67% of hibakusha believe Japan should reduce nuclear power: survey+

OSAKA, July 30 Kyodo -
Some 67.1 percent of survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 believe Japan should reduce the number of nuclear power stations, according to results released Saturday of a Kyodo News survey taken after the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster.
Although many have campaigned for years for the abolition of nuclear weapons, the so-called ''hibakusha'' have avoided discussing the pros and cons of nuclear power due to the potentially divisive nature of the issue. But the crisis has caused more than 40 percent to become opponents of nuclear power, the survey showed.
The questionnaire was distributed in June to July to 2,400 hibakusha across Japan via the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization and other bodies, and 1,006 responded.
It found about 73 percent of the respondents are now against the ''peaceful use'' of nuclear power.
But 11.5 percent support the peaceful use of nuclear power, saying doing so is inevitable for industrial development as there seems to be no prospect for employing alternative energy sources capable of generating enough power in the near future to replace nuclear plants.
With nearly 66 years having passed since the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, most respondents to the survey are now in their 70s and 80s.
The country's worst nuclear crisis erupted in the wake of the massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami and continues at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant 220 kilometers northeast of Tokyo.
In April, Japan raised the severity level of the nuclear crisis from an initially reported 4 on an international scale to the maximum 7, equivalent to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
The survey showed 9.6 percent of responding hibakusha believe Japan should maintain its 54 existing commercially run nuclear reactors, while 1.9 percent said the number ought to be increased.
Some 7.1 percent said they could not say what should be done.
Japan began operating commercial reactors in 1966 and currently has 54 commercial reactors around the country, which were producing about a third of the nation's electric power prior to the March 11 disaster.
As to whether the world is moving toward abolishing nuclear weapons, 30.5 percent said it is not moving much in that direction and 24.9 percent said not at all.
Those responses come against a background of what some said was growing hope in Japan over nuclear abolition, following U.S. President Barack Obama's pledge made in Prague in 2009 to create a world free of nuclear weapons, which led to his winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
In another hopeful development, U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Roos last year attended the Aug. 6 ceremony in Hiroshima to mark the 1945 atomic attack, becoming the first U.S. government representative to ever do so.
But in reality, there has not been much progress toward abolishing nuclear weapons, with the revelation earlier this month that the United States had conducted its third subcritical nuclear test under the Obama administration.
A 69-year-old male hibakusha from Hiroshima said in the survey, ''I had a hope (for Obama), but now feel betrayed. It was too early to give him the Nobel prize.''
A 72-year-old man, who has been gathering signatures for a petition calling for nuclear abolition, said, ''I have been doing this for a long time, believing that what I can do may be small but not zero. But now I feel unrelieved.''