January 30, 2013

A group of Japanese Communist Party local assembly members in five prefectures in the Chugoku region on January 29 visited Chugoku Electric Power Company to demand that the utility keep its idled nuclear power plants inactive and adopt a position promoting the use of renewable energy.

From the five prefectures of Yamaguchi, Hiroshima, Okayama, Tottori, and Shimane, 22 JCP assemblypersons from city and prefecture levels joined the group.

A utility official said that the company will take measures to make its NPPs safer and explained the company’s view that the 3.11 tsunami, not the earthquake, caused the extensive damage to the Fukushima NPP.

Criticizing the utility’s view, a representative of the JCP group said that the failure to recognize the quake as the cause of the accident will prevent the utility from taking measures to identify the possibility of active faults running under its NPPs.