June 21, 2013

It has come to light that nine U.S. military aircraft in seven separate flights have flown in the airspace above several nuclear energy plants in Japan since 2007 in violation of the 1999 bilateral agreement requiring U.S. pilots to avoid the airspace above atomic-related facilities.

The U.S. Forces Japan admitted to all seven flights.

Six out of the seven flights came to light after operators of power plants sent complaints to the Defense Ministry and the other was revealed in a report submitted to the Nuclear Regulation Agency, explained a defense official to Japanese Communist Party Shiokawa Tetsuya during a Lower House committee meeting on June 19.

Referring to a U.S. Marines helicopter crash in 1988 only 800 meters from the Ikata Nuclear Power Plant in Ehime Prefecture, Shiokawa warned that that could have caused a nuclear catastrophe if it had crashed into the compound of the plant.

Shiokawa pointed out the demand for a ban on flights over atomic power plants and related facilities by site-hosting municipalities, and demanded that the government immediately prohibit such flights.

The nuclear power plant facilities U.S. military aircraft flew over were the Higashidori NPP (Aomori Pref.), facilities of the Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. (Aomori Pref.), the Ningyo-toge Environmental Engineering Center of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (Okayama Pref.), and the Ikata NPP (Ehime Pref.).

The complaints included one from the Higashidori NPP operated by Tohoku Electric Power Company, which states that all staff members at the plant were stunned by fighter jets flying directly overhead.