Against Govt's "sloppy (energy) policy"

April 12, 2014

Pro-nuclear energy policy angers residents hit by Fukushima disaster

Residents and citizens groups protest against the government's basic energy plan in front of the Prime Minister's Office in Tokyo's Nagatacho district, on April 11. (Mainichi)

拡大写真 

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20140412p2a00m0na013000c.html 

The government's decision to support the use of nuclear power under a new national energy policy has angered residents concerned about continuing radiation damage from the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The Abe Cabinet named nuclear power as an "important base-load power source" under the Basic Energy Plan it approved on April 11. Residents living in the aftermath of the disaster say the government has forgotten about them, and have slammed the policy.

"It's a sloppy policy that shows how the government thinks restarting nuclear plants will fix everything," said 63-year-old Hiromitsu Kobayashi, secretary-general of a citizens group in Abiko, Chiba Prefecture.

He says nuclear plants cannot be controlled when they are broken. "I don't want the government to reactivate nuclear plants," he stressed.

Kobayashi lives near a public interim storage facility for ashes from the incineration of radiation-tainted waste. Over 520 tons of contaminated ashes that have been delivered to the city -- despite opposition from residents -- will remain there until the end of March 2015, when the interim storage period ends.

A total of 104 municipalities have registered radiation dosages over 0.23 microsieverts per hour and sought government-supported decontamination. The municipalities are spread out over the eight prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Saitama and Chiba.

Fumio Iwamoto, 72, a shiitake mushroom farmer in Kanuma, Tochigi Prefecture, has been banned from shipping his products, though Kanuma is over 100 kilometers away from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

"The plant disaster has ruined my life," he lamented.

Iwamoto bought special logs from the Shikoku region last year to grow his mushrooms and has restarted shiitake farming, but customers have been buying elsewhere. There is no guarantee that his products will reach consumers at all.

"Considering the level of damage a nuclear plant can do to farmers like us, its operational cost is not cheap," Iwamoto said.

Hideko Nara, 49, a mother of three boys in Gunma Prefecture city of Numata, bought a stack of books about radiation in the wake of the plant disaster. She was concerned about its effect on her children's health. When she approached local elementary and junior high schools, asking them to decontaminate the school grounds, officials told her that doing so would spark harmful rumors. At that moment, she realized that the nuclear accident had divided the local community.

"I don't understand why the government is pushing to restart nuclear power plants when the cause of the Fukushima disaster has not been clarified," said Nara angrily.

April 12, 2014(Mainichi Japan)