Japan Press Weekly

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2013 August 28 - September 3 TOP3 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

Majority of local gov’ts near restart-seeking NPPs have no evacuation plan

More than half of the municipalities near the nuclear power plants seeking to reactivate their operations have yet to draw up evacuation plans in the event of a nuclear accident, Akahata’s recent survey revealed.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority has left it up to local authorities to make an evacuation plan. NRA Chair Tanaka Shun’ichi said, “It is governors and municipal heads that should take responsibility for disaster damage prevention as well as residents’ safety.” Whether autonomous bodies have their escape plans is not even a prerequisite for nuclear reactors’ reactivation.

Akahata in August carried out a hearing survey of 52 municipalities in 10 prefectures, which are located within 30km-zones from the six nuclear plants applying to the national government for permission to restart their operations. Of them, 27 municipalities (52%) have not yet worked out residents’ evacuation plans in case of a nuclear accident. In Ehime Prefecture hosting the Ikata plant and in Kagoshima Prefecture hosting the Sendai plant, none of the surrounding local governments have such a plan.

On top of that, there are doubts about whether those plans are really going to work in an emergency. Tomari Village, Hokkaido, which hosts the Tomari NPP, has designated in its evacuation plan a coastal road as just one evacuation route, and has yet to specify evacuation sites.

Akaigawa Village, located in a mountainous region about 30km from the Tomari plant, has designated a resort facility in the village as an evacuation site. A village official said, “It may be impossible to accommodate all the evacuees in the ski season because the facility is crowded with skiers.”

The authorities on Oshima Island in Nagasaki’s Hirado City, located 20km from the Genkai NPP in Saga Prefecture, has a plan to transfer its islanders in case of an accident to a safer place by ferryboat. The number of people the boat can carry, however, is only 150 although there are about 1,300 inhabitants on the island.

All the nuclear plants in Japan stopped their operations one after another following the 2011 nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Although the two reactors at the Oi power station in Fukui Prefecture were reactivated in July 2012, they are scheduled to be brought offline again in mid-September.