WIT Life #174: Saga Setting the Nuclear Standard
Earthquake Tsunami, Translating/Interpreting, Uncategorized, WIT Life, Writers 
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
Yesterday’s NYT had an interesting article about Japan’s nuclear policy going forward. Increasingly local governments are being depended on to determine this, though they believe these are decisions the central government should be making. Currently the debate is taking place in the rural prefecture of Saga located in Kyushu, where battle lines are drawn between nuclear power plant operators who insist their facilities are safe and wary citizens. In the middle is Saga governor Yasushi Furukawa who is being looked to for approval or rejection of restarting two of the four reactors at the plant. After being shut down for routine maintenance, the question is whether they should be turned back on or not.
Out of Japan’s total of 54 reactors 35 are now offline, whether due to earthquake/tsunami damage or maintenance (there is a legal requirement that reactors must be shut down every 13 months for this purpose). The mayor of the city where the plant is located has already given his approval for restart, and Furukawa is seen to be setting the trend for governors throughout the country. Many of these leaders face the same decision of whether to restart reactors in their prefectures, so close attention will be paid to the outcome in Saga.
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