A court Tuesday dismissed a petition seeking to halt operations at the No. 3 reactor of Shikoku Electric Power's Ikata nuclear power plant in Ehime Prefecture.
Hiroya Kikuchi, presiding judge at Matsuyama District Court, rejected the petition filed by some 1,500 residents living near the nuclear plant in the town of Ikata over safety concerns.
In similar lawsuits over the nuclear plant, Oita and Hiroshima district courts dismissed residents' petitions to halt its operations in March last year and early this month, respectively. The Iwakuni branch of Yamaguchi District Court is currently hearing a similar case.
In the Matsuyama lawsuit, the plaintiffs had claimed that Shikoku Electric underestimates the risk of earthquakes linked to a fault zone passing near the nuclear plant and the Nankai Trough off the country's Pacific coast.
They had also argued that the possibility of a catastrophic eruption of the largest class ever occurring in Mount Aso in Kumamoto Prefecture should be taken into account, and that local governments' evacuation plans were ineffective.
Shikoku Electric had insisted that it has appropriately evaluated the basic earthquake ground motion, which is the largest tremor assumed when designing nuclear plant facilities, based on detailed surveys and the latest knowledge.
The possibility of a huge eruption occurring during the operation period of the Ikata nuclear plant is sufficiently small, the company said, adding that the evacuation plans are sufficiently effective as they are constantly being improved.
In December 2017 and January 2020, Hiroshima High Court issued provisional injunctions ordering Shikoku Electric to suspend operations at the No. 3 Ikata reactor, but both were revoked following appeals by the company.
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