Japan Press Weekly

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2011 August 17 - 23 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

Nuclear energy and political parties – LDP (Part 3)

The Liberal Democratic Party government in 1978 separated the safety inspection division from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and established the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC). The NSC, however, had neither the authority nor a system in place to accurately assess the safety of nuclear power stations.

Further propagate ‘safety myth’

A major nuclear accident occurred at Three Mile Island in March 1979. The partial meltdown there led to the use of the phrase, “severe accident” and the world’s governments began reviewing the veracity of the “safety myth”.

Nevertheless, Japan’s AEC still claimed that Japan had had no accident or problems that caused any health damage to plant employees or harmed surrounding residents with radioactive contamination. Continuing to promote the nuclear “safety myth”, the successive LDP governments took no measures to prevent a similar accident from occurring in Japan. It actually went so far as to promote the “safety myth” even more vigorously.

In 1986, another severe accident occurred at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union. A reconsideration of and improvements in each country’s nuclear safety regime again became necessary. Following the Chernobyl accident, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) made the recommendation that each country take measures in preparation for a possible severe accident.

The LDP government, however, maintained its conventional argument that a severe accident would be highly improbable in Japan from the technological viewpoint and left everything regarding safety measures up to power companies.

Series of accidents

In the wake of a series of major accidents including the breakdown of the core cooling system at the Mihama nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture (1991), sodium leakage at the fast breeder reactor “Monju” at the Mihama plant (1995), and the nuclear criticality accident at JCO’s reprocessing plant in Tokai Village in Ibaraki Prefecture (1999), pro-nuclear energy forces faced a fierce backlash of public outrage.

Nuclear facility operators also met with public criticism regarding their secretive corporate nature. They were found to have falsified the data regarding spent fuel containers (1998) and covered up defects of TEPCO’s reactors (2002).

Rollback campaign

Under such circumstances, the pro-nuclear forces hammered out a campaign to overcome the negative image associated with atomic energy. Taking advantage of the move to address global warming, the campaign promoted nuclear energy as a clean source of energy.

On March 31, 2000, the LDP set up an inner-party subcommittee on energy policy with Amari Akira, who later became the Economy, Trade, and Industry Minister, as chairman and with TEPCO’s Vice President Kano Tokio, who later became an LDP politician, as secretary.

On April 12, 2001, the LDP subcommittee on energy policy proposed that the government continue to promote nuclear power generation and nuclear fuel recycling as national energy policy.

The party tried to overcome public apprehension by repositioning the promotion of atomic energy as national policy. In 2005, the Cabinet adopted a policy outline in which it emphasized the need to sell Japan’s nuclear power generation technology to other countries.

The policy to construct more nuclear power plants and export such plants abroad was passed on to the government led by the Democratic Party of Japan.