As the
ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in the town of
Ohkuma continues, and plant engineers and first responders endanger
their lives to keep fuel rods and containment units cool, it is critical
to consider how Japan’s commitment to nuclear power arose in the first
place. It was no twist of fate or invisible market-hand that created 55
nuclear reactors in a seismically active country smaller than the state
of California. Japanese bureaucrats and politicians have made it a
priority to create an indigenous source of power that provides an
alternative to imported oil and coal.
Despite this understandable rationale, it’s
still surprising that the only nation in the world against which atomic
weaponry has been used—twice, no less—has created the world’s most
advanced commercial nuclear program. It is especially surprising when
you consider that countries like France, Germany, and the United States
have given up their attempts at fast breeder reactor technology because
of concerns about proliferation and hazard. What has driven Japan to
pursue its advanced program of nuclear power, and why have nuclear power
plants ended up in incredibly vulnerable positions along Japan’s
coasts?
While the United States
has provided some support for nuclear power (for example, the
Price-Anderson Act, which commits the federal government to absorbing
some of the financial costs of potential nuclear accidents), as a source
of alternative energy, it has never been fully embraced. This tradition
of fence-sitting continues today, as seen in the Obama administration’s
decision to end funding for the planned high-level radioactive waste
repository at Yucca Mountain after two and a half decades of struggle
over the site. Completion of the facility would have helped pro-nuclear
groups convince skeptics that offsite waste disposal was possible. (The
difficulty in securing permanent storage sites for nuclear waste is what
leads U.S. and Japanese nuclear power plants to store their used fuel
rods on site where they are most vulnerable.)
In contrast, the Japanese government has gone far beyond this approach.
The origins of its enthusiasm can be traced to the postwar period. In
1955, at the urging of then-Diet Memberand later Prime Minister
Yasuhiro Nakasone, the Japanese government granted more than 5 billion
yen—about $14 million in 1955 currency—to the Japan-based Agency for
Industrial Science and Technology to begin research under the aegis of
the “atoms for peace” banner raised by Dwight Eisenhower.
In recent decades, the Japanese central government has supported the
regional power utilities—including Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO),
which runs Fukushima, and its counterparts—through research funding,
risk amortization, and financial and logistical support. Unlike France,
for example, which explicitly nationalized and then partly privatized
their main nuclear-power-promoting utility company, Japan did not
nationalize its energy industry, and some Japan experts have
characterized the relationship between the state and utility firms as
contentious. Yet both sides got what they wanted over the past 50 years:
The government guided Japanese firms to produce nearly one-third of the
nation’s power through nuclear plants, and the utilities obtained
credible commitment against risk and financial backing for their
expensive investments.
The Japanese people, as readers might imagine, have not been solid
supporters of these government-initiated policies. Just as the
government hoped to start its nuclear program in 1954, a highly
publicized accident—in which crewmates onboard the poorly named Lucky
Dragon Number 5 ship were exposed to radioactive fallout from an
American hydrogen bomb test—resulted in the death of a radioman from
radiation exposure. This spurred the creation of one of the world’s
first national anti-nuclear movements (known as Gensuikyō)
and a petition against nuclear weapons that obtained more than 20
million signatures. Attempts to build a number of plants around the
country since the mid-1950s have resulted in petitions, public outcries,
demonstrations, sit-ins, marches, and the occupation of town councils
by anti-nuclear activists. While the anti-nuclear movement has not
demonstrated the kind of violence shown by the anti-Narita Airport
protests in the 1960s—during which a number of police officers and
anti-airport farmers and students were killed in struggle over land
expropriation—the success rate for the building of nuclear power plant
has been roughly 50 percent. (That is, for every two attempts to
construct a new plant, only one has gone forward.)
To minimize these fights over nuclear power in a society where people
are deeply sympathetic to victims of atomic energy, the government has
taken a two-pronged approach. First, it has worked tirelessly with the
regional utilities to map out villages and towns that are the best
locations for plants, according to the utilities’ needs. Bureaucrats
within MITI (the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, which
became METI, the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry,
as of 2001) provided funding for geographical and demographic surveys
of potential grounds. Power companies have often targeted rural,
depopulated coastal communities, where the population of local fishermen
are declining. But, while legitimate criteria, such as distance from
high-population areas, shock-resistant bedrock, and access to cooling
water, have played a role in such plant site selections, the inability
of the local population to coordinate anti-nuclear mobilization has
often been the dominant factor.
Second, the government has created an extensive framework of
policy instruments to manage and dampen anti-nuclear contestation. Where
the Japanese authorities have been content to use standard, Weberian
tools against anti-facility movements in other areas—such as dam
construction and airport building—they have never resorted to
land-expropriation in struggles over nuclear power plants, despite clear
legal precedent for them to do so. Rather, the government has created a
series of hard- and soft-control tools alongside deep incentives for
communities willing to take on nuclear reactors. For example, students
in Japanese middle schools may take science courses emphasizing the
safety and necessity of nuclear power plants, with curricula written by
government bureaucrats rather than teachers. Farmers and fishermen in
these communities are regularly offered jobs at government-sponsored
facilities to compensate for signing away sea rights in the surrounding
fishing area. To further assuage the resistance that fishermen and
farmers have shown in the past (because of concerns over “nuclear
blight”—potential customers avoiding crops or fish because of fears of
nuclear contamination), the government sponsors a yearly fair in
Yokohama, in which only communities that host nuclear power plants can
display and sell their goods. Finally, the government has created a
monumental program called The Three Power Source Development Laws (Dengen Sanpō),
which funnels roughly $20 million per year to acquiescent host
communities. The money—which comes not from the politically vulnerable
and annually vetted budget, but, instead, from an invisible tax on all
electricity use across the nation—purchases roads, buildings, job
re-training, medical facilities, and good will. In these far-flung rural
communities that are, by and large, dying through depopulation and
aging, these funds can provide vital support.
Japan’s choices—to sway public opinion through subsidies, social control
tools, and manipulation—have left little room for public debate on the
issue of nuclear power. The local residents—whom we see bearing the
heaviest burden of the ongoing crisis in Fukushima and who have been
exposed to radiation by past accidents at the Monju FBR, the fatal
accident at Tokaimura, and elsewhere—are seen not as partners, but as
targets for policy tools. A plan-rational approach, as Chalmers Johnson
might have called it, has placed reactors in areas vulnerable to the
threat of tsunami and pushed rural communities into dependence on the
economic side payments which accompany these facilities. Now, as Japan
struggles to avert catastrophe, it is the time for a real discussion
between civil society and state over the future of nuclear power.