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2011 August 31 - September 6 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

Rightist textbook and former TEPCO president

Akahata “Window” column

Nuclear power generation “releases hardly any carbon dioxide, which is responsible for global warming. It has also advantages in that its uranium fuel can be recycled repeatedly.”

This is how a civics textbook for junior high school published by the rightist textbook publisher, Ikuhosha, describes nuclear power. The textbook, up for selection this spring for local education boards nation-wide, is known for its hostility to the pacifist Constitution but is also an avid advocate of nuclear power generation.

Recycling nuclear fuel is hazardous. A recycling plant in northern Japan now under trial operation has been highly accident prone, with no prospect of going into full-scale operation. The recycling project produces nuclear waste which must be kept isolated for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years.

In a section titled “My life protected by the state,” the textbook contains a drill for students to simulate introducing a nuclear plant in a fictitious city, whose dwellers are expected to accept the project through a referendum. The scenario is against real world experience. All the nuclear plant projects since 1970s have been opposed by local residents.

All the textbook publishers are planning to partly rewrite their textbook after the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear accident. But Ikuhosha’s director of the textbook publishing department still boasted that its description of the nuclear power was “most objective.”

Ikuhosha is owned by a parent company, Fuji Media Holdings, Inc. One of the corporate auditors of this holding company is Minami Nobuya, former President and current advisor of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the biggest nuclear power operator in Japan. He is the person who was responsible for forging inspection records of nuclear power plants and hiding accidents from public eyes.

No wonder Ikuhosha has no qualms about indoctrinating children with the “nuclear safety myth.”