We air a talk by Aileen Miyoko-Smith. Aileen is the Executive Director of Green Action Japan. She has been working for 30 years against nuclear power in Japan, and her talk, which she gave in June at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, is about her work to keep shuttered Japanese nuclear power plants from starting up again.
After the Fukushima disaster began in 2011, all nuclear power plants in Japan were shut down. There were massive, unprecedented demonstrations, and many lawsuits against TEPCO and the government.
Despite these protests, the Abe government has a goal of restoring 20% of Japan's power to nuclear by the year 2030. Right now, only 1% is coming from nuclear. There are nuclear 43 plants in this small country which is located on the Ring of Fire, the seismically active circle of convergent tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean. Only two plants are operational at this time.
Having survived the shutdown, public opinion supports keeping the nuclear plants closed. But the economy has been in a slump for decades, so public support for closing the plants weakens when people are told it will further depress the economy by making energy more expensive.
Stay tuned to learn about who's fighting back, the state of monitoring for contamination and health impacts in Japan and the US, what Aileen thinks we should be doing in the U.S., the relocation of residents including those with special needs, the role of gender in Japanese nuclear politics, threats to Japan's Peace Constitution, the new Secrecy Law, and how it is all playing out given yesterday's Japanese parliamentary elections, where the governing Liberal Democratic government of Shinzo Abe is claiming victory.