Japanese Government's Effort to Reboot Nuclear Energy Meets Resistance
By Winifred Bird
Earth Island Journal, Friday, March 11, 2016
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35174-japanese-government-s-effort-to-reboot-nuclear-energy-program-meets-resistance?tmpl=component&print=1
The atmosphere in the packed meeting room is tense. It is a Wednesday night
in November, and perhaps a hundred people have gathered at a community
center in the city of Minamisoma, which begins about six miles north of the
decimated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. At the front of the room
sits a phalanx of government officials in dark suits. Facing them are men
and women who were forced from their homes in Minamisoma's Odaka district by
nuclear fallout, and who are now being told they might be allowed back by
spring. The question on the table is whether that move is premature. Twenty
minutes into the discussion, the deep divide between the officials and the
residents is clear.
An older man raises his hand. "There's a tombstone behind my house where the
radiation measures 10.5 microsieverts per hour. 10.5!" he says.
Multiplied over a year, the figure is 4.6 times the standard Japan's
government has set for mandatory evacuation, and 92 times the limit the
International Commission on Radiological Protection recommends for the
general population under normal circumstances. It is also far higher than
most measurements taken recently in Odaka, where a massive
government-sponsored cleanup--together with natural decay--is steadily
lowering radiation levels.
"It's probably a hotspot," an environment ministry official says. "We can
take care of it for you."
"I asked the government for data about that spot in August, but I haven't
gotten anything. Why not?" the resident demands.
A woman in the audience shouts out: "Because they're liars!"
"We think you're afraid to give us the real data," the man says.
Another resident speaks up: "The forest surrounding my house has not been
decontaminated. Would you live in a place like that? I beg of you, please
delay the resettlement!" Applause breaks out in the audience.
I kneel at the back of the crowd, surprised by the depth of the anger and
skepticism coursing through the room. The normal tone of public space in
Japan is deferential courtesy. That ordinary residents of a provincial town
are willing to challenge officials so openly reflects a profound shift
brought about by the nuclear disaster.
Simply put, far fewer people trust the government today than they did five
years ago. The immediate cause of the disaster was an earthquake and tsunami
on March 11, 2011 that deprived the coastal Fukushima plant of its power
supply, and hence of its ability to keep reactors and spent fuel cool. A
series of explosions and meltdowns followed, which led to the eventual
evacuation of 164,000 people. Subsequent investigations soon revealed,
however, that poor oversight and cozy ties between government, industry, and
academia (the so-called "nuclear village") laid the groundwork for the
disaster. The public also learned that the government bungled the
evacuation, causing thousands of people to suffer more radiation exposure
than they otherwise would have.
Since then, resistance has extended deep roots. The clearest evidence of
that is here in Fukushima, where residents like the ones in this room are
fighting to make sure their rights are respected. But far beyond these
borders as well, communities are embracing renewable energy and citizens are
protesting government abuses of power more loudly than they have in decades.
The question that remains after I slip out into the cool night air is how
much that resistance is changing policy and politics in Japan.
At times, the answer seems to be: very little. The same political party that
enabled the Fukushima disaster through half a century of pro-nuclear policy
is back in power, three nuclear reactors are running again despite safety
concerns, one more is about to restart, and 20 more are awaiting approval.
Meanwhile, Japan played only a minor role at the Paris climate talks in
November, and is pouring money into coal plants to compensate for its idled
nuclear fleet. In Fukushima, the government remains intent on repopulating
the 310-square-mile exclusion zone as quickly as possible.
I have come to Japan on the eve of the disaster's fifth anniversary to try
to make sense of these changes--to weigh hope against cynicism,
transformation against retrenchment. What happens here matters globally.
Japan is the world's fifth largest carbon dioxide emitter, is the number-one
importer of liquefied natural gas and number-two importer of coal, and a
leading exporter of nuclear and "clean coal" technologies. Its domestic
energy choices clearly affect the world's efforts to tackle climate change.
