Through the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s excessive regulation, the scrapping of Monju, obstruction of reactor restarts, and false reporting by Asahi Shimbun, this essay sharply exposes the distortions in Japan’s nuclear administration and anti-nuclear discourse.
It vividly portrays the confusion in post-Fukushima policymaking, along with the resentment and deception behind it.

2019-06-07
Correcting such injustices should also be the job of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, but that side is simply left untouched.
An ugly Princess Kaguya is unbearable to look at.

The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s renowned column “Henken Jizai” published in Shukan Shincho, which went on sale yesterday.
It is a splendid essay that proves he is truly the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
It is the finest essay in the world, filled with facts that all Japanese people and people throughout the world should know.
The Malicious Princess Kaguya.
When the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute was established in Tokai Village, the first thing that changed drastically was the academic performance of the local elementary and junior high schools.
They became the best in the prefecture.
That was only natural, since the children of young nuclear physicists attended them, but another thing that changed was the spread of the Reds.
While studying beta decay and the Cherenkov effect amid blue skies, the wide sea, and green pine groves, one would suddenly start thinking about Gramsci or the Harahara Tokei.
People decided that nuclear power could not be entrusted to such people, and so the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation was created by pulling away competent personnel.
With a generous budget, Dōnen improved the performance of nuclear plants, and even the dream reactor “Monju” began to operate.
With the resentment of the Atomic Energy Research Institute behind it, Dōnen bloomed gloriously.
Then everything darkened because of that great tsunami and Naoto Kan.
A man incompetent yet fully endowed with cunning chose South Korean-made solar panels over nuclear power.
That cunning man placed into the all-powerful Nuclear Regulation Authority a person from the grudge-ridden Atomic Energy Research Institute.
Stalin placed Jewish guards in German POW camps and had them commit cruelties even worse than Auschwitz.
It was similar to that.
The first chairman, Tanaka Shunichi, immediately stopped all nuclear plants, just as expected.
Prove that the strata beneath the nuclear plants have not moved for 300,000 years.
If you do that, I will let them operate.
That was harsher than the demands of Princess Kaguya.
Most nuclear plants still have no prospect of restarting.
Even so, Tanaka, though evil, was still comparatively reasonable.
Regarding the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant, which had at last been able to restart, Asahi Shimbun reported, “The surrounding radiation monitors are not functioning.
In the event of an accident, residents would not know where to flee.”
The report even carried comments from a senior Nuclear Regulation Agency official saying, “The restart came too early,” and in the next day’s editorial it dismissed the matter by saying, “It is too sloppy to even be worth discussing.”
But the radiation monitors were functioning normally, and the remarks were also fabricated by the reporter.
Everyone will surely be astonished and appalled by this fact.
I said to the friend beside me that one wonders just how rotten a newspaper Asahi is.
Tanaka sternly criticized it, saying, “They are stirring up residents’ fears with lies.
It is already criminal.”
Incidentally, Asahi offered neither apology nor correction.
It sneered as if saying, “If it is anti-nuclear, then everything is innocent.”
Asahi also made an uproar over the approval to restart the Takahama Nuclear Power Plant.
“What if a missile comes from North Korea?” it asked.
Tanaka replied, “Rather than aiming at a tiny nuclear plant, it would make far more sense to drop it into the very center of Tokyo.”
The moment it was launched, North Korea would perish.
There is no reason they would aim for a remote stretch of seashore.
In his own way, Tanaka tried to persuade the residents and criticize a foolish newspaper.
But the second chairman, Sarada Toyoshi, had no such common sense.
He moved solely out of resentment.
First, he decided to decommission Monju.
This was no elementary school experiment, yet he destroyed a one-trillion-yen undertaking simply because some sodium had spilled.
Nuclear plants too apparently looked to him like the robes of Dōnen monks.
He raised the hurdle for restart approvals to the utmost limit.
For example, although the scientific figure for a tsunami on the Sea of Japan side is a maximum of five meters, he demanded preparations for more than double that.
If an earthquake comes, liquefaction will occur.
He began saying, “Assume unprecedented liquefaction,” and demanded that thousands of reinforced piles be driven down to a depth of fifty meters underground.
He also demanded anti-terror measures.
In the United States, under the assumption that a Phantom fighter jet might crash into a reactor building and cause a fire, backup power supplies and cooling-water pools were made mandatory for each nuclear plant.
Taking that as his reference, Sarada demanded, “In Japan, assume a terrorist attack in which four jumbo jets crash into the plant.”
To meet that requirement, a 50,000-ton cooling-water pool large enough to float the battleship Yamato would be needed fifty meters underground.
Right now, each nuclear plant is digging that underground pool with all its might.
Separate from this, there was also an additional order, with a deadline, to install emergency power supplies and an operations command room deep underground.
If you cannot make it in time, assume there will be no approval.
Thus, construction works surpassing even the underground Imperial Headquarters at Matsushiro are now being carried out quietly and steadily at each nuclear plant.
The cost amounts to hundreds of billions of yen.
Yet doubts remain.
The enemy is Al-Qaeda or North Korea.
Why should the defense against them be imposed on each individual nuclear plant?
If there is concern, then surely the proper course is for the Nuclear Regulation Authority to have the government provide security.
The lie of the annual 1 millisievert still continues to prevail.
And in dependence on that lie, anti-nuclear profiteers have sprung up one after another.
Correcting such injustices should also be the job of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, but that side is simply left untouched.
An ugly Princess Kaguya is unbearable to look at.