Mayor calls for quake-hit nuclear plant to be shut for safety concerns

Tsunehisa Katsumata, president of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co, toured the site this morning, declaring it “a mess”.

The previous evening, his company released a list of dozens of problems triggered by Monday’s deadly 6.8 magnitude quake.

Katsumata apologised for “all the worry and trouble we have caused”.

“It is hard to make everything go perfectly,” he said. “We will conduct an investigation from the ground up. But I think fundamentally we have confirmed that our safety measures worked.”

TEPCO, Japan’s largest power company, said the quake was stronger than planned for at the seven-reactor plant in the northern prefecture of Niigata.

But none of the problems posed serious threats to people or the environment, it said.

Still, the plant suffered a fire, broken pipes, water leaks and spills of radioactive waste.

Hiroshi Aida, mayor of Kashiwazaki, a city near the epicentre that is home to the plant and 93,500 people, ordered a halt to operations today for “safety reasons”

“I am worried,” he said. “It would be difficult to restart operations at this time. … The safety of the plant must be assured before it is reopened.”

TEPCO had been under fire for delays in reporting initial troubles, including the fire at an electric transformer and leaks of water containing radioactive material.

But the lengthy list of problems released more than a day after the temblor stoked further concerns about the safety of nuclear power in the quake-prone country.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki urged TEPCO to be more transparent in reporting problems, especially those that may impact the public.

“We want the report itself to be honest and we want it quickly,” he said.

Similar concern was echoed throughout much of the country, which depends on a total of 55 nuclear power plants for about 30% of its electricity needs.

“This was a relatively new nuclear power plant, but what would have happened if it was at an old plant? We need to thoroughly review what happened and learn the lesson from this case,” national daily Asahi said in its editorial today.

Meanwhile, it emerged that a fault line may run underneath the mammoth power plant.

TEPCO spokesman Hiroshi Itagaki said aftershock data indicate a fault under the ocean floor near the plant. While it was unclear how close the line came to the plant, Meteorological Agency official Osamu Kamigaichi said it may stretch under its grounds.

The plant lies only 12 miles from the epicentre of Monday’s quake, just off the nearby coast of the Sea of Japan, TEPCO says. The quake killed nine people, damaged hundreds of buildings, buckled roads and severed utilities.

For residents, thousands of whom work at the plant, the controversy over its safety compounded already severe problems, which included heavy rains and the threat of landslides, water and power outages, and patchy communications.

The area around Kashiwazaki was hit by an earthquake three years ago that killed 67 people, but the plant suffered no damage.

The plant in Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, 135 miles northwest of Tokyo, eclipsed a nuclear power station in Canada as the world’s largest power station when it added its seventh reactor in 1997.

The Japanese plant, which generates 8.2 million kilowatts of electricity, has been plagued with mishaps. In 2001, a radioactive leak was found in a turbine room.

The plant’s safety record and its proximity to a fault line prompted residents to file lawsuits claiming the government had failed to conduct sufficient safety reviews when it approved construction of the plant in the 1970s.

But in 2005, a Tokyo court threw out a lawsuit filed by 33 residents, saying there was no error in the government safety reviews.