Electronics maker Toshiba Corp. might have again falsified data on three coolant flow meters for a reactor at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co., in addition to one at the utility firm's Fukushima No. 1 power plant, government nuclear safety inspectors said Friday.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, an organization under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, said it received a report from Toshiba that it might have made the fabrication.

In late January, Tepco had announced that Toshiba, a key maker of nuclear power facilities in Japan, had falsified coolant flow meter data for the No. 6 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 plant in Fukushima Prefecture.

In a related development Friday, officials from the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency inspected Toshiba's Keihin plant in Yokohama's Tsurumi Ward to check details about the data falsification.

Tepco said the data fabrication had posed no problem in legal terms or in the safe operation of the reactors.

The Toshiba-supplied meters at the Fukushima No. 1 plant were found to have failed to meet accuracy requirements as specified by Tepco. The data on the three meters at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant might have been fabricated similarly, Japan's largest utility said.

Tepco said it confirmed the data fabrication at the Fukushima No. 1 plant after receiving a document from an in-house whistle-blower in September claiming Toshiba supplied the flow meter with fabricated data. The flow meter measures coolant flows at the reactor.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, located in the city of Kashiwazaki and the village of Kariwa, Niigata Prefecture, on the Sea of Japan coast, has seven reactors and is known as the world's largest nuclear plant, with a total power output capacity of 8.2 million kw.

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