Japan's anti-nuclear movement remains localised
Date: 07-Oct-99
Country: JAPAN
Author: Miho Yoshikawa
Given the lack of a focus for protests, it remains unclear whether the
mistake at a uranium processing plant, which triggered an uncontrolled
nuclear chain reaction, will lead to delays in the government's
ambitious nuclear power programme.
For the anti-nuclear movement, the fact remains that not one plant has
ever been cancelled once on the official programme, and activists
against local plant construction are accused of selfish behaviour in a
land short of energy resources.
Some activists say public concern peaked shortly after the 1986 nuclear
plant disaster at Chernobyl, in the Ukraine, which blew radiation clouds
far over the earth.
"I think we missed a major opportunity after Chernobyl," said Makoto
Saito, a lawyer involved in the anti-nuclear movement. "If we had been
able to mobilise a nationwide opposition group back then...the
anti-nuclear scene would have looked different today."
The 24-year-old Citizens Nuclear Information Centre said it saw the
largest jump in membership after Chernobyl.
But even the centre, believed to be Japan's largest anti-nuclear group,
only counts 2,300 registered supporters.
In last week's accident at Tokaimura, 140 km (90 miles) northeast of
Tokyo, 55 people were exposed to radiation when workers mistakenly
loaded more than the normal amount of uranium into a tank, triggering a
nuclear chain reaction.
Experts say three workers who were exposed at the site of the accident
at JCO Co Ltd, a subsidiary of Sumitomo Metal Mining Co, have only a
slim chance of surviving. So far, there have been no deaths in a wave of
nuclear accidents across Japan.
In December 1995, a large coolant leak forced the prototype fast-breeder
reactor Monju, in western Japan, to be shut down.
Two years later, an explosion at a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, also
in Tokaimura, exposed 37 staff to radiation.
Public opinion is heavily against the nuclear industry, with three in
four citizens cautious or critical of the nation's nuclear programme in
a poll published by the daily Mainichi Shimbun on Monday. But public
opinion alone has had no impact.
Japan's official policy remains the construction of 20 more nuclear
reactors by 2010, to add to the existing 51 commercial nuclear reactors.
Four reactors are actually under construction.
Japan has never cancelled construction of a nuclear power plant once it
has been included in the government's Electric Power Development
Coordination Council programme.
The new head of Japan's powerful Trade Ministry, Takashi Fukaya, said on
Tuesday that the nation's nuclear energy policy would proceed despite
last week's accident.
Protest at local sites remains fierce. In 1996, the people of Maki, a
small farming town on the Sea of Japan, voted overwhelming against
construction of Tohoku Electric Power Co's plan to build a power plant
there.
But local activists have found themselves open to criticism for a
"Nimby" (not-in-my-backyard) attitude.
"These people only want to stop nuclear plants being built in their own
neighbourhood. I call it regional egotism," said one energy problem
expert, who declined to be named.
But activist lawyer Saito justifies the attitude as a natural starting
point for many people, without which they would never develop a more
principled stand against nuclear power.
"You start by not wanting (a nuclear plant) built near you...you can't
join a movement just by having these lofty ideas," he said.
The local anti-nuclear movements tend to be led by a handful of
dedicated activists who hold the group together, but who have very few
contacts with other activists' groups, observers say.
Without the core members, the group often disintegrates.
Sei Shimada, 62, is an activist in one of Japan's oldest anti-nuclear
groups in Nantocho, in central Japan, where three generations of
fisherman have been waging a protest movement against Chubu Electric
Power Co Inc's 1963 propo
