Mayor of Town That Hosted Fukushima Nuclear Plant Says He Was Told: “No Accident Could Ever Happen”

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! on Pacifica Radio, reports from Tokyo:

'We speak with Katsutaka Idogawa, former mayor of the town of Futaba where part of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is located. The entire town was rendered uninhabitable by the nuclear disaster. We ask him what went through his mind after the earthquake and tsunami hit on March 11, 2011. "It was a huge surprise, and at the time I was just hoping nothing that had happened at the nuclear power plant. However, unfortunately there was in fact an accident there," Idogawa recalls. He made a decision to evacuate his town before the Japanese government told people to leave. "If I had made that decision even three hours earlier, I would have been able to prevent so many people from being exposed to radiation." For years he encouraged nuclear power development in the area; now he has become a vocal critic. He explains that the government and the plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric Power Company, always told him, "’Don’t worry, Mayor. No accident could ever happen.’ Because this promise was betrayed, this is why I became anti-nuclear." '

On Hiroshima Day, 2010, Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps visited Futaba and Okuma, the host towns of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. As part of a nation-wide speaking tour organized by Green Action of Japan, Kevin met with the vice mayor of Futaba, and the mayor of Okuma. Kevin also spoke to a community meeting of citizens concerned about the risks at the nearby six atomic reactors. They wanted to learn about leaks of radioactivity from high-level radioactive waste storage pools in the U.S. The meetings, event, and speaking tour were part of a last gasp effort to prevent the loading of "Pluthermal" (mixed oxide plutonium, or MOX) nuclear fuel into reactors across Japan. However, just the next month, in September 2010, pluthermal was loaded by Tokyo Electric Power Company into Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3. It was just six months before the nuclear catastrophe began. Unit 3 suffered the largest exlosion of all, after its reactor melted down.