Japanese Island’s Activists Resist Nuclear Industry’s Allure

When the boats came to alpha assignment on a planned nuclear ability bulb aloof off this tiny island, an crumbling fisherwoman called Tamiko Takebayashi agitated out a affecting protest: she lashed herself to the dock. The move, while evocative of a Greenpeace action, was awful abnormal in chaste Japan. But it was emblematic of the islanders’ about three-decade action adjoin the admiral arrayed adjoin them — their own government and the nuclear industry it has championed.The sea is our livelihood,” said Ms. Takebayashi, 68, whose ancestors has fished for sea bream, mackerel and added bounded delicacies for generations. “We will never let anyone asperse it.The news of Iwaishima’s action has become article of a criterion in Japan, abnormally amid those who feel afraid in the deathwatch of the adversity at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear bulb for accepting accustomed decades of government assurances that nuclear ability was safe. And because the affairs to body the bulb are afterpiece to approval than any others in Japan, abounding antinuclear activists see the island’s attempt as their best achievement of catastrophe the country’s assurance on nuclear energy.