Japan Press Weekly

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2012 May 9 - 15 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

Village mayor resolves to decommission NPP

“We refrained from thinking about the danger of nuclear power generation only because it was ‘national energy policy’,” said a leader of a village where a critical nuclear accident broke out in 1999.

Murakami Tatsuya, Mayor of Tokai Village in Ibaraki Prefecture, gave a speech on May 12 at a meeting held by a citizens’ group in central Tokyo.

Murakami is the only mayor demanding the decommissioning of nuclear reactors among local governments that host nuclear power plants. He participates in an association composed of municipal leaders supporting denuclearization.

Tokai Village is a major center for the nuclear industry, known as the place where nuclear energy turned its light on for the first time in Japan in 1957. More than 900,000 people are living in areas within 30km from the Tokai Daini NPP located in the village. This is the largest concentration of people living in such close proximity to a nuclear power plant in the country.

The mayor said, “If an accident like Fukushima happened in this area, it would be absolutely impossible to compensate for damages.” He also said that he resigned as a vice-president of a national association of municipalities hosting NPPs because of his belief that it is wrong for local residents as well as local governments to continue to rely on grants for supporting nuclear power generation.