But my motivation is also personal. I was living in Japan when the disaster
occurred. I witnessed firsthand both its devastating aftermath and the sense
of hope for a more sustainable and democratic future that sprang up in its
wake. I want to know the fate of that hope.
My host in Minamisoma is a retired postman and lifelong activist from Odaka
named Tomio Kokubun. He began protesting nuclear power when he was 20 years
old and a new plant--Fukushima Daiichi--was proposed south of his home. Back
then, his anti-nuclear activism placed him on the fringe of a community
eager to benefit from the jobs the plant brought to the region. Today, he
tells me with just a hint of vindication, his neighbors concede he was right
to worry.
I first met Kokubun in 2013 in the snowy mountains west of Fukushima City,
where he and his family had been living since they fled the coast after the
first explosion at the plant. It was clear that two years of displacement
had taken their toll. Kokubun's ailing mother-in-law and sister-in-law died
after a series of evacuation-related moves, and his wife Mieko told me she
felt isolated and unhappy in her new surroundings. His grown son, too,
talked about how much he wanted his old life back.
Kokubun alone seemed galvanized by the chain of events. He had founded a
sprawling association of evacuees and supporters, and was traveling
regularly to speak against nuclear power. He was also deeply involved in a
class-action lawsuit to gain more compensation from Tepco, the plant
operator, for damages caused by the accident. (By 2015, over 10,000 evacuees
and nearby residents had filed similar claims.) The stricter safety rules
for nuclear plants that the government implemented later that
year--including more rigorous backup power requirements--did not placate
him. To the contrary, the disaster and its aftermath proved what he had
always suspected--that any man-made system contains the potential for
failure, and in the case of nuclear power, failure is catastrophic.
Now, two years later, Kokubun was back in Minamisoma, and I had arranged to
meet him there the morning of the community meeting. As I looked around the
clean, quiet bus stop, I caught sight of him grinning and waving at me from
across the street. He was dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, his snow-white
hair poking out from under a tweed hat.
"We're doing well," he told me as I climbed into his car. He and Mieko had
finally pulled together enough money to start building a new house farther
north. In the meantime, they are living in a house in a part of their
hometown that was only briefly evacuated. One reason for this move was
Mieko's worsening depression, which Kokubun told me had eased now that she
was on familiar ground. The other reason was political.
"I felt strongly that I needed to expand my activism, and I thought if I
came back here more people would sympathize with my message," he said. In
July of last year he launched a local organization focused on radiation
safety, which so far has attracted around 100 members.
We headed into Odaka where Kokubun's abandoned house is located. The cleanup
was in full swing. Industrious men in masks power-washed sidewalks, dump
trucks crowded the streets, and orange placards marked houses for
demolition. Everywhere we went we saw squat black bags stuffed with tainted
dirt and debris. (Almost 10 million of these bags litter Fukushima, awaiting
transportation to a mid-term storage site near Fukushima Daiichi.)
At the community meeting later that night, the mayor of Odaka insisted that
all this work was meant only to ensure displaced residents could return if
they wanted to--not to force them back.
The dilemma, of course, is that contamination cannot be completely removed
from the environment. It will linger in forests and ponds and backyard
corners for decades to come, exposing anyone who returns to low but
persistent levels of radiation. Science provides no clear answers regarding
the potential health risks of that exposure. Above 100 millisieverts (mSv)
cancer rates clearly rise; below that level, they may also rise slightly,
but the increase is extremely hard to detect in population-level studies.
Following the Fukushima disaster, Japan's government used the lack of
scientific consensus on low-level radiation impacts to justify raising the
acceptable level of exposure for the general population from 1 mSv to 20 mSv
per year above background levels. (The International Commission on
Radiological Protection's recommended maximum exposure for the general
population is 1 mSv under normal circumstances and between 1 mSv and 20 mSv
after a nuclear accident.) The decision was, in effect, a pragmatic one. If
the government had stuck with the 1 mSv limit, it would have had to evacuate
far more people and establish a large, long-term exclusion zone similar to
the one around Chernobyl. With the higher limit, bringing nuclear refugees
back home became a possibility.
