The third reactor at the Tomari nuclear plant in Hokkaido, Japan, has gone off line because of periodical inspection. This has put the whole country in a peculiar, but very interesting, and very encouraging, situation. For the first time since 1970, no reactor in the whole country is actually generating electricity. Compared to that time when there were only two reactors, we have as many as fifty at the moment. There were four more before the Fukushima disaster in March last year, but they were seriously damaged.
The stoppage of the above reactor is therefore really epoch-making. It ceased to generate at 11pm, 5 May, and came to a complete halt in the small hours of the next day. There were gatherings at many places, even in front of the plant itself, on 5 May which is the Children's Day, a public holiday. It has been called, if not by all but certainly by many, as the Day of Zero Nuclear Generation. People have declared that we should not give those plants to the children as our legacy.
Not all of the other reactors are in inspection at the same time. Some have come out of it, and are technically capable of operating. The government and the business organizations want them to start working. But the shock of the Fukushima is still so great that the government is not quite in a position to say 'yes'. They have been prevented from saying so, at least by now.
What if all the sources of power supply are cut off as in Fukushima? Has it been certified that areas where the reactors are located quake-proof, and tsunami-proof? And what is the condition at Fukushima itself now? Those questions still remain to be answered. Meanwhile the number of the operative reactors has decreased one by one. Finally it has come to zero.
So we are, in a sense, nuclear-free at the moment. Great, isn't it? I hope this will continue indefinitely. Nuclear power is something too dangerous for the humanity at their present level of knowledge to handle. Many people would agree with this. That is why they have been encouraged by achieving zero generation. Many others, however, are not yet convinced. They accept the danger of nuclear power, but still would ask, by what means do we get power, then?
Well, we have obtained at least some space this time where we can discuss the question. Let us discuss it as part of the larger one of what shape Japan is going to take in the future, and what kind of relations we are going to have with our neighbours. That space may be limited, but it is where our civil society is expected to grow more self-confident.
The stoppage of the above reactor is therefore really epoch-making. It ceased to generate at 11pm, 5 May, and came to a complete halt in the small hours of the next day. There were gatherings at many places, even in front of the plant itself, on 5 May which is the Children's Day, a public holiday. It has been called, if not by all but certainly by many, as the Day of Zero Nuclear Generation. People have declared that we should not give those plants to the children as our legacy.
Not all of the other reactors are in inspection at the same time. Some have come out of it, and are technically capable of operating. The government and the business organizations want them to start working. But the shock of the Fukushima is still so great that the government is not quite in a position to say 'yes'. They have been prevented from saying so, at least by now.
What if all the sources of power supply are cut off as in Fukushima? Has it been certified that areas where the reactors are located quake-proof, and tsunami-proof? And what is the condition at Fukushima itself now? Those questions still remain to be answered. Meanwhile the number of the operative reactors has decreased one by one. Finally it has come to zero.
So we are, in a sense, nuclear-free at the moment. Great, isn't it? I hope this will continue indefinitely. Nuclear power is something too dangerous for the humanity at their present level of knowledge to handle. Many people would agree with this. That is why they have been encouraged by achieving zero generation. Many others, however, are not yet convinced. They accept the danger of nuclear power, but still would ask, by what means do we get power, then?
Well, we have obtained at least some space this time where we can discuss the question. Let us discuss it as part of the larger one of what shape Japan is going to take in the future, and what kind of relations we are going to have with our neighbours. That space may be limited, but it is where our civil society is expected to grow more self-confident.
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