Japan Press Weekly

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2016 January 13 - 19 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Local residents demand referendum on planned restart of Ikata NPP

A residents’ group in Yawatahama City in Ehime Prefecture on January 18 submitted to the city mayor signatures seeking enactment of an ordinance to hold a local referendum on whether to restart the Ikata Nuclear Power Plant.

The number of submitted signatures is 9,939, almost one-third of all eligible voters in the city. This figure far exceeds 5% of voters, the minimum necessary number to make such a direct claim to a local government. Local members of the Japanese Communist Party have supported the signature campaign.

Yawatahama City is adjacent to Ikata Town which hosts the Ikata NPP, and the whole of the city is within a 30-kilometer radius of the plant. The Abe government and the plant operator, Shikoku Electric Power Co., have been aiming to reactivate the offline reactors as early as possible. In September 2015, the mayor of Yawatahama expressed his approval of the resumption plan without consulting local residents or the city assembly.

After the submission, Endo Aya, co-representative of the civic group, said to reporters, “Many people are claiming that the mayor is wrong to have arbitrarily consented to the plan. The nuclear power station issue concerns the lives of citizens and the future of our children. The mayor and assembly members should take this public opinion seriously and work together to enact the ordinance.”

The mayor is supposed to propose to the city assembly a draft ordinance for a referendum and convene the assembly to discuss it within 20 days after he accepted the petition. If the local assembly passes the act, the referendum will be called.

Past related article:
> Structure of collusion leads to restarting Ikata nuclear power plant [November 12, 2015]