Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe might have hoped that a 40-year-old mother-of-two with impeccable political pedigree might prove the acceptable face of nuclear power when he appointed her as industry minister. However, observers say Yuko Obuchi will have her work cut out convincing a public still badly scarred by the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster that it is safe to switch the country’s 48 atomic reactors back on.
“I too am raising children,” Obuchi told a press conference shortly after being made Japan’s first female minister of economy, trade and industry. “If people say they are worried, I think it is only natural... The central government must offer a full explanation to these sentiments.”
Naming a young mother to the job was “a cunning move by Mr Abe,” said Greenpeace Japan nuclear campaigner Kazue Suzuki, because the implicit message is that if someone who has children says nuclear power is safe, it sounds more credible.
Photo: AFP
Suzuki said people would not fall for such a ploy, and that if Obuchi wants to represent them, she should oppose nuclear restarts.
Obuchi, the daughter of former Japanese prime minister Keizo Obuchi, is a rising star in the Liberal Democratic Party and, having first been a minister at the age of 34, holds the record as the youngest woman ever to make the grade.
Since the disaster at Fukushima Dai-ichi, where tsunami knocked out cooling systems and sent reactors into meltdown, Japan’s nuclear stable has gone offline, taking with it more than a quarter of the country’s electricity supply.
That has left resource-starved Japan reliant on expensive fossil fuel imports, which has played havoc with the balance of payments and has pushed up prices for hard-pressed consumers.
At her inaugural press conference, Obuchi repeated the Abe administration line that policy remained “to reduce our reliance on nuclear plants by actively introducing renewable energy and thorough energy saving.”
Political talent notwithstanding, Obuchi is facing an uphill challenge, said Hikaru Hiranuma, a research fellow at The Tokyo Foundation, a think tank.
“She needs to address several difficult issues: safety at nuclear plants, preparations in case of an accident such as evacuation schemes and drills, compensation for accident victims and how to dispose of spent nuclear fuel,” he said. “It will be difficult for her to justify the government’s plan to continue using nuclear as an important source of power, unless she comes up with answers to these challenges.”
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday vowed that those behind bogus flood control projects would be arrested before Christmas, days after deadly back-to-back typhoons left swathes of the country underwater. Scores of construction firm owners, government officials and lawmakers — including Marcos’ cousin congressman — have been accused of pocketing funds for substandard or so-called “ghost” infrastructure projects. The Philippine Department of Finance has estimated the nation’s economy lost up to 118.5 billion pesos (US$2 billion) since 2023 due to corruption in flood control projects. Criminal cases against most of the people implicated are nearly complete, Marcos told reporters. “We don’t file cases for
RSS