If anti-nuclear arguments based on waste disposal were universally valid, consistent international action would be required. Yet Japan shut down nuclear power while China and South Korea rapidly expanded it. This essay examines how Japan’s industrial weakening aligns with rival national strategies—and asks who is enabling that outcome.

2016-03-14

Before introducing Mr. Narabayashi’s paper, there is something that must be stated.

A major factor cited by those who align with the absolute anti-nuclear stance advocated by Asahi Shimbun is the issue of nuclear waste.

The first time I encountered this argument was in footage reported from Finland by 古舘伊知郎, the host of TV Asahi’s 報道ステーション.

Now, if this argument were absolutely valid in the international community as well,

what they should devote all their efforts to doing would be obvious.

South Korea is rapidly increasing the number of nuclear power plants, particularly along the Sea of Japan coast.

China is expanding nuclear power even more aggressively.

Newspapers such as Asahi Shimbun should immediately go to the United Nations, which they so admire, and launch a major campaign to prohibit this massive expansion.

Otherwise, their logic has no legitimacy whatsoever. It is meaningless.

Now then, in inverse proportion to the comprehensive shutdown of nuclear power under the 菅直人 administration, South Korea and China swiftly made government decisions to massively expand nuclear power.

I find this sequence of events deeply suspicious.

It is common knowledge that China and South Korea are considerably inferior to Japan in nuclear technology.

It is self-evident that a complete shutdown of nuclear power leads to the weakening of Japan’s nuclear industry. In fact, the number of students entering nuclear engineering programs must have declined sharply.

The weakening of the nuclear industry directly results—just as with the former electronics manufacturers—in the outflow of Japan’s world-class engineers to China and South Korea, which have decided to dramatically expand nuclear power.

I am convinced that this is their national strategy: to cause the decline of the world’s finest Japanese nuclear industry, cultivate their own nuclear sectors, rapidly reduce Japan’s national strength, and place themselves in a position of superiority.

If that is the case, then who is it that is being manipulated by their national strategy, and who is working exactly as they intend to weaken Japan and diminish its national power?
Japan and the Japanese people would do well to think carefully about this.