Tokyo Electric Power Co. has shut down its final running reactor, leaving Japan with just one reactor online and a city and town stuck between heightened safety concerns and fears about their economic survival.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. has shut down its final running reactor, leaving Japan with just one reactor online and a city and town stuck between heightened safety concerns and fears about their economic survival.
Unit 6 at the TEPCO’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Niigata Prefecture was shut down for regular maintenance on the night of March 25. Hokkaido Electric Power Co.’s reactor at the Tomari nuclear plant in Hokkaido is now the only one in Japan generating electricity, and it is scheduled to go offline on May 5.
All 54 of Japan’s reactors will be idle unless some can be restarted after clearing safety tests. But the government’s plan to restart reactors before the summer has run into opposition in light of the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant that started in March last year.
Although the people of Kashiwazaki and Kariwa are aware of the risks involved with the nuclear plant, they also consider the nuclear plant the lifeline of their economies.
A 62-year-old electrician who works at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant said he is afraid of losing his job after maintenance work on Unit 6 is complete--and if safety concerns delay the restarts of the plant’s seven reactors.
“I will manage to make a living if the nuclear plant is operating,” said the man, an employee of a TEPCO subcontractor.
Yet he also knows firsthand that safety must be confirmed before utilities are allowed to resume reactor operations.
The electrician lives with his wife and mother in Kashiwazaki because their home in Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, is 12 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima plant and within the 20-km no-entry zone.
“If an accident occurred (at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant), what has happened in Fukushima Prefecture would unfold here as well,” he said. “We can no longer assert that nuclear power plants are safe without a solid basis.”
However, keeping the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa reactors offline for an extended period would affect revenue and employment in the area.
As of March 1, 5,702 people of TEPCO subcontractors worked at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, as well as 1,235 TEPCO employees.
A member of the Kashiwazaki municipal assembly who promotes nuclear power said that restarting the reactors at the plant is a matter of life or death for the city of about 90,000.
“If the plant remains idle in the future, it would amount to losing a company with a work force of 5,000,” said 74-year-old assemblyman. “Kashiwazaki would be dead.”
About 14 percent of Kashiwazaki’s expected revenues for fiscal 2012 come from taxes and subsidies related to the nuclear plant.
The percentage jumps to 30 percent at neighboring Kariwa, a village that co-hosts the plant and has a population of about 5,000.
According to a survey by the Kashiwazaki Chamber of Commerce and Industry last summer, 289 member companies, or 44 percent, said they were involved in nuclear power-related business deals. For 56 companies, more than half of their sales revenues came from such deals.
Masao Saikawa, head of the chamber, said he was surprised at how dependent local companies were on the nuclear power industry.
“We should cut our reliance on the nuclear power plant, but the truth is that we cannot make a swift change,” he said.
A local group comprising 25 people from Kashiwazaki and Kariwa, including proponents and opponents of nuclear power, has yet to reach a consensus on restarting the reactors.
The group was founded after media reports in 2002 said that TEPCO had falsified 29 inspection data to cover up problems at the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear plants--and the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant.
At a meeting in February, some group members argued that operations at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant should be suspended until the causes of the Fukushima accident are established.
But others said the plant should be restarted for the local economy and employment.
Yoshiko Arano, who heads the group, said discussions cannot move forward because of the lack of information about the Fukushima plant accident.
“We have been unable to obtain information from the central government and TEPCO on what we really want to know,” she said. “So we are stuck between the pros and cons.”
Masahiro Sakurai, a former Kashiwazaki municipal assembly member, said the Fukushima accident has driven home the point that even progress of science cannot tame Mother Nature.
Four years ago, Sakurai ran for mayor on a campaign promise to promote nuclear power-related businesses. He was defeated by Hiroshi Aida, who called for the eventual reduction of nuclear power, by only 1,021 votes.
Sakurai said the nation’s worst-ever nuclear accident has completely transformed his perception. He disbanded his support group and retired from politics to focus on managing a cram school in the city.
“We should pull out of nuclear power generation,” he said.
(This article was compiled with reports by Kohei Tomida and Kentaro Uechi.)