A reporter stands at a roadblock outside Fukushima's 20 kilometre exclusive zone in March 2011. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS

By Kitty Stapp
NEW YORK, Aug 10 2015 (IPS)

Protesters rallied outside Japan’s Sendai nuclear plant a day ahead of its planned opening and four years after the Fukushima disaster galvanised opposition to nuclear power in the country.

In a statement, Kyushu Electric Power Co. said it will begin bringing online the No. 1 reactor at its Sendai facility on Aug. 11, start power generation as early as Aug. 14 and return it to normal operations next month.

“We will continue to seriously and carefully cooperate with the country’s inspections, making safety our top priority, cautiously advancing the restart process,” the company said in the statement.

However, local activists say that there is no adequate plan in place to quickly evacuate tens of thousands of residents in the event of a Fukushima-style meltdown.

Triggered by a massive March 2011 earthquake, Fukushima was the largest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 and the second disaster (along with Chernobyl) to measure Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

It led to a complete shutdown of Japan’s nuclear power plants in 2013, which will end Tuesday, if the Sendai facility opens as planned.

Nuclear power had previously provided 30 percent of Japan’s electricity.

Although the new plant meets overhauled safety regulations, opponents point out that Japan records more earthquakes than any other country — and the reactor that opens tomorrow is 60 kilometres from an active volcano in the country’s northwest.

“There are schools and hospitals near the plant, but no one has told us how children and the elderly would be evacuated,” Yoshitaka Mukohara, a representative of a group opposing the Sendai restart, told the Guardian.

“Naturally there will be gridlock caused by the sheer number of vehicles, landslides, and damaged roads and bridges.”

The Shinzo Abe government’s energy plan relies heavily on nuclear power, setting a goal to have it meet more than 20 per cent of the country’s energy needs by 2030.

“We believe it is important for our energy policy to push forward restarts of reactors that are deemed safe,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters.

But Jan Vande Putte, a specialist in radiation safety and an energy campaigner with Greenpeace Belgium, notes that, “Japan has been nuclear-free for over a year, and no electricity blackouts have occurred. The Japanese government should turn its back on nuclear power and instead opt for an energy policy based on improving energy efficiency and expanding renewable energy.

“This would protect its citizens from a repetition of the horrors of Fukushima and set the country on track to meet its climate commitments by 2020.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

By Risto Isomaki
HELSINKI, Nov 21 2014 (IPS)

At the height of the Cold War the world’s total arsenal of nuclear weapons, counted as explosive potential, may have amounted to three million Hiroshima bombs.  The United States alone possessed 1.6 million Hiroshimas’ worth of destructive capacity.

Since then, much of this arsenal has been dismantled and the uranium in thousands of nuclear bombs has been converted to nuclear power plant fuel.

Risto Isomäki

Future historians are likely to offer some stingy comments on how 20th century governments first used thousands of billions of dollars to laboriously enrich natural uranium to weapons grade uranium with gas centrifuges, and then reversed the process, diluting their weapons grade uranium with natural uranium.

This declining trend has led many people and governments to believe that nuclear disarmament is no longer an important issue.

It is true that the probability of a nuclear war is currently immensely smaller than during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 or during the other hair-raisingly dangerous moments of the Cold War.

In spite of this, it could be a grave mistake to assume that the danger is now over, forever.

We have not really been able to push the evil genie back into the bottle, yet. The remaining U.S. and Russian inventories might still amount to 80,000 Hiroshima bombs. This is approximately forty times less than at the height of Cold War’s nuclear armament race, but still much more than enough to destroy the world as we know it.“The remaining U.S. and Russian [nuclear] inventories might still amount to 80,000 Hiroshima bombs. This is approximately forty times less than at the height of Cold War’s nuclear armament race, but still much more than enough to destroy the world as we know it”

While the world’s nuclear arsenal has become smaller, the remaining nuclear weapons are more accurate and on average smaller than before.  This might, some day, lower the threshold for using them.

Besides, it now seems that we have seriously underestimated the destructive capacity of all kinds of nuclear weapons.

