The Dec. 16 Lower House election will be the first national-level election held since the 3/11 disasters, including the crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. As if to show their concern over the plight of people whose lives have been disrupted by the nuclear catastrophe and to stress the importance of Japan's future policy on nuclear power generation, leaders of four parties gave their first campaign speeches in Fukushima Prefecture on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) spoke in Iwaki; Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leader Shinzo Abe, in Fukushima City; Nippon Mirai leader Yukiko Kada, in the village of Iitate; and Social Democratic Party chief Mizuho Fukushima, in Aizu Wakamatsu.
Because 160,000 local residents are still forced to live away from their homes due to radioactive contamination, Japan is quake-prone, nuclear waste storage facilities in Japan have little room to accept additional waste and technologies to allow the safe, permanent storage of high-level radioactive waste don't exist, attempts to bring a large number of nuclear reactors back online are likely to cause environmental and ethical problems. On the other hand, forces calling for the eventual abolition of nuclear power generation should realize that many technological and political hurdles must be overcome before they can achieve their goal. Above all, they must develop convincing proposals.