Last Friday, Prime Minister Kan urged the Chubu Electric Power Company/中部電力 to shut down the Hamaoka nuclear power plant 浜岡原発 until stronger defenses against earthquakes and tsunamis could be built there. Then, the day before yesterday, the company complied with the request. To be honest, I didn't pay much attention to nuclear power plants before the Fukushima disaster. Still, I knew how controversial the Hamaoka plant has been for many years. Actually, it's been said that the area where the Hamaoka plant is located has the highest chance of being hit by a massive earthquake in the near future. On top of that, Shinkansen bullet trains -- important transportation to connect three major cities:Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya--run within 20 kilometers of the plant. A major highway that connects these three cities is also in these area. Given that, there is no wonder that the Hamaoka plant has been controversial.
Since the shutdown of the Hamaoka plant was announced, many local people living near the plant have shown mixed responses to it. The crippled Fukishima nuclear power plant seems to have inevitably heightened their concerns about the safety of the Hamaoka plant. From this viewpoint, the shutdown would relieve them and be good news for them. On the other hand, however, there are their concerns about their local economy and their city's finances. As a matter of fact, they and their city have been depending on the plant to varying degrees for many years - like other cities where nuclear power plants are located.
Towns, cities and prefectures where nuclear power plants are located can receive a large amount of central government subsidies and taxes related to the plants. Near nuclear power plants, there are good public facilities built with the subsidies. Since some of them look out of scale with what the residents really need, the local governments which built them are sometimes criticized for not making effective use of the subsidies. I've heard that a town near the crippled Fukushima plant has been suffering from financial difficulties mainly because the public facilities built with these subsidies requires high maintenance and operation costs. It's been said that the town made decisions to build them without due deliberation. Other than this, it's reported that another city where a nuclear power plant is located has already requested an electric power company to build two more reactors in the plant in order to improve its finance.
As you can see, once local governments start relying on subsidies, taxes and businesses relating to nuclear power plants, they won't be able to get out of the dependence. Because of the addiction, nuclear power plants are expressed in such a way that they are like drugs , and the phrase "nuclear power plant addiction/原発中毒" is used.