In both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear bombs ignited large firestorms that burned all the people caught inside the fire perimeter to death.  However, U.S. military scientists regarded fire damage as so unpredictable that for fifty years they concentrated only on analysing the impact of the blasts.

The story has been beautifully documented by Lynn Eden, a researcher at Stanford University, in an important book important book entitled Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge & Nuclear Weapons Devastation.

When, in 2002, the United States was afraid of a nuclear war between Pakistan and India, it warned their governments that a nuclear war in South Asia might kill twelve million people.

The figure was absurdly low because it only took the impact of the nuclear blasts into consideration. According to recent research, the fire damage radii of nuclear detonations are from two to five times longer than those determined by the blast effects.  In practice, this means that the area destroyed by the fire is typically 4 to 25 times larger than the area shattered by the blast.

The Second World War firestorms in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Hamburg and Dresden caused very strong rising air currents and hurricane-speed winds blowing towards the fire from the edges of the fire perimeter.

Nuclear detonations in modern cities created even fiercer firestorms because they contain very large quantities of hydrocarbons in the form of asphalt, plastic, oil, gasoline and gas.

According to one study, the firestorm ignited by even a small, Hiroshima-size explosion in Manhattan would produce incredibly strong super-hurricane winds blowing towards the fire at the speed of 600 kilometres per hour. Most skyscrapers have been designed to withstand wind speeds amounting to 230 or 250 kilometres per hour.

The worst-case scenario is a nuclear detonation happening far above the ground.  According to the so-called ‘Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack’ – or EMP Commission for short – of the U.S. Congress, between 70 and 90 percent of the country’s population might die within one year if somebody detonated a megaton-sized nuclear weapon at the height of 160 kilometres above the continental United States.

A nuclear explosion always produces a very strong electromagnetic pulse ­ or, to be more precise, three different electromagnetic pulses, which can fry all unprotected electronic equipment within a line of sight.  From the height of 160 kilometres, everything in the continental United States is within a line of sight. Everything works with electricity and practically nothing has been protected against an EMP.

In other words, a single nuclear weapon could wipe out health care, water supplies, waste-water treatment facilities, agricultural production and the factories and laboratories making pharmaceuticals, vaccines and fertilisers – among many others.

Europe is equally vulnerable and most other countries, including India and China, are doing their utmost to become as vulnerable as the old industrialised countries already are. 

According to the EMP Commission, the cost of electronic equipment would only rise by 3-10 percent if it were hardened against an electromagnetic pulse, and protecting the key 10 percent of everything with electronics would be enough to secure the crucial functions of an organised society. However, in practice, nothing like this has been done, in any country.

We should not forget nuclear disarmament, because it could still be the most important thing there is.

It would probably be wise to utilise the periods of relative calm as efficiently as possible for further reducing our nuclear weapons arsenals and for developing better alternatives for nuclear electricity. Otherwise, tensions between declining and rising great powers may one day again create new nuclear armament races, with potentially disastrous consequences.

The spread of nuclear reactors increases the risks. Every country that acquires the ability to construct a nuclear reactor also acquires the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons.

Nuclear reactors were originally developed for making better raw material for nuclear weapons, and all our reactors are still making plutonium, every second they operate.

The weapons grade uranium used in nuclear bombs is enriched by the same gas centrifuges that produce the fuel for our power-producing nuclear stations.

The stakes will rise higher if we also begin to construct fourth-generation nuclear power plants or breeder reactors.  Breeders need, in one or more parts of the reactor, nuclear fuel in which the percentage of the easily fissile isotopes has been enriched to 15, 20 or 60 percent, or to even higher levels. This kind of fuel can already be used for making crude nuclear weapons, without any further enrichment.

It is often said that when a technology has been developed it can no longer be forced back into the Pandora’s box from which it came.  However, when it comes to nuclear technologies, we just have to try. The long-term survival of our species may depend on this choice. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Nuclear energy provides around a fifth of U.S. electricity demand. Credit: Bigstock

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Nov 4 2013 (IPS)

Four prominent climate and energy scientists are calling on environmentalists to rethink their longstanding opposition to nuclear energy, warning that there is no “credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power”.

