The stress tests to review nuclear plant safety don't include lessons from the Fukushima No. 1 disaster, effectively ignoring the reason for running the checks, according to two government advisers.
The stress tests were initiated after the earthquake and tsunami wrecked the Fukushima plant last March, causing radiation leaks in the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.
Yet the checks ignore the potential for two natural disasters to occur at the same time, which is what happened at Fukushima, said Masashi Goto, a former atomic plant designer who is a member of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency's stress test advisory committee. The tests also don't take into account the ages of plants, he said.