Moves for Anti-nuclear Policy

Annual stockholders’ meetings of electric power companies on Thursday were painted by moves for demanding getting rid of nuclear power generation. However, all those moves were rejected. The companies tried to reserve the nuclear option to stabilize their business, ignoring refugees in Fukushima still being exposed to radioactive materials from broken reactors in First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant owned by Tokyo Electric Power Company. The moves reminded the Japanese of the fact that this nation was divided in two, who wanted to forget the tragedy and who did not.

Stockholders of all nine power companies, except Okinawa Power that did not have nuclear a reactor, submitted each of their meeting proposal for eliminating nuclear power generation. They demanded retreat from nuclear fuel cycle project or taking responsibility on evacuation in emergency of nuclear power plants. In the meeting of Kansai Power, Mayor of Osaka City, Toru Hashimoto, requested resignation of board of directors, threatening retreat as a great stockholder. Outside the buildings, protesters chanted no nukes slogans.

Management boards firmly rejected those requests. “Our mission is stable supply of electric power. We want to deliver it with reasonable price. We regard nuclear power as an important resource,” told Naomi Hirose, President of TEPCO. That was nothing but a blackmail indicating significant price hike unless nuclear power. Encouraged by national government that already decided resumption of nuclear reactors in Japan, all boards of directors emphasized need for resuming safe reactors.

Meanwhile, TEPCO rejected additional compensation for victims in Fukushima. It dismissed request of people in Namie Town, all of them still evacuating home, which was to accumulate compensation by fifty thousand yen per month. Although Center for Solution of Compensation Conflict over Nuclear Accident recommended accepting it, TEPCO ignored it for its survival in business.

Evacuees from devastated area in Fukushima suffer from a lot of physical and mental depressions. Some are exhausted in their life separated from families, and others needed to buy new houses for kicking off their new life. Some actually committed suicide. Anti-nuclear movement is sympathetic for the situation of the victims, and thinks that jeopardy has not been removed. Supporters for nuclear generation are turning their back to the status quo of this country, which holds one hundred and thirty thousand refugees from radioactive materials.

Nuclear power will not be needed next century. This is, in other words, a struggle between who have long-term vision and who only think about their lifetime.