The warning comes just ahead of a new round of international climate negotiations, slated to start next week in Poland, aimed at arriving at an international consensus on action to mitigate climate change beyond 2015. Yet observers are increasingly pessimistic that this process will be able to keep the planet’s average temperature rise below two degree Celsius by the end of this century, the current stated goal."Solar and wind technologies have none of those risks and their costs are quickly coming down." -- Steve Clemmer of UCS

The new call comes in the form of a letter sent over the weekend to world leaders, prominent environmentalists and green organisations. Most prominently, it was signed by James Hansen, the former NASA scientist who for decades has written of the dangers posed by climate change; today, he is perhaps the single most recognisable researcher speaking on the issue in the United States.

Also signing on to the call, addressed to “those influencing environmental policy but opposed to nuclear energy”, are two additional U.S. scientists, Ken Caldeira and Kerry Emanuel, and one from Australia, Tom Wigley. Each are associated with major research institutions.

“We appreciate your organization’s concern about global warming, and your advocacy of renewable energy. But continued opposition to nuclear power threatens humanity’s ability to avoid dangerous climate change,” the four state.

“With the planet warming and carbon dioxide emissions rising faster than ever, we cannot afford to turn away from any technology that has the potential to displace a large fraction of our carbon emissions. Much has changed since the 1970s. The time has come for a fresh approach to nuclear power in the 21st century.”

Currently, nuclear energy provides around a fifth of U.S. electricity demand. Globally, that figure is slightly lower, with 30 countries hosting nuclear reactors that provided around 12 percent of worldwide electricity production, as of 2011.

As of July, around 434 reactors were operating globally, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), a U.S. lobby group. In addition, 71 new plants were under construction, including two here in the United States.

In their letter, the four scientists say that while they support renewable forms of electricity production, these methods appear unable to deal with the quickly ramping-up global demands for energy. They also suggest that new nuclear plant designs are cheaper and “much safer” than older reactors, while new incineration methods can “solve the waste disposal problem”.

The letter has been embraced by the nuclear industry, which many analysts suggest has been stagnating for years over environmental and safety concerns.

“The letter puts an exclamation point on a phenomenon that has been unfolding for several years, namely the steady growth in support for nuclear energy from leading environmentalists,” Marv Fertel, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, told IPS in a statement.

“Greenhouse gas emissions would be vastly higher if nuclear energy facilities did not provide 40 percent of the electricity globally that is produced by carbon-free sources of power (63 percent in the United States) … There is ever-increasing recognition of this analysis.”

Expensive, slow, risky

In fact, the number of environmentalists who have publicly begun advocating for nuclear power in the face of climate change remains quite low, though James Hansen will now be a notable addition.

Among environmentalists, initial reactions to the letter have been adamant, if respectful, rejection.

“[We] respect these scientists, and thank them for their years of service. Unfortunately, we will have to agree to disagree with them on this one,” Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, a conservation and advocacy group, told IPS.

“While we agree that the climate crisis is the most urgent challenge of our time, this group fails to acknowledge that wind, solar and [energy] efficiency are the faster, cheaper and safer way to fight the climate threat.”

Brune says nuclear plants are “too expensive, too slow to build, and too risky”, while noting that Germany, one of the world’s largest economies, is currently decommissioning its nuclear plants while focusing significant funding on renewable energy sources.

Indeed, green groups have been increasingly trumpeting the falling costs of renewables, with wind energy falling by around 43 percent over the past three years, and solar down by 80 percent. The economics of nuclear, on the other hand, have become even more complicated in recent years, with several U.S. plants shutting down over feasibility concerns.

Further many renewable technologies are currently ready to be put into action, compared to the decade it can take to build a new nuclear plant. A major report released last year by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a U.S. research group, found that currently available renewable technologies could provide 80 percent of U.S. demand by 2050.

And while, in their letter, Hansen and the other scientists allude to new technologies that would make the nuclear option cheaper and safer, most such methods have yet to be demonstrated.

“There certainly are proposed technologies that proponents say would address many of these concerns, but they don’t have a proven track record, and have yet to be deployed on a large scale,” Steve Clemmer, director of energy research for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), an advocacy group, told IPS.

