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Yasushi Furukawa, the governor of Saga Prefecture, has wavered on whether to allow restarting two idle reactors at the Genkai Nuclear Power Plant. Seen as a bellwether for the rest of Japan, Mr. Furukawa had appeared to be moving toward allowing two of the reactors to restart but his decision was put off after revelations of a scandal over faked supportive e-mails sent by employees of the local Kyushu Electric Power Company posing as pro-nuclear citizens.

Then early last month, a third reactor shut down at Genkai after a worker mistakenly pulled out a cable from the unit’s condenser vacuum, causing the turbine to stop. The full details of the case have not been made public.

Kyushu Electric called it a small error and said that the automatic shutdown it triggered had gone smoothly. But some critics warned that the episode constituted a serious safety lapse and pointed to a more widespread problem at other plants. Since then, however, the utility has submitted — and Japan’s nuclear regulators have checked and approved — operation manuals for that reactor, paving the way for a restart. “If this is a decision reached by the central government after ample checks, we accept,” Mr. Furukawa told reporters Tuesday before the restart. The reactor at the Genkai plant was started up around 11 p.m. local time and was set to reach 100 percent generating capacity on Wednesday, Kyushu Electric said. But the reactor’s run will be brief: the same reactor must be stopped in mid-December for routine maintenance.

I worked at Hamaoka nuclear plant for a little over 5 years, but it was not the only time I’d worked at a power plant. Before Hamaoka, I spent my 30s working at a nearby nuclear plant for about 10 years in the 1980’s. At that time, I did not work at just one site but was moving from one plant to another to do regular maintenance work. Recently, that kind of people are called “Nuclear gypsies” with a bit of contempt and in that period I was living as one of those. Two years after I began the wandering life of a gypsy, I entered for the first time the core container of a steam generator. At the time I was working at the Genkai Nuclear Power Plant in Saga Prefecture. [Editor's note: In brief, there is a containment building within the plant. This houses the core and the steam generator.] The core is the part of the reactor where uranium fuel undergoes nuclear fission. It generates heat which is then passed to The steam generator which produces the steam to power the turbines which turn the generators elsewhere in the plant . The level of radioactivity in the containment building is very high compared to elsewhere [in the plant]. My job involved entering [the generator] and installing a robot monitor that would enable examination of whether there was any damage in the steam generator.

Actually what happened on the day was that another person replaced me and entered the steam generator to install the robot. After the installation was completed, there was a problem in that the robot wouldn’t respond and thus could not be operated from outside. There are many small holes in the walls of the central part of the steam generator and the six (I believe there were six) ‘legs’ of a robot, operated via a remote control, should be able to survey it through those holes. The employees in charge of supervising the installation concluded that there had been a problem in properly positioning the robot’s legs.

If the ‘legs’ are not completely inserted and the robot is left in that position, it could fall down at any time. If that happens, it spells the loss of a precision machine that's said to be worth several hundred million yen. That’s why I was sent in to enter the generator, on very short notice, to replace the robot back to its correct operating position before that happened. I started putting on the gear to enter the housing at a spot near the steam generator. Two workers helped me put it on. I was already wearing two layers of work clothes, and on top of those, I put on Tyvek protective gear made of paper and vinyl, and an airline respirator. Plus, I wrapped a lot of vinyl tape around my neck, my wrists and my ankles, to block even the slightest opening.

Once I finished putting on the protective gear — which honestly looks like an astronaut suit — I headed toward the housing. When I arrived at the area near the housing, two workers were waiting. They were employees of a company called the Japanese Society for Non-Destructive Inspection [JSNDI] and, to my surprise, despite the area being highly radioactive, they were wearing nothing but plain working clothes. They weren’t even wearing masks. The person who appeared to be in charge invited me over and, after a look at my eyes inside the mask, nodded his head a few times. I guess just looking into my eyes he was able to determine that I’d be able to handle working in the core.

He and I went to the steam generator together.

The base of the steam generator more or less reached my shoulder, at slightly less than 1.5m. At the bottom, there was a manhole. The manhole was open, and I immediately realized I would have to climb up into it.

The JSNDI employee in charge put his arm around me and together we approached the manhole. We looked over the edge and peered in. Inside was dark, and the air was dense and stagnant. It felt as though something sinister was living inside. My expression glazed over. A slight sensation of dread came over me. As I approached the manhole, I noticed a ringing in my ears and felt reluctant to go in. When I looked inside, I saw that the robot was attached to the wall indicated by the [JSNDI] employee. It was not properly attached, which is why I had been sent in.

The robot was square-shaped, 40 cm on each side and 20 cm deep. It was called a ‘spider robot’. The JSNDI employee put his face at the edge of the manhole, a third of his face peering in, and diligently explained what I had to do. There was little awareness at the time of the dangers to workers of radiation exposure, but even so I was concerned about the bold act of the employee, who looked inside the housing with me. He continued looking inside, unfazed, and I remember wondering why he wasn’t scared. I was almost completely covered while he wasn’t even wearing a mask. […]

I stood up, climbed the ladder, and pushed my upper body through the manhole. In that second, something grabbed at my head and squeezed hard. A pounding in my ear started right away.

