Tokyo's anti-nuclear protesters
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Is the damage to the image of nuclear power beyond repair in Japan?
Transcript(excerpt from advertisement)
YOUNG CHILD: Welcome! Please come in!
YOUNG CHILD 2: Wow look at this place, it's like a hotel! It's beautiful!
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ERIC CAMPBELL, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: For decades, Japan's power giants have spread a reassuring message, nuclear power is safe and makes everyone's life better.
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YOUNG BOY: How beautiful.
NARRATOR: Good days with Tokyo electricity.
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ERIC CAMPBELL: And the biggest corporation of all is TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company.
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NARRATOR: Repeat after me, TEPCO HIKARI"
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ERIC CAMPBELL: With the explosions at TEPCO's quake-damaged reactors are sending a very different message. Nuclear plants don't belong in earthquake zones.
PHILIP WHITE, CITIZENS NUCLEAR INFORMATION CENTRE: You now have a situation where this big earthquake has occurred, aftershocks are happening, I think there's a good argument for shutting them down now. Then you have the electric supply issue. It's a no win situation. But they've created this no win situation, and it was always predictable.
ERIC CAMPBELL: Philip White moved from Adelaide to Japan 15 years ago and works for the Citizens Nuclear Information Centre. For years, this small anti-nuclear group warned an emergency like this was certain to happen.
PHILIP WHITE: We don't feel any satisfaction about seeing what's happening. I mean, it's frightening for us too, because at the moment there is no radiation risk to people in Tokyo, but if we do have a worst case disaster, it will get to Tokyo.
Tokyo withstood the quake with its buildings barely damaged, but this city of 13 million is nervously following each new crisis at the nuclear plants.
ERIC CAMPBELL: What's happened?
HITOMI KAMANAKA, FILM-MAKER: It's exploded.
ERIC CAMPBELL: It just happened now?
HITOMI KAMANAKA: Now, just after 11.
ERIC CAMPBELL: Hitomi Kamanaka is an independent film maker who's documented local opposition to Japan's expanding nuclear program.
Just weeks ago, residents clashed with construction workers at Iwai Island in Japan's west.
HITOMI KAMANAKA: One electric company going to build nuclear power plant, two nuclear power plants, but for 30 years people opposing it, but then they've started at midnight, suddenly this happened, February 21st. I rushed there and then filmed.
ERIC CAMPBELL: She's one of very few journalists who report such conflicts.
HITOMI KAMANAKA: So they are going to be two nuclear power plants newly. This is really an issue. But, you know, media.
ERIC CAMPBELL: Doesn't cover it, so the big media doesn't want to upset the government, or why don't they report it?
HITOMI KAMANAKA: Because the sponsor is electric company, biggest.
ERIC CAMPBELL: For 40 years, Japan's Government has backed the electricity companies, approving more than 50 nuclear plants over the objections of residents and environmentalists.
Now, this area where they're going to build two reactors on this quite beautiful island, that is potentially affected by earthquakes and tsunamis too?
HITOMI KAMANAKA: Yeah, of course. It's facing to the sea, and also next is very close to Kyushu Island and the volcano burst yesterday.
ERIC CAMPBELL: Right.
HITOMI KAMANAKA: On this island?
ERIC CAMPBELL: It has a volcano too next to it, and they're still going to build nuclear power plants.
HITOMI KAMANAKA: Mmm. This big huge earthquake happened, you see how long, how wide affected.
ERIC CAMPBELL: Japan is one of the most earthquake prone countries in the world, but its coastline is dotted with reactors, many using seawater as back up coolant.
This is TEPCO's Fukushima plant filmed by the ABC in 2006. It's now off limits to any cameras, as technicians struggle to prevent the reactor cores melting down. The problem is many people don't know what to believe.
PHILIP WHITE: I think it's highly likely, given accurate information to the best of their knowledge, they could give more information and should give more information, particularly about the radiation from the monitoring posts, but, you know, when you cry wolf, people don't believe you the next time.
ERIC CAMPBELL: TEPCO has form in lying to the public and nuclear inspectors.
In 2002 it was found guilty of deliberately concealing safety breaches. In 2007 it admitted once again that it had failed to report incidents.
PHILIP WHITE: There are many, many, cases where they have misled the public.
ERIC CAMPBELL: Japan might seem a strange country to be so sanguine about the dangers of nuclear energy. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II crippled the nation.
But with America's encouragement, Japan turned to the awesome power of atomic energy to rebuild. Today nearly a third of its electricity comes from nuclear reactors. And some critics claim there's been a conspiracy of silence over the dangers.
HITOMI KAMANAKA: This is very important, the reality of nuclear power plants, and because of people in Japan get only information from electric company, as advertisement and also this is national policy that building more and more nuclear power plants and then people are afraid to go against it and even media. That's why no criticism.
ERIC CAMPBELL: She resigned from the state broadcaster NHK after it refused to run her material criticising power companies.
Local people who stand up to the corporate giants have fought lonely battles.
Even without the media, public attitudes to authority have been changing. And a spate of nuclear accidents has raised doubts.
One of the worst was at the Tokimora uranium processing plant 120km north of Tokyo.
Fifty-five workers were exposed to radiation and 300,000 people ordered to stay indoors after a leak caused by sloppiness and poor safety standards. The Government's response was a litany of failures.
PHILIP WHITE: New things keep coming out. I mean, in the last year, there's been, it's been revealed that a whole lot of parts in nuclear power plants were supposed to have been inspected had never been inspected.
ERIC CAMPBELL: Many insist these failings should not be seen to discredit the entire nuclear program.
Boiling water plants like Fukushima rely on 1960s technology. New designs have stronger safeguards against the perils of earthquakes and tsunamis.
PHILIP WHITE: The Japanese are very, very skilled engineers and they have progressively changed the design of their reactor s as they've observed how they have responded to various earthquakes in the past.
I'm sure they'll do this again and reset the specifications.
ERIC CAMPBELL: Japan faces nervous days as authorities struggle to contain the damage to these reactors. The damage the image of nuclear power may be beyond repair.
LEIGH SALES: Eric Campbell reporting.