A Tokyo Electric Power Co employee mishandled confidential security documents at Japan’s biggest nuclear power plant, according to the nation’s atomic watchdog, in the latest security breach to affect a facility that’s close to getting approval to restart.
TEPCO shares fell as much as 10 percent, the biggest intraday decline since April. The Nuclear Regulation Authority published a document Thursday saying a TEPCO employee at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant removed papers from a designated storage area, made copies and locked them in another desk. The NRA said the severity level of the incident, which occurred in June, was the lowest on its four-point scale.
Japanese regulations demand the strict control of sensitive nuclear-sector documents. The watchdog said it was investigating the matter and that an internal probe by TEPCO had found the same employee had done this more than once.
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TEPCO was not immediately available for comment. The issue was first reported by the Asahi newspaper late on Wednesday, citing people it didn’t identify.
Kashiwazaki Kariwa, the world’s biggest nuclear power plant, is awaiting a nod from the governor of the Niigata region before it can restart electricity production after more than a decade lying idle. This approval – expected as soon as Friday, according to local media – would be the strongest signal yet that Japan is re-embracing nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
But the plant has been dogged by a series of security lapses – from workers using stolen IDs to sensitive documents being lost — that has delayed its restart.
“Until now, the view had been generally positive regarding the prospects for nuclear restarts, which helped support the recent share price,” said Ikuo Mitsui, a fund manager at Aizawa Securities Co. “But if new uncertainties or hurdles to realizing those restarts have emerged, investors are likely becoming more conscious of that.”
TEPCO’s stock pared some of its earlier losses and was down 6.2 percent at 12:41 pm local time.
