14 DAY TRIAL // We have previously reported on Japan's restarting its nuclear power plant at Ohi, in spite of numerous protests against this decision.
In an attempt to put an end to the country's use of this rather dangerous energy source, Japanese citizens filed a lawsuit against the government's nuclear energy policies.
Their main argument is that the nuclear reactors are built on land that is prone to geological faults.
This means that earthquakes can occur without any previous warning and this might easily cause another nuclear disaster.
As well as this, it is presumed that the pipelines at the Ohi nuclear plant have not been inspected properly, not to mention the fact that they are rather old and therefore can break down at any moment.
What makes matters even worse is that, according to reports recently made public, the Fukushima nuclear disaster was not so much caused by the earthquake and its subsequent tsunami, but by several flaws in the plant's make-up.
To put it bluntly: if the engineers employed at the Fukushima power plant had been more careful in imposing the required safety protocols and had given due attention to inspecting all the equipment there, odds are that no nuclear disaster would have happened.
Taking all of these aspects into consideration, two groups, Green Action and Mihama-no-Kai decided to go to court and try to fight the decision to restart the Ohi nuclear power plant on legal grounds.
Hopefully, this will force the Japanese government to start taking the will of the people into consideration.
From where we stand, in spite of open street protests and this lawsuit, it is highly unlikely that this country will give up nuclear power anytime soon, especially given the fact that, whilst all of its nuclear plants were shut down, significant amounts of money had to be spent on crude oil as a source of energy.
More information on this topic can be read on Greenpeace's official website.