The earthquake in Noto Peninsula today

This afternoon, on my car heading back home from shopping, the radio program was abruptly drowned out by an emergency message, which told a big earthquake hit Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, in central Japan along Japan Sea. Forecast of tsunami was also announced.

There seem to be some people were buried in landslide and houses were destroyed. Some fire cases were reported. The damage will be turned out soon. So far, tsunami was not so devastating as that in Tohoku in 2011. News tells there have been no major damage to the nuclear power plants near to the epicenter.

There have been clusters of earthquakes in the area for the past couple of years. Last May, a big earthquake with the size of magnitude 6.5 hit the same area. Big earthquakes are believed to occur along the Pacific Ocean coast due to plate tectonics. But there have been a lot of big earthquakes occurring along Japan Sea as well.

Actually, there are a lot of nuclear power plants around there. Shiga nuclear power plant; abbreviated as NPP after this has a couple of reactors, 70km southeast of the epicenter area. Kashiwazaki Kariba NPP about 150km east of there with 7 reactors. About 200km southeast of there, there are 16 reactor at different NPP. It is called as NPP Ginza because of large number of reactors located in the vicinity in the area. All of them could be badly damaged if the earthquake was of bigger size and the fault ran that way, or tsunami was larger.

We are concerned about the possibility of serious NPP accident like that in Fukushima in 2011. The Nuclear Regulatory Comission, NRC, has been testing of the safety of each NPP for resumption of operation at from one NPP to another. The government boasts the test is of the first quality and guarantees safety in operation. But in the case of Shiga NPP, ten faults had been found in the area of the power plant. NRC has examined them according to the geological data the power line company submitted and concluded those faults were not regarded as active ones. Shiga NPP is going to resume its operation in the near future. The government as well as NRC are quite irresponsible for this decision. In this earthquake, hopefully, it will be questioned again.

It is ridiculous to have so many NPP in this small country with a lot of earthquakes and tsunami. Resumption of NPP operation and elongation of operation period longer than designed are only for the powerline companies and related people in politics, administration, research as well as mass media, who are gaining profit from NPP running. Even after that devastating accident in Fukushima, they won't change the policy. This rigid decision making in administration would result in further serious problem.

The recent news and the SNS informations report there have been people buried or crushed under furniture or other items. I only hope the victimized people are saved as soon as possible and less houses or other infrastructures are damaged.