April 22, 2015

Survey shows strong opposition, concern over nuclear power

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20150422p2a00m0na015000c.html

Seventy percent of Japanese are against restarting the country's nuclear reactors, and 90 percent believe nuclear disaster evacuation plans in their municipality are insufficient, according to a recent survey.

Tokyo Woman's Christian University professor emeritus Hirotada Hirose conducted the opinion survey about Japan's nuclear power plants March 4-16. To eliminate weighting the results towards certain demographics, polltakers were sent to homes in 200 locales across Japan. A total of 1,200 people between the ages of 15 and 79 responded.

Asked about the possibility of an incident at a nuclear power plant as severe as the Fukushima nuclear crisis, 22 percent of the pollees said they thought such an incident would occur, and another 52 percent said that such an incident was likely to occur. Meanwhile, only 1 percent told the survey that such an incident would not happen, while another 24 percent said such an incident was unlikely to occur.

When asked if they thought evacuation plans mapped out by municipal governments were sufficient, 37 percent of respondents said "absolutely insufficient" and another 50 percent said they were "somewhat insufficient."

Asked about restarting currently idled nuclear reactors, 45 percent said they were "somewhat opposed" and another 26 percent said they were "absolutely opposed." Twenty-four percent of respondents said that they supported restarting reactors "to some extent," while only 4 percent "strongly" supported reactivation.

In addition, 85 percent of the pollees said that permission for restarts should be obtained from all municipalities within 30 kilometers of a nuclear plant, not just from host municipalities as is currently the case. Just 10 percent said the decision to back reactor reactivations should be made solely within host municipalities. Furthermore, 53 percent said that use of nuclear energy should be reduced in phases while approving reactor restarts for the time being.

Hirose says the survey shows that people's sense of danger over nuclear power has not faded in the four years since the Fukushima nuclear crisis began, citing insufficient measures from authorities to prevent future disasters.