Whistle Blown on Japanese Nuclear Power Plant Safety After Falsified Report

Last year, Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority conducted an internal investigation of Chubu Electric Power Company’s nuclear power plant in Hamaoka, a coastal town 125 miles southwest of Tokyo, after a nondisclosed whistleblower tipped them off regarding “years” of “fabricated data that underestimated potential seismic risks,” ABC News reports.

The facility has been largely dormant, but has reportedly requested the requisite safety screenings to resume operations at two of its five reactors (two are currently being decommissioned, while another remains idle).

Hamaoka, and all of Japan’s East Coast, sits on the Nankai Trough, a subduction zone where the Philippine Sea plate is sliding beneath the Eurasian plate (upon which Japan lies). The zone is prone to “megathrust earthquakes”—earthquakes that take place at convergent plate boundaries—with severe ones generating 20- to 70-foot tsunami waves, according to records, and leaving thousands dead in their wake.

Just this past September, according to the BBC, Japan’s earthquake investigation panel predicted a 60-90% chance that a megaquake would happen along the Nankai Trough within the next 30 years.

In short, while new emergency and evacuation protocols have been implemented since the last big one occurred along the Nankai Trough in 1946, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent Fukushima power plant nuclear meltdown prove the distinct vulnerability of seaside nuclear power facilities.

That the Chubu Electric Power Company has tried to undermine the safety process to avoid scrutiny in its race to jumpstart its nuclear power facilities is nothing new and a story as old as the very history of utility companies the world over. But that the company’s operators were (and have remained) callous enough to tempt fate and public-safety endangerment mere hundreds of miles down the coast from arguably the worst environmental catastrophe in modern history—and a scant few years after the fact, at that—is downright sickening, if still not shocking.

Watching this sort of reckless duplicity take place in Japan, it’s worth taking note (and stock) of what might (or might not) be happening in your own backyard.

Where might we be without the environmental watchdogs and whistleblowers of the world.