TOKYO (Reuters) - several thousand Japanese anti-nuclear demonstrators marched in the rain Saturday, allowing an appeal from the Prime Minister to close a plant at the Centre of Japan and urging more close to avoid another nuclear crisis.
The appeal of the surprise of the Prime Minister Naoto Kan Friday to shut down Hamaoka of Chubu Electric Power Co. plant followed by pressure on the Government to review the policy of nuclear after an earthquake on March 11 and tsunami damaged another plant and triggered the worst disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.
Tens of thousands of residents around the Fukushima Daiichi plant on the northeast coast were ordered to evacuate after radiation leaks in air, soil and sea. Radiation checks led to bans of shipment of some vegetables and fish.
Students, members of the Union and parents with children hoisted on their shoulders walk by neighbourhood of bustling Shibuya in Tokyo to the music and songs, carrying flags written with "Close all clear both plants!" and not "fukushima."
"After Chernobyl, we have collectively forgotten the seriousness, the horror of nuclear power," said Takashi Enari, a businessman who said he protested outside the Fukushima plant after the disaster of 1986 in Ukraine.
"I always thought that they should shut down Hamaoka". It must be rethinking energy policy in this country, "he says, as the other demonstrators marched wearing masks of danger and carrying coloured balloons.
Media, said Saturday that the anti-nuclear of the Japan, a small movement and ignored by the public until the crisis of Fukushima, could become even more vocal after Kan appeal for a judgment of Hamaoka.
Kan said he took the decision "out of" concern for public safety, citing a forecast by government experts who put 87% chance of a magnitude 8.0 earthquake hit the area served by Chubu Electric over the next 30 years.
CHUBU Electric held a meeting of the Commission on Saturday to discuss the decision of the Kan, but has not reached a decision on whether to comply with its request, which is not legally binding.
"The decision is still under discussion," said a spokesman. "We cannot say when exactly the decision will be made, but we would like to reach a rapidly."
POWER SHIFT
Decision of Hamaoka of Kan signals a probable change in the energy policy of the Japan, with the Government now rethink its objective to stimulate the dependence of the country on nuclear power to 50 percent of its power needs by 2030up to a current 30 per cent.
"I am pleased that the closure of Hamaoka but I do not think that it is enough", said social worker Akemi Nomura in Hiroshima, Western Japan, the anti-nuclear protest.
"I want the Yamaguchi plant too close", she says, referring to a plant under construction near Hiroshima one of the two cities hit by atomic bombs dropped by the United States in 1945.
A judgment Hamaoka could also difficult for other utilities restart reactors now closed for scheduled maintenance, with local residents of growing more concerned about security, the Nikkei business said daily Saturday.
Then that would be welcomed by anti-nuclear activists, it might upset worried businesses of energy supply, as well as local Governments concerned of the impact on employment. Media said 1,200 residents of Omaezaki, where the plant in Hamaoka, worked at the facility.
"We would have liked the Government to listen a little more to the local perspective and for that to have reflected on the governance of the national nuclear policy," the Mayor Shigeo Ishihara Omaezaki, told journalists.
(Other reports by Chisa Fujioka, Shinichi Saoshiro;) (Editing by Nick Macfie)
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