Hiroshima high court blocks restart of nuclear reactor near volcano in Ehime

Schopenheur - houses in Oita don't contain large amounts of MOX, the fuel used in Ikata. A lava flow into a house in Oita will not cause a Nuclear Disaster.

The Ikata Nuclear plant is located on Sadamisaki Peninsula, basically on the Median Tectonic Line (MDL), the longest major active fault line in Japan.

The MDL is linked to the Aso volcanic region.

If there was ever a mis-siting of a nuclear plant in the world, this would challenge for top honours.

I'll take a hit in the wallet if it means I won't get fried when one of these suckers pop.

That said,  I chose to live near neither. But I still believe that Japan, of all countries, should be leading the way in alternatives.

After all...isn't Japan supposed to be the land of high tech?

"Hiroshima high court blocks restart of nuclear reactor near volcano in Ehime"

Very happy to read a logical pragmatic headline first thing in the morning, its gonna be a good day folks enjoy!

Good!

Thank God someone's got some sense!

Schopenhauer, the lack of nuclear power is not the reason for Japan's economic woes. I'd look to the LDP and its economically challenged leader for that!

A court ruled Wednesday that a nuclear reactor in southwestern Japan should not operate because it is too close to an active volcano and could be affected by a major eruption.

The world is getting weirder, you need a learned judge to tell this? Nuclear reactor beside an ACTIVE volcano? are these people plans to suicide bringing Japan along with them?

Geothermal is a more realistic and safer option for Japan than nuclear and storing or dumping all the radioactive waste it generates. The waste lasts 30,000 years so it's just beyond stupid to make. That way of thinking belongs to those that sold the future for today rather than thinking about anyone else but themselves. Japan has so much renewable potential if they were allowed to pursue it. This court ruling helps

Local generation would also lead to local power rather than regional dependencies. Resilience in an earthquake prone country is ideal. Volcanos then become a benefit

The world is going more and more renewable, that's also where the research is growing and bearing fruit every year with new designs and greater efficiency

Japanese engineers research renewables all the time in spite of government love of nuclear. There could be a grand challenge to the nation to make it 50% renewable in a decade, the nation has languished so long.

Tight fisted oyagis not caring about a future hanging on to nuclear need to go so that Japan can be awesome

At least one prefecture has some brains.

Yeh, because nuclear contamination and the inherent risks trump the profit motive !

Good! Intelligence and clear-headedness prevailed over the insanity of pro-nuke support. Well done Hiroshima!

I believe that an eruption os far worse than anything else. That will go to the supreme court and will allow them to continue

It seems that frequent earthquake and too many volcanos country should not have such disastrous nuclear plants from the beginning. All nuclears should be banned and better use more eco power instead of it.

Luis - cucashopboy doesn't need to be an expert to know of and understand that Japan is geographically the most volatile high level earthquake prone country in the world. It is a common fact - not fiction. Hence building nuclear plants is a questionable practice. Even if you take into account that 50 years ago that "They know not what they do", why would you be hell bent on re-starting antiquated designed plants, that are acknowledged as being beyond their use-by-date??? 

And match this with the known lack of competency within and surveillance of the nuclear industry by authorities ( also well documented for all to peruse), then I don't see you have much of a base for an attack.

So many faults with the Industry & it's monitoring over the decades.

The Tokai Mura case of a few years back sums up all that is J-Nuke Inc. Unskilled workers, short cutting by using the "In-House only Manual" , reached a stage of criticality (ie nuclear fission reaction became self sustaining) literally in a bucket and tank. It would be worthy of python-esque chuckles of disbelief - but sadly 2 of the workers suffered excrutiating deaths by all accounts.

So, no  - Japan geologically and logically -  is not a good place to play out nuclear games.

Luis - thank you for your reply.

Spewing Fear??? Think you've got the wrong person. Please re-read my post.

And what you say re anything is susceptible to damage in a disaster, is certainly true. No argument. Gas plants, slopes, shops, roads etc but I guess as I wrote earlier - there's no plutonium in costco etc.

And re those 2 workers - Tsunami??? Way off beam there. Please re-read my post. I was talking about the insanely ineptTokai Mura incident.

And if you do re-read my posts, you'll understand the gist being that building nuclear power stations ( you know with radioactive material inside) in the most earthquake prone zone on earth is possibly questionable in the least.

And please don't bury me under your projected presumptions.

Luis - maybe there is a case for nuclear power in some countries.

However, the combination of very high tectonic activity and poor corporate governmence has already caused one huge nuclear disaster in Japan, so I think its reasonable to be against nuclear power in Japan without specialist knowledge of nuclear power.

Yes, and no. If they are going to block this one, then why not Sendai in Kyushu, (not the other Sendai north of Tokyo)? Sendai NPP is only 60 km from Kagoshima and the biggest caldera in that area. When that one blows...

