Plan for new nuclear power plant given up

Tohoku Electric Power Co. on December 24 announced that it gives up plans for the construction of a new nuclear power plant at Maki Town in Niigata Prefecture.

This is the first nuclear power plant construction planned as part of the basic national energy development program to be revoked.

Tohoku Electric came up with this plan in 1971 and the government in 1981 recognized it as part of the national energy program. However, in the 1996 town-wide referendum on building the nuclear power plant, the first such referendum in the country, a majority voted against.

At a news conference on December 24, Maki Town Mayor Sasaguchi Takaaki said, "We can now tackle ordinary town planning as we are released from the spell of a nuclear power plant". The mayor also said that the prefectural governor should have given up the plan in 1996 after the majority of the residents rejected the plan in the referendum.

The leader of the residents' association against the construction plan said, "After struggling for 32 years, we've got the plan withdrawn based on the nation's first plebiscite on nuclear energy."

The Japanese Communist Party Niigata Prefectural Committee chair commented on the withdrawal decision as a victory for the residents in the struggle to defend self-government that foiled the attempt of the government and the power company to impose a dangerous plant on the townspeople in the name of national policy.

The JCP prefectural committee chair called on the government to abandon the present national energy policy that heavily depends on nuclear power generation in which dangerous technologies are involved. (end)