| | This "article" is a news-free anti-nuclear screed. There is no talk of production or efficiency - only risk, worry:
...only country to have suffered a full-scale nuclear attack...
It seems odd, then, that it is so addicted to nuclear energy...especially odd...vulnerability to natural disasters like earthquakes.
Despite the acute public sensitivity...
So when the US began promoting nuclear technology in the 1950s under the slogan "Atoms for Peace", Japan - by now a close Cold War ally - eagerly signed up.
Concern over nuclear safety was not widespread back then...
Japan's powerful bureaucrats...with little dissent from most of its citizens.
...more Japanese to question their own nuclear industry, but they remained a tiny and powerless minority.
The real catalyst for the growth of the anti-nuclear movement in Japan has been a string of accidents...
.. workers...mixing dangerous quantities of uranium...were Japan's first nuclear casualties since 1945.
And Japan's worst accident ...took place ... five workers were killed by scalding steam ...
... all 12 power companies admitted to thousands of irregularities in reporting past problems.
...residents across Japan have started resisting...
The courts..inclined...to act against the nuclear industry.
A pervasive culture of secrecy...
...hostility to whistleblowers...
Existing regulations...withstand an earthquake of magnitude 6.5...potential earthquakes could be a lot stronger than that...
One plant...is built directly on top of a major fault line...but...the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was measured at more than 9.0...
But Japan's record suggests that future accidents...
Opponents of nuclear power also worry...weapons...although the constitution currently bars such a move.
...eclipse all these concerns...
Its citizens can only pray...
Ted Keer
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