ANTI-NUCLEAR MOVEMENT IN JAPAN

JAPAN ANTI-NUCLEAR MOVEMENT GAINS TRACTION AS CRISIS DRAGS ON

Chisa Fujioka

Reuters, April 8, 2011

TOKYO - Japan's anti-nuclear movement, small and ignored by the general public, is gaining traction as a crisis at a tsunami-stricken nuclear power plant drags on for weeks with no clear end in sight.

The growing debate will make it difficult for the government to meet its target securing 50 percent of national electricty from nuclear power by 2030, up from 30 percent now.

The public has watched nervously as engineers battle radiation leaks, hydrogen explosions and overheating fuel rods at the Fukushima Daiichi plant on the northeast coast after it was hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

With updates on the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986 now daily fare on TV, more Japanese are questioning the safety of the quake-prone country's 54 nuclear reactors and the government's plans to build more.

"As a person who has had a pro-nuclear stance, I'm totally at a loss at the moment whether we should promote Japan's nuclear policy," Masayoshi Yoshino, an MP from Fukushima prefecture where the Daiichi plant is located, told a news conference this week.

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