‘A form of self-destruction’: Japan weighs up plan to expand nuclear power
Posted: 1st December 2022
Japan’s prime minister is pushing for as many as 17 nuclear reactors to be switched back on, more than a decade on from the meltdown at Fukushima
Tsuyoshi Suda, an anti-nuclear campaigner, with Onagawa nuclear power plant in the background. Suda says Japan’s plans to invest in nuclear power is ‘a form of self-destruction’.Photograph: Justin McCurry/The Guardian
Justin McCurry in Onagawa
Wed 30 Nov 2022 04.07 GMTLook carefully through the trees, and it is just possible to catch sight of Onagawa nuclear power plant from its visitors’ centre, perched on a hill surrounded by thick woods.
The plant’s supporters may have had its remote location, on a rugged peninsula in Japan’s north-east, in mind when they campaigned to bring nuclear power – and the promise of subsidies – to the town more than 40 years ago.
Despite its seclusion, the plant is now in the political spotlight, as Japan prepares to again put its faith in nuclear power, more than a decade after the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi.