Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency

[5] The NISA, and now NRA, main office is located in Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda, Tokyo working with the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission (JAEA) as well as providing other functions.

[6] On August 5, 2011, then Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Banri Kaieda announced that an independent panel had started to examine the allegations that NISA repeatedly tried to influence public symposiums on the use of nuclear energy.

[10] On Friday 12 August 2011, the Japanese Cabinet decided to separate the NISA from the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, because the ministry was too much involved with promoting nuclear energy.

At the same time NISA will merge with the Nuclear Safety Commission, that until that moment functioned under the jurisdiction of the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Education and Science.

At first JNES deputy head of inspections Masaharu Kudo told the newspaper: "we do receive data (from Global Nuclear Fuel), but of course we don't use it as-is.

[12][13][14] On November 4, 2011 the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization (JNES) said, that an independent committee would be formed to investigate how the inspection protocols were compiled.

March 2004, four months, in an answer to questions of the leader of the Social Democratic Party Mizuho Fukushima, at a session of the House of Councillors, Kazumasa Kusaka, as representative of the Japanese government, denied the very existence of these data.

The two officials were not punished, because former Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Shoichi Nakagawa said, that "Since they had not known the existence of estimated data until recently, the answer was neither a lie nor malicious."

A similar case of cover-up by high-ranking Japanese government officials happened in 2002, when a Russian diplomatic document in which Moscow offered to accept spent nuclear fuel from Japan, was kept secret, because in this way the reprocessing of radioactive waste at a plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture could be promoted.

At the end of the year 2011 it became clear, that Masaya Yasui, in 2004 director of the agency's Nuclear Power Policy Planning Division, had instructed his subordinate in April 2004 to conceal the data.

This raised questions, because Masaya Yasui was appointed in 2011 as counselor in charge of reform of nuclear power safety regulations.