![]() ![]() More than a decade later, about 30,000 Japanese citizens who lived near the Fukushima plant are still under evacuation orders (the government lifted a few in early April). “When this accident began - and I say began because it’s not over,” Fackler said at the start of his presentation on Japan’s day-to-day response to the crisis. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. The event, called “ Dry Run for War: How Fukushima Changed Japan and Its Place in the World,” was hosted by the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia, the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and Edwin O. On April 20, Fackler joined Arnold “Arn” Howitt, co-director of the Program on Crisis Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, to discuss how the nuclear accident - the second-worst in history, after Chernobyl - irrevocably altered Japan. His team’s coverage earned them a spot as a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. He reported on the Fukushima accident for The New York Times, arriving in Japan just one day after the quake struck. Fackler, a writer, journalist, and Harvard research fellow, has spent two decades covering Asia. The tsunami knocked out power to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, launching a nuclear meltdown whose fallout still affects Japan’s citizens, international relations, and internal politics to this day, according to Martin Fackler. Together, the two natural disasters claimed close to 20,000 lives, making the event one of the deadliest in Japan’s history.īut the crisis didn’t end there. Waves taller than houses slammed against hundreds of miles of the country’s northern coastline one wave measured 33 feet high. A small group of politicians from both the ruling party and opposition are calling for this to happen faster, but the restarts face hurdles including getting local government approval and a formal safety nod from the national regulator.The strongest earthquake in Japan’s recorded history triggered a massive tsunami in 2011. Only 10 nuclear reactors have been restarted under post-Fukushima safety rules, but Japan’s 2030 energy goals requires nearly all 33 of them to be back online eventually. Countries from South Korea to Belgium have been reassessing the role of nuclear to help speed the transition away from fossil fuels, with the war in Europe making atomic power look even more attractive. Japan is the world’s second-biggest LNG importer, so a revival in atomic power there would have a big impact on global gas markets. See also: Japan Power Crisis Was a Decade in Making and Won’t Go Away If Japan restarts nuclear, the country’s utilities could re-sell spare liquefied natural gas to Europe, he said. “There is a strong tailwind for nuclear power at this moment,” Nobuo Tanaka, a former executive director of the International Energy Agency, said in a Bloomberg TV interview on Monday. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed up energy prices globally, however, and a recent tremor in Japan took several gas- and coal-fired plants offline, leading to the first-ever electricity supply alert for Tokyo. Japanese public opinion moved decisively against atomic power after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami resulted in the meltdown of three reactors at Fukushima, with most of the country’s operable nuclear reactors remaining shut. The newspaper has been conducting semi-regular polls on the issue for more than a decade. That’s up from 44% support for the restarts in a similar survey in September. Some 53% of people said nuclear reactors should restart, if safety can be ensured, while 38% said they should remain shut, according to the poll conducted by the Nikkei. It comes amid surging power prices and warnings of electricity shortages in Tokyo. The survey result marks the first time since the Fukushima disaster in 2011 that an increasing role for nuclear has been favored. (Bloomberg) - For the first time in more than a decade, a narrow majority of Japanese now support restarting idled nuclear reactors, according to a poll in the country’s top business newspaper. ![]()
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