Reversing
his campaign pledge to reduce Japan’s reliance on nuclear power even as he had
just been elected as prime minister of Japan in 2012 (Tepco’s nuclear
power-plant meltdown having occurred in 2011), Shinzo Abe announced that he
would have more nuclear reactors built in Japan. “They will be completely different from those at
the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant,” he
said in a television interview.[1]
Adding a silver lining on to a rather gray, radioactive cloud, he said, “With
public understanding, we will be building anew.”[2]
This change in policy is dramatic, for the previous administration--that of
Yoshihiko Noda—had sought to phase out nuclear power in Japan by 2040. In fact,
Abe’s own party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), had in its platform the
goal “to establish an economy and society that does not need to rely on nuclear
power.”[3]
That the shift took place within the
LDP suggests a shift in its power-dynamics, with the pro-nuclear sub-faction
astonishingly having gained the upper hand over its rival while memories of the
tsunami-triggered meltdown were undoubtedly still fresh.
The full essay is at "On the Political Power of Nuclear Power"
The full essay is at "On the Political Power of Nuclear Power"
1. Hiroko Tabuchi, “Japan’s
New Leader Endorses Nuclear Plants,” The
New York Times, December 30, 2012.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.