“It would have been nice to know exactly what this letter is referring to, as they don’t actually back up these claims. If they’re going to convince environmental groups, they’re going to need to offer some good technical information.”

While UCS has focused for years on issues of nuclear safety and price (a recent analysis on a U.S. plant under construction can be found here), the group doesn’t reject the prospect of nuclear energy entirely.

“Because the climate issue is so large and the need to reduce emissions is so big and urgent, we certainly don’t want to take nuclear power off the table as a potential solution to climate change,” Clemmer says.

The United States alone, for instance, will likely have to reduce its emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050.

“As such, we’re definitely supportive of things like research and development of nuclear and other technologies that can reduce carbon emissions, and we want to make sure we have as many options at our disposal,” Clemmer continues.

“But where we are today is a different story. We’re not in a position to allow for large-scale deployment of nuclear power, due to concerns over security, proliferation, safety, waste disposal. Meanwhile, solar and wind technologies have none of those risks and their costs are quickly coming down.”

Fishermen and their families protesting against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant. Credit K. S. Harikrishnan/IPS

By K. S. Harikrishnan
KUDANKULAM, India, Jan 6 2013 (IPS)

Mahalakshmi, a housewife married to a farmer, is afraid for her family’s future. The fifty-two-year-old woman is also frustrated that Indian authorities have “betrayed” poor villagers.

A huge nuclear power plant under the control of the government-run Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) is the source of her woes.

The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP), situated 24 kilometres from the world famous tourist town of Kanyakumari on the southern tip of the Indian peninsula, is likely to be commissioned this month.

Speaking to IPS, Mahalakshmi and dozens of women in Kudankulam, a village in the Tirunelveli district of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, charged that the energy project would ruin their futures, homes and livelihoods.

The plant is slated to produce an initial 1,000 megawatts of power, according to the NPCIL, no small contribution to a country saddled with a severe energy deficit.

But the proposed nuclear station has brought sleepless nights to scores of locals, who fear a disaster similar to the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan in March 2011, and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe.

Locals have risen up in widespread protest over the proposed plant, which they claim has not been equipped with the best possible safety measures.

One of these protestors, Arul Vasanth, told IPS that politicians, scientists, and bureaucrats have made every effort to crush agitation against the potentially lucrative KKNPP.

“We, the poor, are at the receiving end of all false promises given by the authorities,” he said. “The risk has been put on our shoulders so the people will aggressively fight till the end.”

Indeed, the vast majority of those participating in the protests live below the government-declared poverty line.

Opposition to the energy project first began when India inked the KKNPP deal with the erstwhile Soviet Union in 1988.

Agitation gained momentum in 1997 when the country signed another agreement with Russia to revive the deal.

The controversial Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant. Credit K. S. Harikrishnan/IPS

Now, in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, which drew the world’s attention to the horrific dangers of nuclear power, the people in Kudankulam have brought their fight into the open.

People from the Idinthakarai, Koottappalli, Perumanal, Koothankuli and Uoovri villages, located close to Kudankulam, fear health consequences arising from the plant.

Talking to IPS, well-known anti-nuclear activist K. Sahadevan questioned the efficacy of government measures to safeguard the health of local people living in the vicinity of the plant.

“Radioactivity-related health hazards are a major concern for the people residing near the plant,” he said, referring to a survey of houses very near to the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station, which revealed a high prevalence of cancer and tumors.

Dr. Binayak Sen, human rights activist and member of the Planning Commission’s Steering Committee on Health, said in a statement after visiting the site that the Kudankulam plant posed serious health consequences, not only for those residing in the immediate vicinity, but for inhabitants of the entire region.

Opposition to the plant has created deep cracks in the villagers’ daily lives. Frequent protests by farmers, fisherfolk, students and coastal dwellers have sent a strong message to the authorities but simultaneously interrupted income-generating activities.

Explaining the ground situation in the villages, Peter Milton, an agitation leader in Idinthakari, told IPS that people are worried and frustrated about their future.

Farmers say the government has failed to compensate them for large swaths of arable land that have now been declared part of the official “construction site”.

One small-scale farmer who has suffered many bureaucratic hurdles in claiming compensation for his land told IPS he favours other sources of energy – such as wind farms – over the proposed atomic power station.

