As Japan prepares to restart reactor No. 6 at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, the country’s largest, many local residents remain deeply concerned about the safety of the facility and the effectiveness of evacuation plans in the event of an incident.
The plant, which has the capacity to generate 8.2 gigawatts of electricity when all seven of its reactors are operational, has been offline since 2012 following the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. Now, 15 years after the 2011 triple meltdown that forced the evacuation of 160,000 people, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), the utility that operated Fukushima, is set to defy local opposition and restart the reactor as early as this week.
Ryusuke Yoshida, a 76-year-old potter who lives less than a mile and a half from the plant in the village of Kariwa, expressed deep apprehension about the restart. “The evacuation plans are obviously ineffective,” he said. “When it snows in winter, the roads are blocked, and a lot of people who live here are old. What about them, and other people who can’t move freely? This is a human rights issue.”
Kazuyuki Takemoto, a member of the Kariwa village council, echoed these concerns, noting that seismic activity in the region makes it impossible to guarantee the plant’s safety. “They say that safety improvements have been made since the Fukushima disaster, but I don’t think there is any valid reason to restart the reactor. It’s beyond my comprehension,” he said.
Tepco has sought to assuage local fears, investing 100 billion yen (£470 million) in the Niigata prefecture over the next 10 years and highlighting the plant’s upgraded safety features, including seawalls, watertight doors, and a fleet of fire engines and mobile diesel generators. However, the company has failed to overcome the deep mistrust of many residents, who point to a recent prefectural government poll in which more than 60% of people living within 30 kilometres of the plant said they did not believe the conditions for restarting the facility had been met.
“Gaining understanding and trust from local residents is an ongoing process with no end point, that requires sincerity and continuous effort,” said Tatsuysa Matoba, a Tepco spokesperson.
For many in the community, the decision to restart the plant has been forced upon them by the nuclear industry and its political allies, with little regard for the safety and wellbeing of local residents. As Yoshida put it, “The priority of any government should be to protect people’s lives, but we feel like we have been deceived. Japan’s nuclear village is alive and well. You only have to look at what’s happening here to know that.”