Fukushima fears shut nuclear reactor

Poer station operator EDF Energy insists the move does not mean the site was unsafe at any time and branded reports in the national media as ‘misleading and inaccurate’.

But environmentalists have accused EDF of failing to be open and transparent.

Doug Parr, policy director of Greenpeace, said it was deeply worrying that the French company “did not feel the need to tell the wider community about serious safety worries over flooding”.

The energy company put a one-line statement on its website in May last year saying unit 22 at Dungeness station had been taken offline on 20 May for maintenance work that included completing improvements to flood defences for extreme events.

Yet there are claims that five months earlier in December 2012, EDF had privately admitted to the industry’s watchdog, the Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR), that a shingle bank that acts as a primary sea defence was “not as robust as previously thought”.

EDF carried out further reviews and decided more flood defence work was needed to protect the site from flooding - the cause of the Fukushima disaster after an earthquake and tsunami.

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