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The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster and the Tokyo Olympics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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To the question, when did you decide to commit to the abolition of nuclear power, Koide Hiroaki replies without hesitation, “October 23, 1970.” It was March 2015 when Koide retired as assistant professor from the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute. If we add together the lead-up to that decision and his activities following retirement, we come up with a half-century of dedication to the cause of stopping the nuclear generation of electricity, a keystone of postwar national policy.
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Notes
1 Much of the following account draws on Koide's multiple public lectures and interviews as well as author interview on July 22, 2018. For the college years, see especially the evocative essay, “Sōmatō no yō ni meguru omoide” [Like memories swirling on a revolving lantern], Narisuna No. 201 (September 2005), available here.
2 Of course, it was US President Dwight Eisenhower who launched the strategic dream of “peaceful uses” with its special implications for Japan with his “Atoms for Peace” speech before the UN General Assembly on December 8, 1953, not three months before the fateful Castle Bravo shot on Bikini atoll on March 1, 1954. See Yuki Tanaka and Peter Kuznick's “Japan, the Atomic Bomb, and the ‘Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Power,‘” APJ-Japan Focus (May 2, 2011) and Ran Zwigenberg, “The Coming of a Second Sun”: The 1956 Atoms for Peace Exhibit in Hiroshima and Japan's Embrace of Nuclear Power,“ APJ-Japan Focus (February 4, 2012).
3 Even while acknowledging its importance: see interview, “Koide Hiroaki-san ni kiku: ‘Genshiryoku mura’ de wa naku ‘genshiryoku mafia’ da” [Mr. Koide Hiroaki's views: It's not a “nuclear village” but a “nuclear mafia”] (March 24, 2015).
4 The relative poverty of the areas where nuclear power plants have been constructed is an integral aspect of siting considerations. Koide is acutely sensitive to these and other discriminatory practices. “Remote,” in any case, is an exquisitely relative designation in a country as small and densely populated as Japan. See here for a series of four maps of Japan, showing nuclear power stations in relation to major cities. If circles with a 20 km radius (12 miles) are drawn around each plant, major cities fall outside their perimeters. But the situation changes drastically if the circle is expanded to 100 kms (62 miles). Double that, to 200 kms (124 miles), and virtually all of Japan, never mind major cities, will be covered by overlapping circles.
5 As of April 2018, the Kyoto University Institute for Integrated Radiation and Nuclear Science (Kyoto Daigaku Fukugō Genshiryoku Kagaku Kenkyūsho).
6 Koide moreover considers the Kumatori site as having been acquired by deception, inasmuch as Kyoto University signed an official agreement guaranteeing the impossible: that no radioactive materials would be released into the air or in the effluent discharged from the Institute.
7 See, for instance, “Tōdai nara katsudō dekinakatta; Kyōdai Koide jokyō ga konshun taishoku” [I couldn't have sustained my activities at Todai; Kyodai assistant professor Koide retiring this spring], Sunday Mainichi, March 15, 2018; and “Koide Hiroaki Kyōdai jokyō teinen intabyū [Koide Hiroaki, Kyoto University assistant professor, retirement intervew], Tokyo Shimbun, March 23, 2015, available here.
8 Text of speech, delivered in English, here.
9 See here.
10 Mainichi report, beginning with actual Board of Audit accounting from October 2018.
11 See “Japan's Olympics Chief Faces Corruption Charges in France,” New York Times, January 11, 2019.
12 “Radiation Doses Underestimated in Study of City in Fukushima,” Asahi Shimbun, January 9, 2019. See also “Journal flags articles about radiation exposure following Fukushima disaster” in Retraction Watch; and especially, Shin-ichi Kurokawa and Akemi Shima, “A Glass Badge Study That Failed and Betrayed Residents: A Study with Seven Violations of Ethical Guidelines Can Be No Basis for Government Policies,” Kagaku, Vol. 89:2, February 2019.
13 “Shinsaigo ‘hōshasen niko-niko shiteiru hito ni eikyō nai’ Yamashita Nagasaki-dai kyōju ‘shinkoku na kanōsei’ kenkai kiroku” [“No radiation effects on people who keep smiling” post-earthquake: Record of “serious possibility” noted by Nagasaki University Professor Yamashita], Tokyo Shimbun, January 28, 2019.
14 “Kantei ni ‘ekigaku chōsa fuyō‘ Fukushima gempatsu jiko de Hōiken riji” [“No epidemiological study necessary”: Director of NIRS to Prime Minister's Office following Fukushima nuclear accident], Tokyo Shimbun, February 18, 2019.
15 “‘Seika rirē’yūchi ni hisaichi Fukushima no jūmin ga hiyayaka na wake” [Why the disaster-afflicted residents of Fukushima are cool to hosting the ‘Olympic torch’ relay], Shūkan Kinyōbi (October 31, 2018). See also her “Follow Up on Thyroid Cancer! Patient Group Voices Opposition to Scaling Down the Fukushima Prefectural Health Survey,” APJ-Japan Focus (January 15, 2017).