Asahi Shouted Against Nuclear Power and Drove Two People Involved to Suicide. Japan’s Cutting-Edge Technology Was Decommissioned That Day by Lies and Excessive Reporting

The fast breeder reactor “Monju” achieved criticality in Japan as the world’s most advanced nuclear reactor technology, yet it was driven toward decommissioning by the Asahi Shimbun, which exaggerated a sodium coolant leak as a “serious accident,” and by the ignorance of politicians.
In reality, unlike a light-water reactor, it was a minor leak comparable to spilling coffee.
Anti-nuclear reporting drove two people involved to suicide, and Japan’s own media destroyed the country’s most advanced science.
Masayuki Takayama harshly criticizes this “destruction of intellect” by the media, alongside the folly of the Japan Patent Office, and argues that Japan’s scientific spirit must be protected.
Asahi Shouted Against Nuclear Power and Drove Two People Involved to Suicide. Japan’s Cutting-Edge Technology Was Decommissioned That Day by Lies and Excessive Reporting.
January 19, 2024
Unlike a light-water reactor, a coolant leak was about as serious as spilling coffee.
The decision to decommission it was made because of lies and excessive reporting.
This is a chapter originally published on January 17, 2020.
These days, I almost always either watch NHK news only while doing something else, or simply skip it.
I especially do not want to watch NEWS WATCH 9.
The other night, I happened to be watching it.
The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy has the following information on its website:
https://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/about/special/johoteikyo/kosokuro_roadmap.html、
Yet NHK reported on the matter in a negative tone without explaining any of this at all.
What was amusing was Arima, who presumably wanted to advocate opposition to nuclear power.
Perhaps someone in the upper management had finally warned him about excessively arbitrary reporting.
He clearly wanted desperately to make an anti-nuclear comment, but he appeared to be restraining himself with all his might, wearing an expression like that of a child.
Yet even when reporting on the Monju accident, they gave no concrete explanation whatsoever and merely described it as “repeated accidents.”
They are the real villains.
They are the most malicious precisely because they speak as though they were people of good sense, or as though they were conveying the truth.
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s book Trump Does Not Lie.
The preceding passage is omitted.
In the year of the Tokyo Olympics, Junichi Nishizawa, a professor at Tohoku University, filed a patent application for groundbreaking optical communication technology.
The Japan Patent Office returned the application, saying, “The format is defective” and “The meaning is unclear.”
Nishizawa resubmitted it twenty times, but each time a different objection was raised.
He even took the matter to court, but after fighting for twenty years, his patent application was never approved.
At around the same time, Charles Kao, a Chinese acquaintance of Nishizawa, went to the United States and published the same paper as Nishizawa.
He later received the Nobel Prize for it.
Meanwhile, the U.S. company Corning also obtained a patent through Kao for technology strikingly similar to Nishizawa’s.
Using that patent right, Corning sued Sumitomo Electric Industries, which had adopted the Nishizawa method, for patent infringement and won a sweeping victory.
It is a good example of Japanese intelligence being crushed by incompetent Japanese bureaucrats.
The fast breeder reactor “Monju,” once called the reactor of dreams, has effectively been decommissioned.
This, too, began with countries around the world starting at the same time, and Japan achieved its first criticality in 1994.
Russia came second and only recently began operating its reactor.
That shows just how far ahead Japan was, but shortly after Monju began operating, an incident occurred in which some of the sodium used as coolant leaked out.
Unlike a light-water reactor, a coolant leak was about as serious as spilling coffee.
But the timing was bad.
It happened when the foolish Tomiichi Murayama was prime minister and the Asahi Shimbun behaved as though it were the Chief Cabinet Secretary.
Asahi shouted against nuclear power and drove two people involved to suicide.
Japan’s cutting-edge technology had its decommissioning decided that day by lies and excessive reporting.
The Japan Patent Office was not alone in crushing Japanese intellect.
An even more foolish newspaper had joined in.
So what are we going to do from now on?
Asahi recommends, with an air of plausibility, that Japan should proceed slowly with joint development with second-rate France.
Second place is good enough, isn’t it?
What are you, Renhō?
(October 6, 2016 issue)