A group of students at St. Annes Higher Secondary School in Kudankulam also expressed distress over a future lived in the shadow of nuclear catastrophe.

“A disaster in the plant will eliminate our dreams. That is why we are agitating,” the students, who wished to remain anonymous, told IPS.

Meanwhile, police and intelligence agencies are stepping up their suppression of protestors. “The threat of the police has put more strain on our lives. Even students and women are not exempted from the harassment,” said Milton.

According to media reports, 269 persons have been arrested in connection with the agitation. Agitation leaders claim the number is much higher, with pending cases running into the thousands.

T. Peter, secretary of the National Fish Workers Forum, told IPS that many people have been taken into custody under the charge of sedition. He alleged that the establishment is trying to “sabotage” the protest movement and crush it with an iron fist.

“The fisher folk residing in the coastal area of Kudankulam are (acutely) aware about the impacts of a nuclear (accident) at the KKNPP. People living in coastal areas between Thiruvananthapuram and Tuticorin will be (particularly) affected if a disaster occurs,” he added.

The Russian envoy to India, Alexander M. Kadakin, branded the anti-nuclear protests “gimmicks” and “games” while speaking to reporters in Chennai.

Regardless, India’s highest judicial bodies have expressed alarm about the lack of safety measures at the proposed plant, going so far as to halt the process altogether.

Litigations are now pending before the Supreme Court of India and the National Green Tribunal.

In November, the Supreme Court instructed the Union Government to deploy all necessary safety measures at Kudankulam.

“There must be no compromise on safety and rehabilitation. We are making it absolutely clear that all the guidelines and safety measures for handling disasters must be put in place before the plant is commissioned,” according to Justices K S Radhakrishanan and Deepak Misra.

Attempting to allay fears of a disaster, nuclear scientists have expressed satisfaction over the safety measures at the Kudankulam plant. Former Indian president and scientist Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam declared the plant to be safe, following extensive discussions with KKNPP officials and a thorough inspection of the plant’s safety features.

(END)

Most European nuclear facilities do not meet even minimum security standards. Credit: Monica S/CC-BY-ND-2.0

By Julio Godoy
BERLIN, Oct 16 2012 (IPS)

The so-called ‘stress tests’ on nuclear power plants in the European Union (EU) have confirmed environmental and energy activists’ worst fears: most European nuclear facilities do not meet minimum security standards.

The tests on 134 nuclear reactors operating in 14 EU member states were carried out in response to widespread concern among the public that an accident similar to the catastrophic meltdown of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactor in March 2011 could occur in Europe. According to the report, “EU citizens must… be confident that Europe’s nuclear industry is safe.”

But the findings of the report, released in Brussels on Oct. 4, suggest that, contrary to feeling safe, EU citizens have good reason to be afraid.

Only four countries “currently operate additional safety systems (e.g. bunkered systems or a ‘hardened core’ of safety systems) independent of the normal safety systems, located in areas well protected against external events.”

The stress tests also found that in “four reactors (located in two different countries), there is less than one hour available to operators to restore the safety functions in case of loss of all electrical power and/or ultimate heat sink.” Additionally, “in ten reactors, on-site seismic instrumentation is not installed yet.”

Only seven countries are in possession of “mobile equipment, especially diesel generators needed in case of total loss of power, external events or severe accident situations.”

Activists have also lamented that the tests were almost entirely theoretical, whose findings and recommendations are not legally binding.

The report itself states, “Peer review teams mainly composed of experts from the Member States visited 24 sites out of the total of 68, taking into account the type of reactor as well as the geographical location. Team visits to selected sites in each country were organised in order to firm up the implementation of the stress tests, without encroaching on the responsibilities of national authorities in the area of nuclear safety inspections.”

Report prompts action

The catastrophe of Fukushima, deemed the worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, demonstrated that nuclear power plants must be protected even against accidents that have been deemed ‘highly improbable’.

In the EU’s own words, “Events at Fukushima revealed well-known and recurring issues: faulty design, insufficient backup systems, human error, inadequate contingency plans, and poor communications.”

