Can Japan afford nuclear power? Can Japan afford to dispense with nuclear power? If the answer to both questions is no — as, in the wake of the Fukushima reactor meltdowns, it appears it may be — we are at a fukurokōji (袋小路, impasse). What to do?
Prime Minister Naoto Kan is often criticized as ketsudanryoku ga nai (決断力がない, indecisive). No doubt he is, and yet who wouldn't be in the face of the jirenma (ジレンマ, dilemma) he confronts? Under current circumstances, the only way not to be indecisive is to be mubō (無謀, reckless), which is probably worse.
On May 6, Kan requested that Chubu Electric Power Co. teishi suru (停止する, shut down) its genshiryoku hatsudensho (原子力発電所, nuclear power plant) at Hamaoka in Shizuoka Prefecture. Why a yōsei (要請, request) and not a meirei (命令, order)? Because he has no legal authority to issue the latter. In any case, Chubu Electric complied. The Hamaoka reactor sits on a katsudansō (活断層, active fault). "Kongo sanjūnenkan de 87 pāsento no kakuritsu de okiru" (「今後三十年間で８７パーセントの確率 で起きる 」 "an 87 percent chance of occurring within the next 30 years") is what seismologists say of the devastating jishin (地震, earthquake) potentially brewing along it. So inevitable is it considered to be that it has already been given a name: Tokai Jishin (東海地震, the Tokai Earthquake).