TODAY. Japan – the return of the “Nuclear Village”?

A first in Japan – The municipal assembly of Genkai in southwestern Japan will request a survey to see if their area is suitable for an underground disposal site for highly radioactive waste. When the Mayor approves this survey, the Saga Prefecture town, will receive up to 2 billion yen ($12.9 million) in state subsidies for allowing the survey.

Local business associations had submitted separate requests for the survey to the assembly, hoping the subsidies and survey activity will prop up the local economy. The associations called on the town, as already a host of a nuclear power plant, to proactively cooperate with the central government.

That would be just the start. The nuclear lobby everywhere is well experienced in arranging “community benefits”. And in nowhere better than Japan.

It starts with the catch-cry of “Jobs Jobs” – first in the construction industry, then in the operations of the nuclear facility, local contractors, and then onward – to the promise of enlivening the local economy. But this wonderful goal is also to be achieved by all sorts of grants and subsidies – “incentives for acceptance” -in Japan Japan: “siting promotion subsidy” – community funds for local development.

For Japan, this could be back to the bad old days.

in the late 1990s, Iida Tetsunari3 coined the term ‘nuclear village’ to describe the ‘syndicate’ of actors pushing Japan’s nuclear power program – institutional and individual pro-nuclear advocates in the utilities, the nuclear industry, the bureaucracy, the Diet (Japan’s parliament), business federations, the media, and academia.

The influence of the nuclear industry over government and the judiciary was powerful and involved ‘regulatory capture’ – industry influence over safety regulation. In safety-related class-action lawsuits, the courts tended to decide in line with government interests to further develop Japan’s nuclear power program

Beyond just “normalisation” of areas hosting nuclear facilities, the “nuclear village” became a celebration of the wonderful, positive role of the nuclear industry in Japanese life, lauded in politics, business, and. education.

That worked out well for Japan, (and for the USA) – in Japan’s great industrial leap forward, and in overcoming and atoning for that old nuclear disaster – the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan’s success became a pointer towards other nuclear villages.

But then came the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in 2011, – and it all ground nearly to a halt. Public opposition to nuclear power has held the industry back over the years since.

But the small global phalanx of nuclear promoters continues to work assiduously to control public opinion. It preys on people’s fear of global heating, and on fears of economic downturn, and promotes nuclear facilities as ‘the answer”. It looks as if that message might now be being heard by at least one municipality in Japan.

Could this be the start of Japan’s nuclear village all over again?