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Tokai village – the first to get nuclear power, the first to renounce it?

“Nuclear power plants bring in money before they’re even built,” he says, noting their financial lure. “We can’t allow a government policy that mocks the countryside (by trying to win them over with money.) It’s an evil policy, the same as colonialism.

Mayor of Japan’s home of nuclear power hoping to make village a different kind of ‘first’, Mainichi Daily News, Japan October 23, 2011 Amid the ongoing disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, the mayor of the Ibaraki Prefecture village of Tokai, the birthplace of Japanese nuclear power, is calling for the village’s nuclear reactors to be decommissioned.

A village that extends seven to eight kilometers both north-south and east-west, Tokai holds 12 nuclear power-related facilities within its borders. Among the roads running east and west through the village are Genden-dori, named after the Japan Atomic Power Company; Genken-dori named after the Japan Atomic Energy Agency; and Donen-dori named after the former Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp., known as PNC or Donen. One-third of the village’s 38,000 residents either hold jobs relating to nuclear power or have a family member who does. And yet, Tatsuya Murakami, Tokai’s 68-year-old mayor, is adamant.

“Looking at how Fukushima has been handled, I’ve realized that Japan isn’t capable of controlling the massive science and technology of nuclear power. I’ve come to feel that Japan isn’t entitled to it, and have decided that we have no other choice but to abandon nuclear power,” says Murakami. “The government thinks nothing of the fact that there are 54 nuclear reactors in one of the world’s most earthquake-prone areas. There’s so much egotism, such arrogance against nature in that.”

Murakami speaks with an unaffected Ibaraki dialect, but the bluntness of his words is powerful……

Murakami was first elected as mayor in 1997 and is now serving his fourth term. While he called for “coexistence with nuclear power” in past elections, he has always taken a cautious stance toward the new construction of nuclear power plants, a wariness that stems from an accident called the JCO accident.

On Sept. 30, 1999, slipshod work at the nuclear fuel reprocessing company JCO led to the nation’s first criticality accident. The company did not contact the Tokai’s government, telling them its employees had evacuated, until about an hour after the incident took place, after it had already contacted the then Science and Technology Agency (now the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)) and the prefectural government.

Murakami was told that the villagers would be all right if they stayed indoors, but he didn’t trust this and, as neither the agency nor the prefecture had set up an emergency task force yet, Murakami himself decided to tell village residents to evacuate. In the end, the incident left two JCO workers dead and over 600 Tokai residents exposed to radiation.

“Even though those at the scene were saying that a criticality accident had taken place, the government took an attitude like, ‘That could never happen,'” Murakami recalls. “It’s the same as how the government resisted admitting for as long as possible that a nuclear meltdown had taken place in Fukushima.”

Murakami says the government covered up the facts and was not prepared to deal with a worst-case scenario. “From how the government handled the situation in Fukushima, I saw once again how it put nuclear power first and residents’ lives and local communities second.” The villagers’ attitude toward nuclear power has been shifting, the mayor adds.

The JCO facility in Tokai village had no choice but to back out of the nuclear fuel reprocessing business after the incident. Today, around 40 employees continue to keep tabs on over 8,000 drums worth of low-level radioactive waste at the facility, located in the western part of the village and surrounded by farmland and private homes. JCO conducts briefing sessions regarding nuclear power for local residents every year……

Murakami characterizes the “nuclear village” — the close-knit, pro-nuclear relationship between members of government, researchers and the nuclear power industry — as resembling the state of pre-World War II Japan.

“Everything was directed towards waging war, and even if you were sure that we were going to lose, you couldn’t say it. If you did, you’d be labeled as unpatriotic, right?” says Murakami. “Once you join the nuclear village, you can’t question the safety of nuclear power if you want to survive there. I don’t think this characteristic of the Japanese will change.”

In response to criticism for his anti-nuclear stance, Murakami says: “Even if you’re talking about just 38,000 villagers, you can’t make an effective evacuation plan for that. What place is going to take in that many people, and provide them with food, shelter, medical treatment and education? It’s a logistical issue to consider before talking about being for or against nuclear power.”

The village’s financial base has been dependent on nuclear power. Of approximately 20 billion yen in general revenue in fiscal 2009, around 4 billion yen came from property tax on nuclear power-related facilities, while some 1.4 billion yen came from central government handouts based on the three electric power laws and subsidies from the prefectural government. Of the village’s corporate inhabitant tax revenue, about 300 million yen is nuclear power-related. All this means that nuclear power-related revenue makes up about 30 percent of the village’s revenue, and criticism directed at the mayor’s anti-nuclear stance generally comes down to the issue of money.

“If we’re just talking about money, then yes, we gain a lot from nuclear power,” Murakami says. “But what a lowly, sad people we are to think that way.”

“Nuclear power plants bring in money before they’re even built,” he says, noting their financial lure. “We can’t allow a government policy that mocks the countryside (by trying to win them over with money.) It’s an evil policy, the same as colonialism.

“Our village may have reaped benefits for 30 or 40 years. But if we lose our homeland in return, what’s the point? I, too, feel like I finally came to understand what “homeland” really means with the crisis in Fukushima.”

The village of Tokai has been a Japanese first in many aspects of the country’s nuclear power industry. Will it also become Japan’s first in renouncing it?

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/features/news/20111023p2a00m0na005000c.html

October 25, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | incidents