In a key decision likely to affect efforts to restart the nation's nuclear power plants, the Osaka District Court ruled Tuesday that two reactors in Oi, Fukui Prefecture, are operating under rational safety standards and that it is not clear there is a concrete danger posed by their location near active faults.
The decision allows the Oi plant's reactors 3 and 4, the only two of Japan's 50 commercial nuclear reactors currently online, to continue operating until they are due to be shut down for safety inspections in September.
Some 260 antinuclear activists in Fukui Prefecture and the Kansai region had sought an injunction to shut them down, arguing they don't meet government standards for the time it takes for control rods to be inserted in an emergency shutdown in the event of a major earthquake.