But why the fixation on return? Is it merely that Japan is small, land is
precious, and people's attachment to place fierce? As we drove through the
strange landscape of black bags and masked men, Kokubun told me he believes
otherwise. "The government is doing this to regain support for nuclear
power," he said. The logic is that if even Fukushima can be "fixed," people
will stop fearing the reopening and operation of other plants.
Kokubun's response has been to do whatever he can to prevent the illusion of
normalcy from seeping in--from dragging Tepco through court to lecturing
nationwide about the situation on the ground to hosting visitors who want to
see the exclusion zone for themselves. That he is 70 and has been fighting
the same fight for 50 years appears not to bother him.
"Right now, the old have to protect the young," he told me. "We're the ones
who accepted the nuclear plants, who allowed them to be built. The real
responsibility lies with us."
"Do you ever feel like giving up?" I asked.
"I will never give up," he replied, almost cheerfully. "I will never accept
nuclear power."
A majority of Japanese now share Kokubun's opinion. Over 70 percent of
respondents in recent polls say they want to phase out nuclear power, and
8.5 million have signed a petition calling for renewable energy to replace
reactors. Anti-nuclear protests in Tokyo drew hundreds of thousands of
ordinary citizens at their peak in 2012. When the Democratic Party of Japan
(DPJ)--which briefly held power before and after the disaster--asked for
public input on its energy and environment policy in 2012, a record-breaking
89,000 people sent in comments, close to 90 percent of them opposing nuclear
power.
The relationship between this surge in anti-nuclear sentiment and Japan's
broader energy policy is complex. The Fukushima disaster occurred just as
global concern over climate change was accelerating. In 2009, then-Prime
Minister Yukio Hatoyama had committed Japan to lowering carbon emissions a
quarter below 1990 levels by 2020--largely through a plan to increase
nuclear power to half of the country's electricity mix. The meltdowns
changed everything.
"With the 3-11 disaster, everyone's attention turned toward nuclear power.
Since then, climate change has fallen more and more off the public's radar
as an important issue," Takako Momoi told me when I stopped by the Tokyo
office of Kiko Network, Japan's biggest homegrown climate-change NGO, where
she works as a manager. A minority of activists even began to spread the
message that climate change was a ruse to gain support for nuclear power. In
2013, when the new government traded Hatoyama's ambitious emissions goal for
a 3 percent increase over 1990 levels by 2020, few people protested.
Coal has already seen a major resurgence. Construction of coal-fired power
plants had stalled around 2009 due to climate change concerns, but now 48
new plants are planned or under construction, says Momoi. Even with
much-touted new "clean coal" technology, she adds, these plants will emit as
much carbon dioxide as those that burn oil.
Then there is the fact that even if the public prefers renewables to coal or
nuclear, most people still prioritize the economy over the environment in
elections. In 2012, voters ousted the DPJ in favor of the pro-nuclear
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has monopolized power for most of
Japan's post-war period. The LDP quickly set about formulating its own
energy vision. It tossed out the public comments the DPJ had collected,
kicked anti-nuclear advisors like those from Momoi's organization off policy
committees, and last summer finalized a long-term energy vision that calls
for electricity to come from roughly equal parts nuclear, liquid natural
gas, coal, and renewable sources by 2030.
At the local level, however, a more ambitious vision has started to emerge.
Many communities are formulating their own renewable energy
plans--Minamisoma among them. This March, the city of 63,000 released a
"Non-Nuclear Power Declaration" reaffirming an earlier pledge to generate 65
percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, and 100 percent
by 2030 (compared to around 10 percent today). Construction is slated to
begin this year on a solar farm large enough to power almost all of the
city's households, and four windmills are planned as well. A generous
national feed-in tariff program introduced in 2012, which guarantees high
prices to individuals and companies selling renewable energy to the grid,
has lured corporate investors to these projects.
