@newspaperarticle {67706,
	title = {With a Mighty Hand},
	year = {2011},
	note = {Daniel P. Aldrich is a former Advanced Research Fellow (2006{\textendash}2007) of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations and a former Graduate Student Associate of the Weatherhead Center (2002{\textendash}2005).},
	month = {Mar 19, 2011},
	publisher = {New Republic},
	abstract = {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{\textquoteright}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{\textquoteright}s 
still surprising that the only nation in the world against which atomic 
weaponry has been used{\textemdash}twice, no less{\textemdash}has created the world{\textquoteright}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{\textquoteright}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{\textquoteright}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{\textemdash}about $14 million in 1955 currency{\textemdash}to the Japan-based Agency for 
Industrial Science and Technology to begin research under the aegis of 
the {\textquotedblleft}atoms for peace{\textquotedblright} banner raised by Dwight Eisenhower.
 In recent decades, the Japanese central government has supported the 
regional power utilities{\textemdash}including Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO),
 which runs Fukushima, and its counterparts{\textemdash}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{\textquoteright}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{\textemdash}in which crewmates onboard the poorly named Lucky 
Dragon Number 5 ship were exposed to radioactive fallout from an 
American hydrogen bomb test{\textemdash}resulted in the death of a radioman from 
radiation exposure. This spurred the creation of one of the world{\textquoteright}s 
first national anti-nuclear movements (known as Gensuikyo)
 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{\textemdash}during which a number of police officers and 
anti-airport farmers and students were killed in struggle over land 
expropriation{\textemdash}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{\textquoteright} 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{\textemdash}such as dam 
construction and airport building{\textemdash}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 {\textquotedblleft}nuclear 
blight{\textquotedblright}{\textemdash}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 Sanpo),
 which funnels roughly $20 million per year to acquiescent host 
communities. The money{\textemdash}which comes not from the politically vulnerable 
and annually vetted budget, but, instead, from an invisible tax on all 
electricity use across the nation{\textemdash}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{\textquoteright}s choices{\textemdash}to sway public opinion through subsidies, social control
 tools, and manipulation{\textemdash}have left little room for public debate on the 
issue of nuclear power. The local residents{\textemdash}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{\textemdash}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. },
	url = {http://www.tnr.com/article/world/85463/japan-nuclear-power-regulation?page=0,0},
	author = {Daniel P. Aldrich}
}
