3 members of Nuclear Standards for Judging panel OK Gov't safety of Oi REACTORS

Three of the 12 members of Fukui Prefecture's nuclear safety expert committee have given the thumbs-up to government safety judgment guidelines accompanying the planned restart of the No. 3 and 4 reactors at the Oi Nuclear Power Plant in the prefecture, it has been learned.

Committee head Hideyuki Nakagawa, a professor emeritus at the University of Fukui, told the Mainichi that if the government's safety judgment standards and plant operator Kansai Electric Power Co.'s roadmap for safety measures were implemented, then the reactors "would be safe." Two other committee experts on nuclear power and earthquakes interviewed by the Mainichi also gave a positive valuation of the government's guidelines.

Fukui Gov. Issei Nishikawa is expected to respect the expert committee's evaluation when making a decision on restarting the reactors. The committee had previously expressed reservations when a 30-point list of safety countermeasures was presented by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), but the latest development raises the possibility that the committee will back up the government's recent decision favoring a restart of the reactors. Read More