Fault under Japan nuclear plant 'may be active': Geologist

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan's only working nuclear power plant sits on what may be a seismic fault in the earth's crust, a geologist has warned, saying it is "very silly" to allow it to continue operating.

Professor Mitsuhisa Watanabe of Tokyo's Toyo University said the earth's plates could move underneath the Oi nuclear plant in western Japan, causing a catastrophe to rival last year's atomic disaster at Fukushima, although some of his colleagues on a nuclear advisory panel disagree.

"It is an active fault. The plates shifted some 120,000 to 130,000 years ago for sure," he said.

"In research that I have conducted on active faults in Japan and overseas, structures built above them were all damaged" when they moved and caused an earthquake, he added.