Why Japan embraced nuclear power after suffering the atomic bomb

Japan has been there before. And that’s what makes the growing radiation threat from the Fukushima Daiichi plant as mysterious as it is disturbing: Why did a country that suffered the utter horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki so willingly give itself over to nuclear power?

Japan’s 55 reactors produce nearly 30 per cent of the country’s electricity, and the long-term strategy before the Fukushima disaster was to push that figure to 50 per cent by 2030. Almost alone among its political allies, whose ambitions were reined in by the catastrophes at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the land that experienced the atomic bomb has chosen to expand its network of nuclear plants, many of them knowingly built in seismic zones.

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/asia-pacific/why-japan-embraced-nuclear-power-after-suffering-the-atomic-bomb/article1945020/