Image courtesy of TBS News bird
A recent court ruling in Japan, Fukui District Court's landmark ruling on May 21, has brought into question the justification for taking the risks associated with nuclear power.
The ruling states that the risks of earthquake-safety planning concerning nuclear reactors are impossible to measure because the science of earthquake prediction today is not able to allow for the risk of damage to nuclear power plants.
As we can see by the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, these risks are and have been seriously underestimated. Even so, the Japanese nuclear corporations are still trying to claim that they can allow for any possible future disaster.
Risk assessment is a core part of any project and it takes into account the profit and other benefits of having a nuclear plant and this is balanced against the social, health and environmental issues.
For a corporation the profit element is the most important as the corporations need to be able to show profits to their shareholders whilst local community and other interested NGOs would normally voice the issues and risks from a social, health and environmental point of view.
Court ruling puts a spanner in the works
AJW.ASAHI.COM reported these facts on the May 21, 2014;
"...An anti-nuclear citizens' network has
translated a Japanese court's ruling blocking the restarts of two
reactors into English, Korean and Chinese to spread the 'universal
values' of the judgment.
"Part of the translated ruling says: 'this court considers national wealth to be the rich land and the people's livelihoods that have taken root there, and that being unable to recover these is the true loss of national wealth.
"...The ruling also says, 'the operation of nuclear power plants as one means of producing electricity is legally associated with freedom of economic activity and has a lower ranking in the Constitution than the central tenet of personal rights.
"...Lawyer Hiroyuki Kawai, who heads a network of plaintiff groups demanding the abolishment of nuclear energy, said it is 'extremely rare' for a Japanese court ruling other than in patent cases to be translated into foreign languages.
"The ruling has resonated with people around the world because it declared universal values by placing priority on the lives of people over the merits of nuclear energy, Kawai said...."
Full article here;
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201405210079
The Green Action Japan website has this to say:
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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