In a Quiet Fishing Town, Japan Steps Toward a New Nuclear Era
More than a decade after the Fukushima disaster, the country faces a stark choice: build anew or risk losing the expertise needed to sustain the industry.
The Kashiwazaki Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant in Kashiwazaki, Niigata, Japan.
Photographer: Yuichi Yamazaki/AFP/Getty Images
On a crisp November afternoon in Japan’s coastal Fukui prefecture, two men in hardhats stand on a web of scaffolding, drilling a small hole into the ground below. Some 40 reporters, many clutching cameras, crowd behind orange-and-black fencing marked “authorized personnel only.”
Aside from the soft puttering of a generator, the site is quiet. The workers, dressed in dark coveralls and rubber boots, watch as the drill bores more than 60 meters (197 feet) beneath the surface. It looks like a routine construction site, but the unusually heavy media presence suggests something larger is at stake — the future of Japan’s nuclear industry.