A village that extends seven to eight kilometers both north-south and east-west, Tokai holds 12 nuclear power-related facilities within its borders. Among the roads running east and west through the village are Genden-dori, named after the Japan Atomic Power Company; Genken-dori named after the Japan Atomic Energy Agency; and Donen-dori named after the former Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp., known as PNC or Donen. One-third of the village's 38,000 residents either hold jobs relating to nuclear power or have a family member who does. And yet, Tatsuya Murakami, Tokai's 68-year-old mayor, is adamant.
"Looking at how Fukushima has been handled, I've realized that Japan isn't capable of controlling the massive science and technology of nuclear power. I've come to feel that Japan isn't entitled to it, and have decided that we have no other choice but to abandon nuclear power," says Murakami. "The government thinks nothing of the fact that there are 54 nuclear reactors in one of the world's most earthquake-prone areas. There's so much egotism, such arrogance against nature in that."
Murakami speaks with an unaffected Ibaraki dialect, but the bluntness of his words is powerful.
Until now, the responses of municipal government leaders when faced with radiation leaks or other nuclear power-related problems have generally been the same. They first criticize the incidents, citing concerns about local residents' health, but ultimately allow nuclear-related projects to go on after pressing for "measures to prevent future incidents" and emphasizing that "safety must come first." It seems that Murakami, however, isn't going to be content with that.
The first time a test nuclear reactor in Japan reached criticality was on Aug. 27, 1957 in the village of Tokai. It was also in here that the nation's first commercial nuclear reactor began operation, and its first one-million-watt class reactor was built. According to the village charter, Tokai residents are "a people built upon a traditional history and the atomic fire."
Murakami was first elected as mayor in 1997 and is now serving his fourth term. While he called for "coexistence with nuclear power" in past elections, he has always taken a cautious stance toward the new construction of nuclear power plants, a wariness that stems from an accident called the JCO accident.
On Sept. 30, 1999, slipshod work at the nuclear fuel reprocessing company JCO led to the nation's first criticality accident. The company did not contact the Tokai's government, telling them its employees had evacuated, until about an hour after the incident took place, after it had already contacted the then Science and Technology Agency (now the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)) and the prefectural government.
Murakami was told that the villagers would be all right if they stayed indoors, but he didn't trust this and, as neither the agency nor the prefecture had set up an emergency task force yet, Murakami himself decided to tell village residents to evacuate. In the end, the incident left two JCO workers dead and over 600 Tokai residents exposed to radiation.
"Even though those at the scene were saying that a criticality accident had taken place, the government took an attitude like, 'That could never happen,'" Murakami recalls. "It's the same as how the government resisted admitting for as long as possible that a nuclear meltdown had taken place in Fukushima."
Murakami says the government covered up the facts and was not prepared to deal with a worst-case scenario. "From how the government handled the situation in Fukushima, I saw once again how it put nuclear power first and residents' lives and local communities second." The villagers' attitude toward nuclear power has been shifting, the mayor adds.
The JCO facility in Tokai village had no choice but to back out of the nuclear fuel reprocessing business after the incident. Today, around 40 employees continue to keep tabs on over 8,000 drums worth of low-level radioactive waste at the facility, located in the western part of the village and surrounded by farmland and private homes. JCO conducts briefing sessions regarding nuclear power for local residents every year.
"This year's briefing session was after the quake, in July. We were told that the facility was not affected by the earthquake, but who knows," said an elderly woman tending to her farm. "It's said that if a bigger quake hit and the drums fell, there's a risk of the radioactive waste escaping outside, and that's worrisome. All we want is to feel safe living on our land."
At a gallery near JR Tokai Station, an exhibit of photos taken of the village by photographer Kenji Higuchi starting the day after the JCO accident featured the concerned looks of residents who had gathered at an evacuation center and the village's deserted streets, much like the scenes from the disaster in Fukushima.
A middle-aged woman at the gallery's reception desk said: "With the Fukushima crisis, people started to realize that it was no longer just someone else's problem. It seems that more people who have family members in nuclear power-related work are now saying they're concerned about nuclear power, even if they aren't opposed to it. In retrospect, we see that the Tokai No. 2 Nuclear Power Plant could have gone the way of Fukushima."
When the quake struck on March 11, the Japan Atomic Power Co.'s Tokai No. 2 Nuclear Power Plant, which was in operation, shut down automatically. "We were told (immediately after the quake) that everything (at the plant) was fine, but that was not true at all," Mayor Murakami says. In fact, the power plant lost its external power source, and one of its three emergency diesel generators stopped working because of the tsunami. The plant was supposed to make it to a "cold shutdown" in about one day, but it ended up taking over three. The tsunami that struck the plant was 5.4 meters high. What would have happened if 15-meter high waves had hit, as they did at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant?
Murakami characterizes the "nuclear village" -- the close-knit, pro-nuclear relationship between members of government, researchers and the nuclear power industry -- as resembling the state of pre-World War II Japan.
"Everything was directed towards waging war, and even if you were sure that we were going to lose, you couldn't say it. If you did, you'd be labeled as unpatriotic, right?" says Murakami. "Once you join the nuclear village, you can't question the safety of nuclear power if you want to survive there. I don't think this characteristic of the Japanese will change."
In response to criticism for his anti-nuclear stance, Murakami says: "Even if you're talking about just 38,000 villagers, you can't make an effective evacuation plan for that. What place is going to take in that many people, and provide them with food, shelter, medical treatment and education? It's a logistical issue to consider before talking about being for or against nuclear power."
The village's financial base has been dependent on nuclear power. Of approximately 20 billion yen in general revenue in fiscal 2009, around 4 billion yen came from property tax on nuclear power-related facilities, while some 1.4 billion yen came from central government handouts based on the three electric power laws and subsidies from the prefectural government. Of the village's corporate inhabitant tax revenue, about 300 million yen is nuclear power-related. All this means that nuclear power-related revenue makes up about 30 percent of the village's revenue, and criticism directed at the mayor's anti-nuclear stance generally comes down to the issue of money.
"If we're just talking about money, then yes, we gain a lot from nuclear power," Murakami says. "But what a lowly, sad people we are to think that way."
"Nuclear power plants bring in money before they're even built," he says, noting their financial lure. "We can't allow a government policy that mocks the countryside (by trying to win them over with money.) It's an evil policy, the same as colonialism.
"Our village may have reaped benefits for 30 or 40 years. But if we lose our homeland in return, what's the point? I, too, feel like I finally came to understand what "homeland" really means with the crisis in Fukushima."
The village of Tokai has been a Japanese first in many aspects of the country's nuclear power industry. Will it also become Japan's first in renouncing it?
Source mdn.mainichi.jp
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