The EU stress tests only confirmed what environmental groups and anti-nuclear power activists have feared for years. Now, these groups are using the results of the tests to call for a gradual phasing out of nuclear power across the continent.

Tobias Muenchmeyer, nuclear power expert for the German office of Greenpeace, told IPS, “The stress tests confirm that the warning systems are insufficient, and that the application of guidelines in cases of major accidents is also deficient. In such cases, nuclear power plants must be shut down.”

“The stress tests on nuclear power plants across Europe constitute a fire signal for a pan-European phasing out of nuclear power,” Muenchmeyer added.

At the very least, according to other activists and politicians, the results of the tests should lead to the immediate shutting down of all nuclear power plants situated in border regions, where nuclear accidents will not only impact the local environment and population but foreign regions and citizens as well.

Such measures would affect nuclear power plants in Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, the Slovak Republic, and Romania.

Johannes Remmel, minister for the environment in the German federal state of North-Rhine-Westphalia, said in a press conference that all deficient nuclear power plants operating in border regions in Europe should be shut down, or, at least, not be allowed to function past their ‘operational life’.

“An accident with leakage of radioactivity would affect populations in several countries,“ Remmel said. He specifically referred to the Belgian nuclear power plants of Tihange and Doel, considered particularly fragile, which are situated between 60 and 120 kilometres away from German territory.

Similar calls were made in Austria referring to the nuclear power plants in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

The stress tests also shed light on just how expensive nuclear power plants can be.

The EU assures that “All participating countries have begun to take operational steps to improve the safety of their plants”, adding that “the costs of additional safety improvements are estimated to be in the range of 30 million to 200 million (euros) per reactor unit. Thus, the total costs for the 132 reactors operating in the EU could be in the order of 10 (to) 25 billion (euros)…over the coming years.”

These figures are based on estimates published by the French nuclear safety authority, which covers more than one-third of the reactors in the EU, and are subject to confirmation in national actions plans.

Experts like Jo Leinen, former minister of the environment in the German federal state of Saarland, and present member of the European parliament, believe this money can be put to better use.

“Either the EU and its member states invest in upgrading the nuclear power plants to make them safer, or they shut them down,” he told IPS. “If the upgrading actually costs 25 billion (euros), such a sum (could) be better invested in renewable energy sources.”

The accident at Fukushima showed that nuclear power plants must be prepared to withstand even the most improbable accidents.

Fukushima also reinforced popular opposition to nuclear power around the world. Meanwhile, numerous nuclear power plants currently under construction, such as the Olkiluoto 3 in Finland and the Flamanville power plant in France, are incurring skyrocketing costs.

Now, the EU stress tests have added yet another nail in the coffin of nuclear power.

The growing global share of renewable energy sources shows that a world free of nuclear power is possible and feasible. The share of nuclear power in global power generation has steadily declined from a historic peak of 17 percent in 1993 to about 11 percent in 2011.

(END)

In Japan, anti-nuke protests draw tens of thousands of average citizens. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Aug 9 2012 (IPS)

A new wave of anti-nuclear protests in Japan this summer, sparked by the disastrous meltdown at a power plant last year, suggests that civil society is no longer willing to allow the government to take the lead in deciding the nation’s energy policy.

A clear example of the impact of grassroots activism was the decision on Aug. 3 by leading prosecutors, after months of deliberation, to accept criminal complaints against Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), Japan’s largest utility corporation that operated the now-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor.

“The new move by prosecutors is a cornerstone in our long and hard fight to force TEPCO to face its criminal responsibility. It is an unprecedented achievement for civil organisations in Japan,” Hiromi Ebisuwa, a veteran activist in Fukushima who is leading the criminal complaint, told IPS.

The lives of tens of thousands of residents, including young children and infants, were drastically affected when they were forced to flee dangerous radiation exposure after the nuclear accident at Fukushima, which followed a massive earthquake and tsunami on Mar. 11 last year.

Since Jun 1,300 residents in Fukushima prefecture have filed complaints with the Fukushima District Public Prosecutor’s Officer. They have identified 33 people, including former executives at TEPCO and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, as culprits in the crisis, for failing to install anti-tsunami protections in the nuclear reactor.

