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JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): It’s been three years since a tsunami destroyed the Fukushima nuclear reactor in Japan, and forced the government to shut down the plants that remained. Today, regulators announced they would speed up safety checks on a pair of idle reactors in southwest Japan, a key step in the prime minister’s push to restart them and others.
NewsHour science correspondent Miles O’Brien looks at the debate raging in the country about that idea.
MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour): In Japan, a meticulous and massive cleanup is under way near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
They are scraping off two inches of soil contaminated with cesium and other radionuclides expelled from the plant after a series of explosions triggered by the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011. The contaminated soil is bagged, placed on a watertight pad, and then covered with a tarp. It will be stored like this until a permanent site can be found.
The radioactive cesium will remain in the soil for 300 years. At Yutaka and Keiko Hakozaki home in Naraha, the cleanup apparently worked. We took some Geiger counter readings in their yard. Cesium levels were 0.204 microsieverts per hour, just under the government limit of 0.23.
Still, the Hakozakis are unsure about returning to their home, but their feelings about nuclear power are now etched in stone.
“We experienced this accident firsthand, which is all the more reason we think that nuclear power plants are not suitable for this country,” he said.
Right now in Japan, not a single nuclear power plant is online generating electricity, 48 nuclear reactors, able to generate 30 percent of Japan’s electrical demand, idle while this country decides if the Hakozakis are right or if turning the nukes back on is prudent, perhaps even mandatory, to maintain Japan’s highly electrified lifestyle.
Japan is making up for the idle nuclear facilities by running their fossil fuel plants at full-tilt, importing $266 billion worth of oil, gas and coal last year. In the country where the Kyoto protocols were drafted, CO2 emissions are up 13 percent.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing an energy policy that would turn the nuclear plants back on as soon as they meet more stringent safety standards adopted after the Fukushima meltdowns. While he has the votes in parliament to make that happen, he doesn’t have much support on the street. In fact, polls show as much as 80 percent of voters here now oppose nuclear power.
And large, noisy protests like this outside Abe’s office are a regular occurrence.
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