More Japanese want nuclear plants to reopen ahead of 2011 Fukushima disaster anniversary

Local governments have been reluctant to approve the country’s 54 reactors, spread across 17 nuclear power plants, to resume operations. Currently, just 12 reactors at six plants are active after passing stringent new safety tests.

The Asahi has conducted a similar poll every year since 2013. For many years, it showed a stable 30 per cent of people who favoured the plants coming back online while up to 60 per cent opposed. However, those figures shifted radically last year, with 51 per cent in favour and 42 per cent opposed.

The February survey, in contrast, indicates that just 35 per cent of the public still want the reactors to remain shut down.

“There are a number of reasons why opposition is falling but the major factor is the multibillion international campaign by the global nuclear energy industry to convince the world nuclear is the answer to global warming,” said Aileen Mioko Smith, an environmental campaigner with Kyoto-based Green Action Japan.

“The industry has been very successful in convincing ordinary people that nuclear energy is needed while the opponents have not been able to get the other side of the argument out,” she told This Week in Asia.

Smith insists that nuclear energy is far from the climate panacea that it is made out to be and that its drawbacks – including high costs and the obvious dangers in a country prone to natural disasters – are being glossed over.

“I also think these poll figures may be more positive because the operator of the Shika Nuclear Power Plant reported no problems after the Noto earthquake on January 1,” she said.

“If there had been an explosion or some other problem, then that would have reminded people of Fukushima,” she said. “But nothing happened and I think that a lot of