That, together with some smaller subsidy programs, should get the city to
its 2020 goal, says Shunichi Shiga, who heads Minamisoma's newly-established
renewable energy division. Reaching 100 percent could be tougher. Power
distributors say they've already reached the limit of how much renewable
energy they can incorporate without major improvements to the grid, and now
that the feed-in-tariffs are being ratcheted down, investing in renewable
energy is looking riskier. Overcoming these obstacles, Shiga says, will
require action at the national level. Momoi concurs. "The [local] movement
to increase renewable energy is great, but within the current policy
context, it will hit a ceiling," she says. "There's a need to think more
about the big picture."
Many people are, in fact, starting to think about what it will take to
achieve true change at the national level. One of the most interesting
developments set off by the disaster has been the emergence of a strong
student movement protesting the government's disregard for democratic
processes. Although its focus is on military policy rather than energy
issues, the underlying concern is the same.
Called Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy, or SEALDs, this
small but vocal group of high school and university students coalesced in
mid-2015 against a set of security bills that the LDP ultimately pushed
through the Diet (Japanese parliament) in September. Using social media and
protests outside the Diet building featuring fierce, smart speeches, the
students quickly engaged a broader slice of society than old-school
protesters had been able to. It was the most significant student movement
since the 1960s.
Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Tokyo's Sophia University
says SEALDs is a "direct descendant" of the civil-society awakening that
followed the nuclear disaster. "They were high school students at the time
[of the meltdowns], and for many of them the first experience of protest was
those anti-nuclear rallies," he tells me. "The disaster exposed the myth
that was more credible in earlier times about the trustworthiness of ruling
elites in Japan."
Nakano is himself active in an organization opposing the security bills, and
has collaborated closely with SEALDs over the past year. He too sees the
roots of the nuclear and military issues as intimately linked. "There's a
sense that the 1 percent increasingly control our fate and the 99 percent of
us are left out in the dark, uninformed and practically disenfranchised," he
says. "In the case of the security bills, it's about the ruling elites of
Japan in collusion with the American elites changing the interpretation of
the constitution to allow Japan to take part in America's wars even without
Japan being attacked. The nuclear power issue is very similar because
nuclear power is something that those big powers need to continue on for
lucrative reasons. They wouldn't want to see Japan dropping out from the
nuclear power club."
In spite of this, Nakano believes citizen activists have changed the
government's course, at least on energy. "There was a long period in which
even [Prime Minister] Abe couldn't restart the nuclear reactors. That has
only to do with the strength of the opposition," he tells me. "We are
talking about ordinary citizens, without resources, stopping the reactors
for many, many months."
As important as these popular movements may be, the people who will
determine Japan's longer-term energy path are not in the crowds outside the
Diet, or even inside its halls. They are in elementary and middle school
classrooms across the country. Japan's education system played a key role in
creating the so-called "myth of nuclear safety"--the widespread belief that
Japan's reactors were indestructible--that led towards poor oversight and,
ultimately, disaster. Likewise, the lessons children learn now about the
Fukushima disaster will shape their views on energy and the environment
throughout their lives. So, on my last day in Japan, I take the train back
to Fukushima to talk with a professor who has spent the past five years
trying to improve radiation education.
Shinobu Goto is a tall, serious man in his forties who teaches environmental
education at Fukushima University. We meet on a Saturday evening in a
cluttered university office, where we are joined by two members of the
Fukushima teachers' union, Toshiki Kokubun (no relation to Tomio) and
Hiroshi Sato, whose name has been changed to protect his identity. All three
were deeply impacted by the disaster.
Goto in particular says the unexpected catastrophe thrust him into a period
of intense reflection and regret. He had not previously focused on nuclear
education, but now he began to scour official teaching materials on the
topic for evidence of bias. He found plenty: elementary-level readers titled
Exciting Nuclear Power Land, illustrations of frowning coal plants
juxtaposed with friendly nuclear reactors, claims that Japan's reactors
could withstand large earthquakes and tsunamis. Goto was not alone in his
critique. The minister of education himself admitted that the pre-disaster
texts contained information "contrary to reality," and soon had them
replaced.