The criminal complaints centre on negligence resulting in death or injury and the violation of the environmental pollution offense law.

Yet another example of the spreading anti-nuclear mood in Japan is a complaint filed against former senior Tokyo Electric Company (TEC) officials by a citizen’s group at the Kanazawa District Public Prosecutor’s office in Ishikawa prefecture.

TEC is debating re-opening its Shiga nuclear power plant in Ishikawa, located on the northwestern coast.

For Aileen Miyoko Smith, head of Green Action, a leading local environmental organisation, the latest developments in the anti-nuclear movement mark a critical juncture in Japan’s energy policy.

“The results of strenuous grassroots efforts after Fukushima, unprecedented in recent decades, are now (visible) in the Japanese political and social spheres,” she told IPS.

She, like other experts, believe the horror of the Fukushima accident, coupled with public outrage about the tragedy, contributed significantly to the temporary halt of operations in all of Japan’s 50 commercial reactors.

National energy security

Today, despite the summer heat, Japan is operating on less than three percent of its nuclear power, another major development for a country that has long touted nuclear energy as the lynchpin of its national economy.

Still, the coast is not clear for protestors. In July, despite continuous public opposition and demonstrations, the government, pointing to the need for secure energy supplies and with the consent of the cash-strapped local Oi government in western Japan, restarted two of the region’s four reactors.

Japan, the world’s third largest economy, currently imports 100 percent of its oil and coal supplies. Nuclear energy provides almost 30 percent of national needs, a figure that represents the country’s desire for energy self-sufficiency.

Indeed, the debate on prioritising between phasing out nuclear energy versus boosting economic growth is now a critical public issue—a July survey by the Japan Sustainable Institute showed that over 80 percent of those polled were against nuclear power.

However, more than 50 percent support a 2050 deadline for closing down all reactors, which illustrates the fact that concern over national energy supplies dilutes the urgency for immediate action and alternatives.

Still, breakthroughs by activists have been monumental.

The local government’s decision to re-start the Oi power plant in May was preceded by months of painful wrangling between national and local governments.

The final decision came only after the government pledged to promote higher safety levels under an independent nuclear regulatory authority that is now investigating the threat from a fault line found underneath the Oi reactors.

Now, leading intellectuals such as Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe and former prime minister Naoto Kan have joined the weekly protests.

As the movement gains steam, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was forced last week to issue a statement that he will meet the organisers of the weekly protests, a drastic change from his stance hithero, which, for many activists, was characterised by his comment, quoted in various local weeklies, that the demonstrations were simply “nosiy”.

For the past two months Misae Red Wolf has been a key organiser of the weekly anti-nuclear demonstrations that snake past government offices in Tokyo, sometimes drawing more than 100,000 people demanding the abolition of nuclear power.

Addressing a crowd in the searing summer heat, Misae demanded the immediate halt of operations in the two newly re-activated nuclear plants and the overall abolition of nuclear energy in Japan.

“Grassroots activism is the way forward. We have been waiting too long for a reliable answer from the government, which continues to ignore the voices of the people who have suffered too heavily from the nuclear accident,” she said.

Eiji Oguma, a prominent Japanese sociologist and professor at Keio University, describes the popular demonstrations as a sign of growing distrust of the country’s political and bureaucratic leadership following the Fukushima accident, and frustration at policies that do not reflect the will of the people.

“Dissatisfaction with politicians has accumulated over 20 years of economic stagnation. The Fukushima disaster and the decision to restart Oi has brought it to a critical point,” a July article in the prominent Asia Pacific Journal quoted him as saying.

The growing rift between politicians and their electorates led to the launch this July of the Green Party, which stands on an anti-nuclear platform and promotes welfare stability for the elderly.

Akira Miyabe, spokesperson for the Green Party, which will debut when it presents its candidates for next year’s Upper House elections on the proportional representation platform, explained to IPS, “The new political party represents a fresh start in Japan.”

“Green Party involvement in gathering criminal complaints against TEPCO for the Fukushima accident is aimed at changing the cozy ties between government and business that has been the (driving force) behind nuclear power in Japan,” he said.

(END)