NPR — Foreign Policy: Japan's Unlikely Nuclear Affair

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http://www.npr.org/2011/03/23/134788478/foreign-policy-japans-unlikely-nuclear-affair

Foreign Policy: Japan's Unlikely Nuclear Affair

by Yuki Tanaka

March 23, 2011

Yuki Tanaka is research professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute, Hiroshima City University.

Along this stretch of utter destruction sit four nuclear power stations, comprising a total of 15 reactors, within a distance of about 200 kilometers. Of these, the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power station, operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), is the largest, comprising six nuclear reactors. Until now, TEPCO was proud of the robustness of the containment vessels of these reactors, claiming that they were made utilizing the same technology originally developed to produce the main battery of the world-largest naval artillery ever produced, mounted on the gigantic battleship, Yamato, the pride of the Japanese Imperial Navy, which U.S. forces destroyed toward the end of the Asia-Pacific War. TEPCO claimed that the nuclear reactors would safely stop, then automatically cool down and tightly contain the radiation in the event of an earthquake, and that there would therefore be no danger that earthquakes would cause any serious nuclear accident. The vulnerability of nuclear reactors to earthquakes was already evident, however, when TEPCO's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant on Japan's northwest coast caused several malfunctions, including a fire in a transformer, and a small quantity of radiation leaked into the ocean and the atmosphere following a magnitude 6.8 earthquake that hit this region in July 2007. In spite of this serious accident, TEPCO officials still arrogantly boasted of their "world-best nuclear power technology."

They're not boasting anymore. Immediately after the earthquake violently shook Fukushima and the tsunami surged and damaged many buildings of the power station, the notion of the "safe and durable reactor," a myth promulgated by TEPCO, was immediately shattered. At this writing, half of the six reactors seem to be on the verge of melting down, and one of the containment buildings has caught fire due to spent fuel rods combusting. The radiation level in the vicinity of the power station is extremely high, and it is spreading as far as Tokyo and Yokohama. Thus, as every day passes, an unprecedented scale of nuclear disaster is unfolding, making it more and more difficult to arrest the multiple problems of radioactivity.

What went wrong with Japan's nuclear industry? It is often said that the Japanese are hypersensitive about nuclear issues because of the experience of nuclear holocaust. How could they not be? On the morning of August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb instantly killed 70,000 to 80,000 civilian residents of Hiroshima city, and by the end of that year, 140,000 residents of that city had died as a result of the bombing. Another 70,000 were killed in Nagasaki. Many others have subsequently died, often after experiencing a lifetime of suffering, or are still suffering from various diseases caused by the blast, fire, and radiation.

Yet opposition to nuclear energy has never been strong in Japan. Why? It is true that the Japanese, in particular the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are highly conscious of the danger of nuclear weapons. A-bomb survivors, who know well the terror of the bomb and who fear the long-lasting effects of radiation, have therefore been the vanguard of the anti-nuclear weapon campaign. Despite this, however, many A-bomb survivors and anti-nuclear weapon activists have so far been indifferent to the nuclear energy issue. Anti-nuclear energy campaigners have long been marginalized in Japan.

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