Last week I compared the Catholic Church in Boston and Japan's "nuclear village" of atomic-power advocates — two powerful institutions that stifled embarrassing revelations for some time. The Oscar-winning film "Spotlight" depicts the comeuppance of the church hierarchy after investigative reporters from The Boston Globe broke the story about pedophile priests in 2002, including how the church chose to reassign them to other unsuspecting dioceses where they continued to prey on children.
Unlike the pedophiles and their enablers, the nuclear industry has avoided accountability over its culture of wishing risk away and corner-cutting that put public safety at risk. The nuclear village has also overcome massive demonstrations and opposition to nuclear power and revved up a reactor near quake-stricken Kumamoto despite having a dubious evacuation plan and its proximity to active volcanoes. And now two "antique" reactors in Takahama, Fukui Prefecture, have been cleared to operate beyond their 40-year shelf life. The Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant was given an identical clearance just a fortnight before the three meltdowns in 2011. On April 24, Gerald Curtis, professor emeritus at Columbia University, appeared on TBS and questioned the wisdom of operating nuclear reactors in such an earthquake-prone nation. Lessons ignored?
U.N. Special Rapporteur David Kaye — who recently put a spotlight on the Abe administration's media-muzzling ways — cited a star journalist in the Asahi Shimbun's award-winning investigative team working on the Fukushima debacle who was punished for his reporting with a salary cut and reassignment to a clerical job. Japan's nuclear village took down the Asahi's investigative team, clipping the wings of the media organization that did most to expose the mismanagement of risk and regulatory capture that lay at the heart of Japan's Chernobyl. For many journalists it remains hard to understand why the Asahi rolled over and conceded without a fight. For others, it is an object lesson of what happens to those who speak truth to power.