Former Japanese PM to testify on Fukushima disaster

Kan says pro-nuclear mentality to blame for Fukushima disaster

The grip of the nuclear lobby in Japan before the Fukushima disaster was akin to that of the military in the run-up to World War II, the prime minister at the time of last year’s catastrophe said Monday. At a parliamentary inquiry into the world’s worst atomic crisis in 25 years, Naoto Kan said the lion’s share of the blame for the tsunami-triggered disaster lay with the state for its unquestioning promotion of nuclear power. “The nuclear accident was caused by a nuclear plant which operated as national policy,” Kan said. “I believe the biggest portion of blame lies with the state,” said the former premier, who has come out strongly against the technology since the Fukushima disaster in March last year. But, he said, the “nuclear village”—a term critics often use to refer to the pro-atomic lobby of academics and power companies—had blinded the government in a way analogous to the rise of the powerful military elite that led Japan into the vicious colonialism that precipitated World War II. “Before the war, the military came to have a grip on actual political power… Similarly, plant operator TEPCO and FEPC (Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan) held sway over the nation’s nuclear administration over the past 40 years,” Kan said.