Just a minor set back at local level. An appeal to the Supreme Court will almost certainly lead to a reversal

of the decision in favour of the establishment and nuclear village. Cue, small brown envelopes...

Nuclear power in Japan needs a rethink, but this would be clearly at odds with the traditional saving face rather than admission of guilt / fallibility. Plus the decommissioning and/or relocation of a Nuclear Power Station would be rather expensive.

You'd think that there would be some motivation for looking into alternative sources of Power other than Nuclear . For example, it seems that only a fraction of the Electricity needs here are provided by GeoThermal Power Stations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_Japan

If anyone believes nuclear power to be safe then then try talking to the thousands of people forced out of Fukushima to determine its safety......

Japan is full of active faults and active volcanoes.

Strong natural disaster is too many for Japan to use nuclear power plants.

Japanese geophysicists,seismologists and volcanologists still oppose against restart of nuclear plants.

Earthquake-proof designed nuclear plants is nowhere in Japan.

Risk of volcanic bomb or missile are not considered yet.

Even practicability of evacuation plans are not inspected.

browny1 - No one needs to be an expert to spew fear about something they do not understand, just like you.

As I said, the same could be said about ANYTHING. There was a gas plant that exploded also because of the earthquake, right? So let's stop using also natural gas. There was a slope that fall at a Costco in Tokyo because of the earthquake and killed people, so let's stop all Costco and/or slopes in this country, because they are dangerous.

Remember the The Great Hanshin earthquake? That time a high-speed elevated road collapsed, so let's stop building those too because it's too dangerous.

If the anti nuclear people were like "We want new safer plants" it would make sense, but as their name say, they don't care about how safe newer plants are, or really about anything, they just want all nuclear power out because they are too scared and are just emotionally reacting.

Also, those 2 workers you talk about, died because they drowned in the Tsunami.

From Wikipedia:

There have been no fatalities linked to short term overexposure to radiation reported due to the Fukushima accident, while approximately 18,500 people died due to the earthquake and tsunami. The maximum cancer mortality and morbidity estimate according to the linear no-threshold theory is 1,500 and 1,800 but with most estimates considerably lower, in the range of a few hundred.

Hiroshima High Court Judge Tomoyuki Tanoue is retiring this month.  Many judges become lawyers after their retirement. They tend to hand down decisions which attract journalistic attentions when their retirement come closer so that they become popular and get many clients after their retirement.  The judge Tomoyuki Tanoue's decision this time is rumoured to be intended so.

cucashopboy- If you are not an expert in anything releated with physics, geography or even climate science, why can you say that with so much certainty?

Using the exactly same argument I can argue that ANYTHING is dangerous in Japan, and therefore we shouldn't do it.

But let me guess, it's because of Fukushima. A once in a life-time event, one of the biggest ever recorded earthquakes in human history combined with a completely out of scale tsunami that killed a lot of people, and just happened to also cause 3 old ass reactors (which by the way, the main reason these old reactors continue to exist is because of Chernobyl, because after Chernobyl and once again the people being afraid of nuclear power, development and construction of new power plants around the world almost completely stopped) to melt down, but have not killed a single soul to this date.

Just as the Chernobyl report discovered, the main health problem created by nuclear accidents are mental health problems from irrational anxiety related with the accident.

The court said the nuclear regulators' risk estimate for Mount Aso, 130 kilometers southwest of the plant, was inadequate, citing a past eruption tens of thousands of years ago that caused pyroclastic flows that exceeded that distance.

And Mt. Aso is a very different mountain, because of those explosions. However, it is hilarious that the judge uses this as a reason, because if an eruption like Aso4 occured without warning now, nuclear meltdowns would be the least of our worries. You'd be talking about millions of immediate deaths, millions more over the next few weeks, and more than that later from the ash choking Japan.

Also funny that the judge doesn't seem to understand that what we think of as "Japan" now, and what was there at the time of the Mt. Aso explosion in question is very different: The Seto Inland Sea did not exist, and Japan was directly connected to the Asian continent - this is because of the low seas in the 'ice age'. Pyroclastic flows are going to have a harder time crossing the Seto Inland Sea.

All this case proves is that the plaintiffs and the judge know very, very little science.

It's really sad to see so many people who do not understand really how nuclear power actually works, how radiation works, and therefore are unable to understand realistically the risks of having a nuclear power plant.

That's I think the biggest problem of nuclear power, unless you spend a lot of time to actually research and understand how it works, it's really easy to get scared by it.

Just for that reason, I don't see a nuclear power resurgence, but that doesn't mean that the anti nuclear movement makes any sense.

The Ikata nuclear plant is located in Ehime prefecture, Shikoku. It is 160 km away from Mt. Aso in Kumamoto prefecture. In between are Oita Prefecture and the Bungo sea channel. Does the high court decision mean people cannot live in Oita prefecture - volcano lava and pyloclastic flow will reach Ikata across Oita and the sea? This decision will be turned down at the supreme court.