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(Photo by Masaya Noda)<\/p>\n
TEPCO is holding its annual shareholders meeting today, the first for its new Chairman, Takashi Kawamura, while the criminal trial of Tsunehisa Katsumata, chairman of TEPCO in 2011 and two other executives, opens on 30 June at the Tokyo District Court. Greenpeace activists protested this morning outside the shareholders meeting with the message that TEPCO and Toshiba\u2019s nuclear power leads to financial meltdown. Greenpeace Japan owns one unit of shares (100) of TEPCO. Inside the shareholders meeting a Greenpeace campaigner will question the executives on nuclear safety risks at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa reactors and their \u00a0unrealistic business plan relying on these reactors.<\/p>\n
Recent cost estimates for the Fukushima Daiichi accident range from \u00a550-70 trillion (US$440-629 billion), as much as three times the latest 2016 government estimates of \u00a521 trillion.[1] TEPCO\u2019s new business plan, announced in May 2017, committed it to securing \u00a5500 billion each year to cover its share of the Fukushima disaster of \u00a516 trillion. The TEPCO plan is based on the official cost estimate of \u00a521 trillion not \u00a550-70 trillion. TEPCO is highly dependent on early restart of the Kashiwazaki Kariwa reactors, which it will fail to do, and therefore even for the lower Fukushima costs it will be unable secure sufficient funds. The consequences are that rather than TEPCO covering costs for Fukushima, the government will seek to increase the financial burden for rate and tax payers and other power companies, including new market entrants.<\/p>\n
\u201cTEPCO\u2019s business plan, like the company itself, is essentially bankrupt even before the new Chairman takes up his post. The company knows that there are no prospects for the early restart of even two of its reactors at Kashiwazaki Kariwa and that government cost estimates for the Fukushima disaster will inevitably rise. The people of Japan, including TEPCO shareholders, are being sold an illusion, the end result of which will see further government efforts to pass tens of trillions of yen onto higher electricity rates and taxes,\u201d said Shaun Burnie, senior nuclear specialist with Greenpeace Germany, currently in Japan.<\/p>\n
TEPCO is aiming to restart Kashiwazaki Kariwa reactor units 6&7 as early as 2019, but concedes that it could be 2021. The reality is that there is no credible timetable for any restart. There are 23 seismic fault lines running through the site, it is vulnerable to soil liquefaction, and all the reactors have major unresolved safety issues, including the possibility that the Reactor Pressure Vessels are at increased risk of catastrophic failure.[2] Three of the reactors have been shut down for ten years, with TEPCO projecting that they may not restart until 2024-2026.<\/p>\n
A new committee to be established by the Governor of Niigata will evaluate the Fukushima Daiichi accident, including its impacts, as well as review of emergency evacuation plans in the prefecture, and will not complete its work until 2020. Though TEPCO won\u2019t admit it \u2013 in the next few years they will have to present plans for decommissioning a number of their Kashiwazaki Kariwa reactors. A citizen led lawsuit against restart is on-going.<\/p>\n
\u201cTEPCO\u2019s business outlook is wholly negative, based as it is on plan that is not viable and which offers no real solutions. By extension, it exposes the deep flaws in current Japanese energy policy and its unrealistic nuclear share target of 20-22 percent by 2030. If Chairman Kawamura wants to avoid the risk of ending up in court like his predecessor he would be wise to start preparing a radically new business model based not on nuclear power but renewable energy,\u201d said Burnie.<\/p>\n
Photos from Greenpeace\u2019s protest at the TEPCO shareholders meeting are available from Chisato Jono. \u00a0Please call at 080-6558-4446.<\/p>\n
Notes: [2]\u00a0Japan Center for Economic Research, \u201cAccident Cleanup Costs May Rise to \u00a550-70 Trillion \u2013 It\u2019s Time to Examine legal liquidation of TEPCO \u2013 Higher Transparency is Needed for the Reasons to Maintaining Nuclear Power\u201d, Tatsuo Kobayashi, Principal Economist, Professor Tatsujiro Suzuki, Specially Appointed Fellow (Director of Nagasaki University Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition), Kazumasa Iwata, JCER President. Contacts: Chisato Jono, Communications Officer, Greenpeace Japan, email:\u00a0chisato.jono@greenpeace.org, mob: +81 (0) 80-6558-4446<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tokyo, 23 June 2017 \u2013 The new Chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) is confronted with a systemic crisis, which will prevent the restart of its nuclear reactors…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2899,"template":"","tags":[],"press-release-category":[14,106],"class_list":["post-17795","press-release","type-press-release","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","press-release-category-press-release","press-release-category-nuclear-power-plant"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/press-release\/17795"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/press-release"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/press-release"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/press-release\/17795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23152,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/press-release\/17795\/revisions\/23152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17795"},{"taxonomy":"press-release-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/press-release-category?post=17795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>[1] \u00a0TEPCO\u2019s Atomic Illusion<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Greenpeace Japan Briefing<\/p>\n
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\n[3] \u00a0Large&Associates, \u201cIrregularities and Anomolies Relating to Nuclear Reactor Primary Cooling Circuit Components Installed in Japanese Nuclear Power Plants\u201d, Large&Associates, commissioned by Greenpeace Japan, 10th December 2016.<\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Shaun Burnie, senior nuclear specialist, Greenpeace Germany, email:\u00a0sburnie@greenpeace.org, mob: +81 (0)80-3694-2843 (Currently based in Japan)<\/p>\n