "No!" to restart of nuclear power in Japan

Instead of moving forward and focusing on the development of better energy conservation methods and renewable energy, Japan, under the Abe administration, is going backward.  Japanese energy companies, the second highest importers of coal in the world after Chinese energy firms, are spending billions of dollars on new coal-fired plants.  Moreover, the Abe administration has aggressively promoted the export of nuclear plants overseas and is now pushing for the restart of nuclear plants in Japan, despite the opposition of the majority of citizens.

Our friends at Green Action, a Kyoto-based nuclear-free advocacy organization led by Eileen Mioko Smith, recently released this video press statement about their legal action to stop the restart:

On March 20th 2014, Japanese citizens gathered at the Osaka District Courthouse at the final session of the injunction lawsuit (filed in 2012) against the restart of Fukui Prefecture's Ohi nuclear reactors units 3 and 4.

Currently all nuclear reactors in Japan have been temporarily shut down following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in March 2011. However, Japanese electric utilities have 17 applications in to restart reactors. The Ohi reactors are among the first slated for restart. The litigants are seeking that the courts address three main issues:

1) underestimation of earthquake impact on the reactors

2) no method of preventing radioactive discharge into the ocean in the event of a serious accident

3) not taking into consideration an active fault very near the emergency coolant pipe, or faults moving simultaneously near the reactor site.

(Note: Past earthquake examples show that Japanese earthquakes produce greater seismic motion with the same AREA of earthquake fault shifting than foreign earthquakes.)