If anti-nuclear arguments based on nuclear waste are universally valid, consistent international action would be unavoidable. Yet while Japan halted its nuclear program, China and South Korea rapidly expanded theirs. This essay examines that contradiction and questions who truly benefits from Japan’s industrial and technological decline.

2016-03-13

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

One of the main arguments cited by those who align themselves with the absolute opposition to nuclear power advocated by Asahi Shimbun concerns 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 increasing them 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 ban 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 plants by the 菅直人 administration, South Korea and China made swift 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.

Who can say that the weakening of the nuclear industry will not lead—just as with the former electronics manufacturers—to 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 weaken 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.