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Agence France-Presse

Two top executives at Japanese nuclear plant operator Chubu Electric Power would step down following a quake data-tampering scandal, the company said in a statement on Monday.
President Kingo Hayashi and Chairman Satoru Katsuno would be replaced, the statement said, and the firm would withdraw applications to restart the Nos 3 and 4 reactors at Chubu’s Hamaoka nuclear plant.
Japan is moving to revive nuclear power 15 years after an enormous earthquake and tsunami sent reactors at the Fukushima atomic plant into meltdown in 2011.
Chubu Electric’s Hamaoka nuclear plant – located in an area of central Japan at risk of a potential “megaquake” – has been undergoing regulatory safety checks, with the aim of restarting two reactors.
But in January, the operator said that it had submitted data to regulators that underestimated earthquake risks.

A 250-page report by an independent panel, released on Monday, said the management’s “reprimand” over delays in the restart review had created pressure on staff, and was “one of the factors contributing to the misconduct”.
According to the report, whistle-blower reports were made within the utility twice, in 2019 and 2021, but neither was handled appropriately.
Chubu Electric said on Friday it had received the report from the committee. Hayashi and Katsuno judged that they should take responsibility after considering the report’s contents, sources said.
Hayashi told a news conference on Monday that he felt “a heavy sense of responsibility and am deeply remorseful”. He said he felt “a profound sense of regret” that he was unable to “foster an organisational culture that prioritises compliance and safety above all else”.
Hayashi has mainly worked in sales-related posts and became president in April 2020. Katsuno served as president for about five years from June 2015. The data falsification began around 2012 at the latest and continued while Katsuno was president.
Nuclear restart
Japan pulled the plug on nuclear power in the wake of the meltdown at the Fukushima atomic plant.
However, the resource-poor nation now wants to revive atomic energy to reduce its heavy dependence on fossil fuels, achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, and meet growing energy needs from artificial intelligence. The world’s biggest nuclear plant, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, restarted operations earlier this year.
The estimate of maximum seismic ground motion is important for the earthquake-resistant design of nuclear plants.


In September 2023 the Nuclear Regulation Authority approved Chubu Electric’s estimate of 1,200 gal, a unit of acceleration used to measure the intensity of quakes.
But in February last year the authority received information about possible data fraud from a whistle-blower. It suspended its safety review process for the Hamaoka plant in late December.
The plant is located in Omaezaki, Shizuoka prefecture, near a seismic fault line where a massive Pacific earthquake is expected to occur in the coming years or decades.
In 2024, the Japan Meteorological Agency issued its first special advisory for a possible “megaquake” in the area, known as the Nankai Trough, before lifting it a week later.

The utility has been hit by a series of scandals, including document falsification, disclosed in August, involving cost claims related to decommissioning work at the Hamaoka plant’s Nos 1 and 2 reactors, as well as the overcharging of customers for electricity.
Chubu Electric is planning to appoint Minoru Yasui, a director of the utility, as Hayashi’s successor, sources familiar with the matter said on Monday.
Yasui graduated from the University of Tokyo and joined Chubu Electric in 1988. After serving as a managing executive officer, he became a director in 2026. He is from Aichi prefecture, also in central Japan.
Additional reporting by Kyodo


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An independent panel report said management’s ‘reprimand’ over delays was one of the reasons behind the falsification of figures


An independent panel report said management’s ‘reprimand’ over delays was one of the reasons behind the falsification of figures.


Japan’s Chubu Electric bosses resign over quake data-tampering scandal

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}An independent panel report said management’s ‘reprimand’ over delays was one of the reasons behind the falsification of figures

An independent panel report said management’s ‘reprimand’ over delays was one of the reasons behind the falsification of figures