One worker said that right after he entered a nuclear reactor he heard a noise like a moving crab. “zawa,zawa,zawa…” He said that he could still hear this noise after he finished the work. Even after the inspection work, when he went back home, he couldn’t forget that noise. The man ended up having a nervous breakdown. A writer who heard this story spoke to this man and wrote a mystery novel based on that experience. The title of the book is “The crab of the nuclear reactor”. It was published in 1981 and was very popular among us.

I never heard such a crab-like noise but I had the feeling that my head was being tightly constricted and deep in my ears I heard very high-tempo echoes like a sutra “gan, gan, gan”. When I entered the steam generator I stood up all of a sudden and my helmet hit the ceiling. So I had to bend my neck and hold both the arms of the robot in the darkish room. “OK” I screamed. So the robot was unlocked and its feet jumped out of the hole. The entire robot was not as heavy as I had thought. After I matched its feet position in the holes I gave them another OK sign and so it was positioned in the hole. In the dark, when I verified that all the feet had entered into the holes I gave them another OK and jumped out of the manhole. […]

Once outside,] I was almost in shock but looked at the alarm meter and saw that it had recorded a value equal to 180, when the maximum it can record is 200. In only 15 seconds, I was exposed to an unbelievably high level of radiation, 180 millirem. At that time the unit ‘millirem' was used while now it’s different. Now everybody uses sievert. That time I was in charge of an inspection work that lasted about 1 month. After that I worked in another nuclear reactor but even on the second time I couldn’t get through the fear and experienced the same creepy noise.

Transcript of the video.

(3)Hirotada Ohashi Professor in System Innovation University of Tokyo (at a panel discussion in Saga Pref. on Dec. 25, 2005, regarding using MOX fuel at Genkai Nuke Plant)

(2)Keiichi Nakagawa Associate Professor in Radiology The University of Tokyo Hospital (in Nippon TV "news every" on Mar. 29, 2011)

Well, half of adult males will die if they ingest 200 grams of salt. With only 200 gram. However, oral lethal dose of plutonium-239 is 32g. So, if you　compare the toxicity, plutonium, when ingested, is not very different from salt. If you inhale it into your lungs, the lethal dose will be about 10　milligram. This is about the same as potassium cyanide. That sounds scary but the point is plutonium is no different from potassium cyanide. Some toxins like botulism bacillus that causes food poisoning is much more dangerous. Dioxin is even more dangerous. So, unless you turn plutonium into powder and swallow it into your lungs.... MC: "No one would do that."

Besides, plutonium can be stopped by a single sheet of paper. Plutonium is made into nuclear fuels in facilities with good protective measures, so you don't need to worry.

For example, plutonium will not be absorbed from the skin. Sometimes you ingest it through food, but in that case, most of it will go out in urine or stools. The problem occurs when you inhale it. Inhaling plutonium is said to increase the risk of lung cancer. MC: "How will that affect our daily lives?" Nothing. MC: "Nothing?"

Nothing. To begin with, this material is very heavy. So, unlike iodine, it won't disperse in the air. Workers at the plant MAY be affected. So, I'd caution them to be careful. But I don't think the public should worry. For example, 50 years ago when I was born, the amount of plutonium was 1000 times higher than now. MC: "Oh, why?" Because of nuclear testing. So, even if the amount has now increased somewhat, in fact it's still much less than before. However, if it is released into the ocean through exhaust water, that's a problem. Once outside, plutonium hardly decreases.

MC: "It takes 24,000 years before it dicreases to half, doen't it?" That's right. So, in that sense, plutonium is problematic. But then again, there will be no effect on the public. I think you can rest easy. MC: "Let me summarize. Plutonium won't be absorbed from the skin. If it's ingested through food, it will go out of the body in urine. If it's inhaled, it may increase the risk of lung cancer. But since it's very heavy, we don't need to worry."

I'd like to point out two things. What happens in a [nuclear] accident depends entirely on your assumptions. If you assume everything would break and all the materials inside the reactor would be completely released into the environment, then we would get all kinds of result. But it's like discussing "what if a giant meteorite hit?" You are talking about the probability of an unlikely event. You may think it's a big problem if an accident occurs at the reactor, but the nuclear experts do not think Containment Vessels will break. But the anti-nuclear people will say, "How do you know that?" Hydrogen explosions will not occur and I agree, but their argument is "how do you know that?"

So, right now in the safety review, we're assuming every technically possible situation. For example, such and such parts would break, plutonium would be released like this, then it would be stopped here...something like that. We set the hurdle high and still assume even the higher-level radiation would be released and make calculations. This may be very difficult for you to understand this process, but we do. To figure out how far contamination might spread, we analyze based on our assumption of what could occur. However, the public interpret it as something that will occur. Or the anti-nuclear people take it in a wrong way and think we make such an assumption because it will happen. We can't have an argument with such people.

