YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Yokosuka, Japan — Yokosuka city is planning its third disaster-preparedness drill next week, continuing to prepare for nuclear-powered warships accidents related to the base, according to local newspapers.

The Yomiuri Shimbun reported that Yokosuka Mayor Hideo Sawada, at a news conference Wednesday, said city hall would carry out on Oct. 26 what’s become an annual drill: Practicing evacuation and response following an accident aboard a nuclear-powered warship.

“The U.S. Navy will join this exercise although it does not share a reason why we do this exercise,” the mayor was quoted as saying. “We had to simulate that a radiation monitoring post had an unusual reading.”

That was the same scenario in last year’s drill. The U.S. Navy’s portion of the drill will involve receiving a phone call from the city reporting high radiation levels showing on a monitoring post — and the base’s response that a simulated nuclear-powered submarine was not the reason why. That’s exactly what happened last year, the first time the Navy participated.

Last year, the pretend high-radiation readings were blamed on a machine at a construction site. The same scenario will be used this year, according to a news release from Commander Naval Forces Japan.

According to Japanese newspapers, the Navy maintains the position that no nuclear reactor accidents would occur and that such an impossibility cannot be used even theoretically in drill scenarios.

In the first drill by the city in 2002, the scenario included a radiation leak from a U.S. nuclear submarine. The U.S. Navy did not participate.

The drills by Yokosuka were the result of heightened fears of nuclear accidents after a 1999 accident at Tokaimura nuclear fuel-processing plant, which supplies fuel to Japanese nuclear reactors — 51 in all — that supply a third of the country’s electricity.

The Navy repeatedly has stated that in 55 years of its nuclear program there hasn’t been one accident involving the nuclear propulsion system.

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