Japan: Exporting a dangerous technology

last updated 8 January 2015

Editorial

Shimpo Hebei Shimbun

Japan is engaging in “double-dealing,” said the Shimpo Hebei Shimbun. After the devastating nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, which rendered the land within a 12-mile radius uninhabitable for decades, this country “cannot be expected to build nuclear power plants within its borders.” It’s simply too dangerous to be politically possible. Yet Japanese firms are more than happy to build such plants overseas, where the victims of the next meltdown will be foreigners. Toshiba is designing a plant in Georgia, the first nuclear facility to be built in the U.S. since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania. GE Hitachi is working on a deal for a plant in Lithuania, and Mitsubishi has plans for one in Jordan. There’s a mistaken assumption out there that the Fukushima accident, preceded as it was by a massive earthquake and tsunami, was “more of a natural disaster and less of a man-made one.” But such an analysis is shallow and misleading. The investigation into the meltdown is still going on, but already it’s obvious that the accident can’t be blamed solely on nature. Until we know all the things that went wrong and how to fix them, we have no business exporting nuclear technology. “Talk of a nuclear renaissance is far too hasty.”