Another thing is the toxicity of plutonium. The toxicity of plutonium is very much exaggerated. Experts dealing with health damage by plutonium call this situation "social toxicity." In reality, there's nothing frightening about plutonium. If, in an extreme case, terrorists may take plutonium and throw it into a reservoir, which supplies the tap water. Then, will tens of thousands of people die? No, they won't. Not a single one will likely die. Plutonium is insoluble in water and will be expelled quickly from the body even if it's ingested with water.

So, what Dr. Koide is saying is if we take plutonium particles one by one, cut open your lungs and bury the plutonium particles deep in the lungs, then that many people will die. A pure fantasy that would never happen. He's basically saying we can't drive a car, we can't ride a train, because we don't know what will happen. MC: "Thank you very much."

See, we've been duped. Plutonium is not dangerous! We'd better ask these three to drink it up to prove it's not dangerous. Then we will feel safe, won't we? Please doctors, would you do it for us?

Indeed, except in the three metropolitan areas around Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, where major companies are concentrated, the utility companies are usually the largest corporations in terms of gross sales in their respective regions. One notable exception is Chugoku Electric Power Co., whose turnover lags that of Mazda Motor Corp. headquartered in Hiroshima.

The typical power structure in each of Japan's 47 prefectures is an "iron triangle" composed of the prefectural government, regional banks and local newspapers. Beneath this triangle are groups of corporations, such as general contractors, that are linked to politicians. It is noteworthy that, except in Hokkaido and Okinawa, the regional electric company transcends this powerful triangle because it monopolizes the power supply in two or more prefectures. For example, Tohoku Electric Power Co. covers seven prefectures in northeastern Japan, and even Hokuriku Electric Power Co., with sales of less than ¥500 billion a year, serves three prefectures. This fact has led the utilities to think that they are above the prefectural governments.

In prefectures where nuclear power plants are located, tense relationships exist between governors and power companies. Governors often try to prevent power companies from doing as they like concerning the operation of nuclear power plants. At the same time, governors want to avoid confrontations with companies because of their vote-generation potential.

A bitter confrontation took place in the gubernatorial election in Fukushima Prefecture in 1988. In his first bid to become prefectural governor, Eisaku Sato (not the former prime minister by the same name) faced a candidate backed by Tokyo Electric Power Co. After Sato won, severe conflicts ensued between him and Tepco, which has nuclear power stations in Fukushima Prefecture that supply electricity to the areas it serves. Sato sought to impose rigid conditions on the operation of the Fukushima Nos. 1 and 2 nuclear power plants and on the use of mixed oxide fuel, which contains plutonium, amid local residents' fears of nuclear power generation.

Although Sato also won subsequent elections, he resigned following his arrest in 2006 in a scandal related to dam construction. Tepco did not come out as the ultimate winner either, as its ranking officials were investigated over their alleged involvement in the same scandal. Confrontations between power companies and governors have various roots, but the main one is that the former are far more powerful than the latter. This overwhelming influence stems primarily from the enormous investments that power companies make to build or renew facilities to generate, transform or distribute electricity. Such investments have been necessary to keep up with the growing demand for electricity.

During the peak year of 1993, capital investment by Japan's 10 electric power companies exceeded ¥5 trillion, with ¥1.7 trillion coming from Tepco alone. In 2009, Tohoku Electric Power Co., which serves the seven prefectures in the Tohoku region, invested ¥274.7 billion, which accounted for 24.4 percent of total capital investment in the region, according to statistics compiled by the Development Bank of Japan.

Comparable figures were 25.5 percent from Kyushu Electric Power, which serves seven prefectures on Kyushu; 22.5 percent from Chugoku Electric Power, serving the five prefectures in the western part of Honshu; and 27.6 percent from Shikoku Electric Power, which supplies power to the four prefectures on Shikoku.

Although power companies possess undisputed influence, the way they have accumulated it is unusual in the history of Japan's postwar economic development. By contrast, companies in the steel, oil, electronics, precision-machine, automobile, shipbuilding and other industries have had to battle it out for market share domestically before gaining international competitiveness.

Power utilities help politicians by providing them with campaign funds; METI helps maintain the industry's regional monopolies; and the power companies provide high-paying positions into which former METI bureaucrats "parachute." The politicians and the bureaucrats jointly promote nuclear power generation, which helps protect the vested interest of the power companies.

Opposition Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Taro Kono argued that the utilities can't be trusted without a complete overhaul of their corporate governance, including the appointment of external board members. The symposiums in question were on the use of uranium-plutonium mixed-oxide fuel at Kyushu Electric Power Co.'s Genkai plant in October 2005, Shikoku Electric Power Co.'s Ikata plant in June 2006, Chubu Electric Power Co.'s Hamaoka plant in August 2007, and Hokkaido Electric Power Co.'s Tomari plant in 2008. NISA also was found to have been involved in briefing sessions about the quake resistance of Tohoku Electric Power Co.'s Onagawa plant in October 2006. Mr. Nishiyama was replaced as NISA spokesman in June following media reports that he was having an extramarital affair while serving as the public face of the ministry during the Fukushima Daiichi disaster between March and June. He continued to work at the ministry.