Japanese fears over nuclear power (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

As Japan admits that radioactive material leaked from a nuclear power plant during Monday's powerful earthquake, the former BBC Tokyo correspondent Jonathan Head looks at why Japan has stuck with nuclear power despite the risks.

Japan is the only country to have suffered a full-scale nuclear attack, and the only country to have suffered massive casualties from radioactive fallout.

It seems odd, then, that it is so addicted to nuclear energy, operating more reactors than any other country after the United States and France.

And it seems especially odd in view of the country's vulnerability to natural disasters like earthquakes.

Despite the acute public sensitivity to nuclear power following the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan has long been concerned over another vulnerability - its lack of indigenous energy resources.
***
more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6903146.stm

[phantom power]

1. the article itemizes two reasons:

1) Unlike other countries, they don't have entire mountain-chains of coal to burn. And any coal they did choose to use would be imported by ship. Way, way, way cheaper per unit energy to import uranium.

2) They understand the implications of climate change

[Dogmudgeon]

2. France had a similar problem

There is even a semi-famous quote to the effect that "we don't have coal, or oil, or a watershed that can be used for much hydroelectric, so we went with nuclear energy".

I would guess that Finland has a similar outlook.

--p!