Yet the new radiation readers that the ministry published in late 2011 were
hardly an improvement. They included just 8 lines about the Fukushima
disaster, and instead emphasized how useful and ubiquitous radiation is in
daily life. In this, Goto saw the makings of a new myth--not that reactors
are infallible, but that the radiation they emit when they do fail is
nothing to worry about.
"The concept that the level of radiation we have in Fukushima is safe is
being steadily created through education and PR," he tells me as we sip tea
in the quiet research building. He was particularly worried that kids
weren't getting the information they needed to protect their own rights to
physical, mental, and social wellbeing. "If you don't know the exposure
limit is 1 or 5 mSv per year in other places, you don't realize the
situation in Fukushima is abnormal," he says. "Education is empowerment in
the sense that it allows you to make those critiques."
Teachers needed a better option, so in early 2012 he assembled a group of 16
Fukushima University professors, and together they wrote an alternative
reader from a human-rights perspective. He also began holding workshops to
teach critical thinking skills to public school students, so they could
assess government and media claims on their own. At this point, top-level
administrators began pressuring him to tone down his activism. The school is
the only national university in the prefecture; from the start, its
administrators had echoed the government's emphasis on recovery over risk.
"They told me I had to put a sticker on the reader saying it wasn't an
official publication of the university. I said that's discriminatory; you
don't do that for other publications," Goto says. (University
representatives tell me they are unable to confirm or deny Goto's claims,
citing personnel changes and a lack of relevant meeting minutes.)
He refused to back down. Ultimately, the reader was published without the
sticker, helping to turn national attention on the official curriculum. That
attention reverberated to the ministry of education; when the official
readers were revised again in 2014, they included more information on the
Fukushima disaster, and an acknowledgement that scientists hold "various
views" on the impacts of low-level radiation. Still, a startling array of
terms were missing: "meltdown," "Nuclear Accident Child Victim's Law,"
"hotspot," "thyroid cancer," and "radioactive waste" among them.
Kokubun and Sato say most teachers in Fukushima don't venture beyond the
official curriculum, which allots just two hours a year for radiation
education, partly because they are too busy, and partly because they're
pressured not to.
Sato, an elementary school teacher in Fukushima City, has experienced this
pressure directly. "Some high-level board-of-education staff observed one of
my classes [on radiation in 2013], and afterwards they said to me, Don't you
think today's class might worry the children?" The content was purely
science based: Sato had shown the kids a graph of the relationship between
radiation and cancer, and pointed out that high levels of exposure can be
deadly. (In lessons, he also explains that the current degree of
contamination in Fukushima City carries a relatively low risk of cancer.)
Fukushima's Board of Education tells me later that teachers are permitted to
share science-based radiation material as long as it is widely accepted.
"Our goal," a staff member writes in an email, "is to teach children to make
appropriate decisions based on correct knowledge and understanding of
radiation." However, Sato says he's been told to avoid the topic by his
principal, vice-principal, and other teachers.
Like Goto, he has not bowed to this pressure. Yet both he and Kokubun seem
worn down by their lonely struggle. The government defends its interests
tenaciously, and the public--with the exception of a determined minority--is
all too eager to assist by turning away from the painful past. "People need
to be angrier," Kokubun says. "I'm sad that more people haven't spoken out
with us."
Outside Goto's office, the sky is growing dark. Kokubun and Sato need to
head home. After they leave, I ask Goto how much hope he has that things
will change. He says he feels like he is gasping for breath. The pace of
progress is slow, and public interest in the disaster's ongoing impact is
dwindling. Still, he says, he is determined to continue his work.
Later, after he drops me off at the train station, I leaf through some
papers he has given me, among them an essay he wrote for his hometown
newspaper concluding with the following lines: "They say that history is
written by the victors. I will be watching and acting to make sure the
lessons of the Fukushima nuclear accident are not written to suit the
interests of the perpetrators of this unprecedented man-made disaster."
In that, and in the commitment of many others to do the same, there lies a
glimmer of hope.
Winifred Bird is a freelance writer covering nature, science, architecture,
and more from the US Midwest.
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