Japan Orders Chubu Electric to Overhaul Operations Over Falsified Seismic Data at Hamaoka Nuclear Plant
Tokyo — Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry on Friday, November 6, issued a business improvement order to Chubu Electric Power Co. under the Electricity Business Act, directing the country's third-largest utility to draw up and implement recurrence-prevention measures and rebuild its compliance and management oversight systems after a series of scandals centered on falsified seismic data at its Hamaoka nuclear power plant.
The scandal broke on January 5 this year, when Chubu Electric disclosed improper handling in the evaluation used to set the design-basis ground motion for the restart review of Hamaoka Units 3 and 4: the company had cherry-picked favorable figures from a pool of more than a thousand candidate seismic-wave datasets, making the projected earthquake shaking look weaker. An independent committee of outside experts reported on September 11 that departments involved were suspected of underestimating the seismic data under schedule pressure felt from senior management.
On September 14, Chubu Electric's board resolved to withdraw the restart applications for Units 3 and 4. President Kingo Hayashi and Chairman Satoru Katsuno resigned effective September 30 to take responsibility, and director Minoru Yasui became president on October 1. The company pledged management reforms centered on changing mindsets, transforming its organizational culture and strengthening governance.
The falsification was not isolated. Construction documents for decommissioning work at Units 1 and 2 were found to have been improperly rewritten, with more than 200 million yen in possibly inflated claims submitted to the government's nuclear decommissioning agency, and the company's retail subsidiary was also found to have overcharged customers. Chubu Electric has booked a special loss of about 380 billion yen (about $2.4 billion) tied to Hamaoka and is expected to post a record net loss of about 215 billion yen for the fiscal year ending March 2026.
The ministry had earlier issued a report-collection order and received the company's response on October 29. Industry Minister Ryosei Akazawa said on October 30 that the government would begin procedures for the improvement order and would respond with the utmost strictness; the order was formally issued on November 6. A business improvement order is an administrative measure for legal violations that obliges the operator to formulate and implement measures to prevent recurrence.
The Hamaoka plant, in Omaezaki, Shizuoka Prefecture, about 200 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, sits almost directly above the Nankai Trough, where Japan expects its next great subduction earthquake. All of its reactors have been offline since 2011. The order further clouds Chubu Electric's path to any restart and complicates the government's push to revive nuclear power amid rising energy costs.
(Source: Kyodo News)
Source: Kyodo News
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于日本静冈县御前崎市的中部电力滨冈核电站航拍。CC BY-SA 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Aerial view of Chubu Electric Power's Hamaoka Nuclear Power Station in Omaezaki, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
