Nuclear Japan

Nuclear Energy has played a defining role in the modern history of Japan, and continues to exert influence on Japan’s policy priorities and international relations. As the only nation to have ever been attacked by nuclear weapons, the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remains deeply rooted in the national psyche, and yet despite widespread anti-nuclear sentiment, nuclear power constituted 30% of Japan’s energy supply until the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster shuttered its entire fleet of 54 nuclear reactors. Now, with a reestablished regulatory agency, and having realized the economic implications of temporarily becoming a non-nuclear state, commercial nuclear energy is incrementally reclaiming a significant place in Japan’s energy policy.

Having been established in the aftermath of WWII in conjunction with U.S. Cold War geo-political strategy, Japan’s commercial nuclear energy industry faces international scrutiny to demonstrate that it has assembled a safety culture that was so devastatingly proven to be lacking when the Tōhoku tsunami swept along the Sanriku coast and inundated the Daiichi Nuclear power plant, causing a total station blackout and meltdowns in 3 reactors, threatening the region with radiation exposure and the long-term viability of commercial nuclear energy worldwide.

It is between these two bookends that Japan’s nuclear policy has developed, as it addressed its commercial energy needs post-war under the influence of U.S pressure while embracing the economic and political advantages that the American nuclear deterrence umbrella afforded.

In this talk, Dr. Kyle Cleveland, a scholar who has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Fukushima and interviewed both Japanese and American government, military and nuclear officials will discuss the history of nuclear energy in Japan, refracted through the lens of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. For more information on this topic, please read Dr. Cleveland's article titled "Mobilizing Nuclear Bias: The Fukushima Nuclear Crisis And The Politics Of Uncertainty" here.