Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, May 19 2011 (IPS) – More than a hundred young nursing mothers living in Fukushima and nearby areas have signed up to get themselves checked for radiation contamination, but they would rather do it on their own, with no help from the Japanese government.
A laboratory the women have selected will conduct the radiation checks, said nurse Saeko Uno, who recently joined the group Mothers Monitoring Breast Milk Radiation Contamination. This is because we do not trust the government to release the correct figures, she added.

Uno lived 50 kilometres from the Fukushima nuclear plant and harboured her own doubts about it. But she laments that local residents were lulled into a false sense of safety. This is something I will never forget or forgive, she told IPS.

Uno s sentiment reflects that of many Japanese who have reacted with anger and shock this week, after news reports indicated that a large part of the nuclear meltdown had occurred in the Fukushima plant soon after the earthquake struck on Mar. 11. The quake and the tsunami it triggered left more than 15,000 dead over 18 prefectures in eastern Japan.

For the Japanese, who have a traditional respect for authority, the news reports this week indicate that government regulators and nuclear plant operators deliberately withheld information from the public about the Fukushima nuclear plant.

On Tuesday, more than two months after the earthquake, top government spokesperson Yukio Edano admitted that Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) failed to inform the government that the Fukushima plant s cooling system was shut down manually the day the quake struck.
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Fukushima has only convinced more people what we have been saying for so long, said Hideyuki Kojima, a former professor of engineering at Osaka Prefecture University.

Nuclear safety has not been a priority for the company or the government. A citizen s movement is the only way to change the situation, said Kojima, now spokesperson for Mihama Net, a group fighting to stop the operation of the Mihama nuclear plant in western Japan. The Mihama plant is operated by Kansai Electric Power Company, the second largest utility in the country that supplies electricity to western Japan.

A recent opinion poll conducted by Japan s public broadcasting corporation NHK this week found almost 70 percent expressing overwhelming or moderate support for the scrapping of nuclear power and the search for safer alternatives.

Analysts say the rise in public opposition to nuclear plants represents an issue that goes beyond a simple debate on nuclear power and has far-reaching implications for the country.

The unfolding Fukushima nuclear power accident has caused soul-searching in Japan because it has ripped away public trust for the government. People are disheartened and angry, said lawyer Osamu Mikiya, who is calling for the government to be held responsible for inadequate supervision over nuclear facilities and tsunami protection.

Mikiya represented a legal battle filed by workers contaminated in Japan s criticality accident when the precipitation tank containing uranium surged to full capacity in a uranium processing facility in the Tokaimura nuclear plant in Ibaraki prefecture, east of Tokyo in 1999.

Post-quake compensation claims and new law suits being filed by anti-nuclear groups and individuals seeking to stop the operation of nuclear plants mark the deterioration of Japan s traditional respect for authority that was a hallmark of society.

In a bid to contain rising public hostility, the government unveiled a road map this week to support victims of radiation. The plan includes conditions set on TEPCO, which is expected to lower salaries for its employees and management as well as pay up compensation to victims amounting to more than 49 billion dollars.

The issue of whether the government should support victims by bailing out TEPCO is also turning into a thorny issue among politicians acutely aware of voter resentment of the use of public funds for this purpose. The banks that will lend to TEPCO will be backed by the state.

A new plan to raise electricity rates to fund compensation claims has likewise been viewed with disapproval. Only 30 percent showed support for the plan, according to a poll by Asahi Newspaper last week.

Yoshika Shiratori, a long time campaigner against the now closed Hamaoka nuclear plant in Shizuoka prefecture, heads the first citizen s group to sue Chuo Electric Company, its operator.

The ongoing seven-year-old lawsuit is now being fought in the Tokyo District Court, and demands that Chuo immediately halt the nuclear plant because of the risk posed by an earthquake given its location near a tectonic fault line. A verdict in support of the company was meted out in 2007 in the first trial filed by Hamaoka Net, the group headed by Shiratori.

Despite the unprecedented decision by prime minister Naoto Kan to suspend the Hamaoka plant, the lawsuit is ongoing because there is no decision yet made to completely halt operations, which is what is needed, said the 78 year-old anti-nuclear campaigner.

Shiratori recalled the time when the group decided to challenge the company and at the same time raise public awareness on the government policy that supported nuclear power in a country that experiences the largest number of earthquakes in the world.

It was the Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union that galvanised us in Hamaoka to action. We had young families then and wanted to protect our children. The going was tough but we are seeing important change now, he said.