CHAPTER 2
Japan’s Energy Policy and Community Power
Movement After the Fukushima Nuclear
Accident
Koichi Hasegawa
“The Happy Land” Suddenly
Turned to “the Land of Tragedy”
The earthquake of magnitude 9.0 and the tsunami disaster on March
11, 2011, is the largest disaster in Japan since World War II. More than
18,000 people died or are still missing. This is the third largest disaster
in modern Japanese history after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923,
which resulted in around 105,000 dead or missing, and the Great Meiji
Sanriku Tsunami of 1896, when around 22,000 died or went missing
(Samuels 2013, p. 47).
This disaster brought the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which is the
second largest nuclear accident in the world after the Chernobyl disaster
in 1986. Among the six nuclear power units of the Fukushima Daiichi
Nuclear Power Station operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company
(TEPCO), Units 1–3 were in operation, and Units 4–6 were out of
K. Hasegawa (B)
Tohoku University, Miyagi, Japan
© The Author(s) 2021
P. Midford and E. Moe (eds.), New Challenges and Solutions
for Renewable Energy, International Political Economy Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54514-7_2
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