Kishida tells ministers to ease public concerns over nuclear policy

After the disaster at Fukushima everyone was led to believe that the old reactors still in use would be shut down permanently. There were a few here on JT, myself included, that never believed the government would seriously entertain the thought of shutting them down, and finding other sources of clean and safe energy.

As predicted, the government is going to keep these cash cows running for the foreseeable future, and we the people just have to keep our fingers crossed that another disaster like 3/11 never happens again here.

One of the few sensible decisions from the usually incompetent Kishida Government. The bottom line comes to a risk-and-benefit analysis: possibility of highly unlikely nuclear disasters and prospects of freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer without electricity. Countries like France has no limit on lifespan of nuclear power plants.

Drop the price of electricity then we will ease our concerns.

If Fukushima had been built with the proper and essential safety features it would have survived both the earthquake and the tsunami. Having worked in heavy chemical plants I see the need to have the correct level of safety. No one involved in the nuclear industry ever believed there could be a nuclear disaster like Fukushima. Both TEPCO and the government have been very poor with the information and the PR further leading to cause people to have great doubts about the safety of the plants.

There is about ¥15 trillion still to be made from the current fleet of reactors.

People concern are valid, last time government create tax to help Tohoku now is planeed being diverted to defense, how come that not make people concern at all?

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/12/13/national/defense-spending-tohoku-tax/

No need to listen to the public, just crank up the propaganda. It always works.

It absolutely blows my mind that they are this willing to play God with the life's of the Japanese people. I mean, this is actually them saying "We don't care. Just keep the bucks rolling in".

More than half of Japan's electorate are opposed to restarting the reactors, let alone extending the service life of crumbling relics from the '60s.

Yet the LDP will win by a landslide in the next election. And the one after that. And the one after that...

Not the best of all worlds. This is a flawed but necessary move. Negative knee-jerk reaction is understandable but wrong under the circumstances. There are no better alternatives to meet immediate needs at low cost, though casual criticisms are even cheaper...

The Japanese government had maintained the so-called “three non-nuclear principles” as a national policy for a long time: “not possessing, not producing and not permitting the introduction of nuclear weapons into Japan”. This was supported by the nuclear-allergic nation overwhelmingly.

Then entered Hiroyasu Nakasone, the 71st -73rd prime minister, who made a breakthrough in it, initially campaigning to teach the nation that nuclear power was Japan's energy of the future.

How much was the U.S. government involved in this policy shift, I do not know. But soon after the three non-nuclear principles became virtually non-existent. U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carriers were able make Yokosuka their home base without any hitch and nuclear-powered submarines made frequent port calls to Japan with impunity.