Japan Press Weekly

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2011 August 31 - September 6 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

Nuclear energy and political parties - SPJ (Part 1)

The Social Democratic Party (SDP) is seeking to abolish all domestic nuclear power plants by 2020. However, its predecessor Socialist Party of Japan (SPJ) in 1955 worked together with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to enact the Atomic Energy Basic Act, which called for peaceful uses of atomic energy and the Japan-U.S. Atomic Energy Agreement, which placed Japan’s energy policy under U.S. schemes as a set.

The SPJ and the LDP jointly submitted a bill to the Diet on atomic energy after repeatedly discussing at an informally-established joint committee of both Houses.

LDP leader Nakasone Yasuhiro was the chairman of the informal committee. In the May 15, 2011, issue of AERA, he recalls, “I worked with Matsumae Shigeyoshi of the Socialist Party, who was also a scientist, to set up the bipartisan committee on atomic energy. The present nuclear power generation came from that.”

The SDP now says that atomic energy at that time was considered to be a rosy source of energy and that political, academic, and business communities were all heading for peaceful uses of atomic energy.

Oka Ryoichi, a Socialist Party legislator, spoke in support of the bill in the House of Representatives plenary session in December 1955. He said, “If we succeed in enacting such an epoch-making bill which will mark the dawn of atomic energy, I believe that it will also be a milestone to be engraved long in history of the Diet.” Oka said that his party will “totally welcome” the introduction of nuclear power generation.

After the enactment of the Atomic Energy Basic Act, the construction of a research reactor in the Kansai area and a commercial reactor in Tokai Village in Ibaraki Prefecture proceeded at a fast pace.

(To be continued)