More from the Japan Times

The J.Times is turning into a battlefield over the nuclear issue. This may be good for its circulation, but it demonstrates neatly part of the whole problem: the media benefits by keeping an artificial controversy alive. If decisions were made on a rational basis, and newspaper articles were fact-checked against the scientific consensus, there would be no 'battleground'.

So in the last few weeks,

I wrote a letter in reply to this misinformed piece, which makes the common fundamental mistake of supposing that the Fukushima accident is part of Japan's decline, rather than the country's nuclear retreat being the problem.

Nuclear retreat signals decline

In his March 12 Community page article, “Do dire predictions for Japan factor in a rush for the exits?,” Colin P.A. Jones makes a tragic error, an error repeated all too often in the media by those critical of both nuclear power and Japan’s general direction. He sees the government’s response to the Fukushima accident as symptomatic of a deeper malaise in Japan itself. This is wrong for two reasons.
For one, the government’s handling of the situation, despite problems, has been praised by international bodies like the International Atomic Energy Agency. If anything, authorities were overcautious in response to an accident that resulted in zero deaths or injuries. More importantly, far from the Fukushima accident illustrating the government’s misplaced priorities, Japan’s retreat from nuclear power is part of its general decline.
This irony is not lost on observers of Japan’s economic and diplomatic rival, China, which has displayed a much more pragmatic and rational approach to nuclear energy.
Following the accident at Fukushima, that country launched a nationwide safety review. Construction resumed last year, and there are now 30 plants under construction.
China’s nuclear boom is emblematic of the country’s economic and technological growth, and those plants will provide power to the nation’s factories, many of which, by the way, are busy making things once made in Japan. By comparison, Japan seems obsessed with navel-gazing and is even considering a permanent return to the evils of coal, oil and gas.
It’s enough to make anyone “rush for the exits.”



I thought at first the letter had dissappeared without making much of a splash, but in fact it elicicited this counter-letter. The author brings up the issue of '13,000' deaths caused by the evacuation, when in reality people who died in the evacuation were killed not by radiation, but by Fear of Radiation, a very different beast indeed.

Then, like every other person opposed to nuclear power he is faced with the dilemma of how to deal with its ability to generate electricity without producing carbon emissions. In response he chooses to deny the reality of global warming.

When it comes to the issue of climate change, nuclear power has the incredible ability to mitigate global warming while still providing colossal amounts of energy. This is a truly game-changing capability. Every person opposed to nuclear power must either ignore this ability, an indefensible hypocrisy, or argue the route of climate change denialism.

This is a stark choice indeed.