Japan nuclear watchdog hits out at reactor injunction

Japan's nuclear watchdog chief said today a landmark court injunction banning the restart of two atomic reactors was based on a judicial "misunderstanding" of basic facts.
"Although I haven't studied it in detail, many things that are based on misunderstandings are written in the verdict," Shunichi Tanaka told reporters, asked about the court injunction issued yesterday.
"It is internationally recognised that our new regulatory regime is one of the strictest... But that was apparently not understood (by the judge)," the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) told reporters.
Tanaka's damning comments come the day after a district court in the central prefecture of Fukui granted a temporary stop order in response to a bid by local residents to halt the restart of the No 3 and No 4 reactors at the Takahama nuclear power plant.

That came after the NRA last December said Takahama's reactors met tougher safety standards introduced after the tsunami-sparked disaster at Fukushima in 2011.
Pro-atomic Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has backed an industry push to return to nuclear -- which once supplied more than a quarter of Japan's electricity -- as companies squeal over the high cost of electricity produced from dollar-denominated fossil fuels.

But Japan has seen a groundswell of public opposition to nuclear power since Fukushima, where reactors went into meltdown after a tsunami swamped their cooling systems -- setting off the worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

Japan's entire stable of reactors was gradually switched off following the disaster, and tens of thousands of people remain displaced from areas around Fukushima because of elevated levels of radioactivity.
The NRA was sold to the public as a watchdog with teeth after criticism that the last nuclear regulator was spineless and had facilitated a cozy relationship between power companies and the government.
But criticism of the body has grown in recent months, with claims that outspoken critics have been removed from its ranks.
Anti-nuclear campaigners saw the legal challenge as something of a Hail Mary that was unlikely to succeed in Japan's usually meek courts.