Japanese government's atomic reactor restart criteria "hasty and sloppy"

The Mainichi has editorialized that Prime Minister Noda's "hastily and sloppily" formulated restart rules, supposedly ensuring the safety of controversial atomic reactor restarts, as at the Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui Province on the Japanese main island's western coastline, are much too shallow. Worked out over a scant three days, the new rules appear to accomodate the nuclear utilities, in order to justify rushed restarts, despite lessons that should have been learned from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe.

In another editorial, The Mainichi has lamented the fact that Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, as well as its Nuclear Safety Commission, currently have no budgets, and an agency proposed to replace them in the aftermath of their incompetent handling of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe languishes in limbo, as the political opposition blocks Prime Minister Noda's initiative. The Mainichi also chastises critics who downplay the danger of Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4's high-level radioactive waste storage pool collapsing.