{"id":1326,"date":"2012-11-20T12:08:53","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T03:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kiyoshikurokawa.com\/en\/2012\/11\/20\/interview-with-dr-kurokawa-former-chair-of-the-national-diet-of-japan-fukushima-nuclear-accident-ind\/"},"modified":"2014-10-01T09:46:02","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T00:46:02","slug":"interview-with-dr-kurokawa-former-chair-of-the-national-diet-of-japan-fukushima-nuclear-accident-ind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kiyoshikurokawa.com\/en\/2012\/11\/interview-with-dr-kurokawa-former-chair-of-the-national-diet-of-japan-fukushima-nuclear-accident-ind.html","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Dr. Kurokawa, former chair of the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (Tokyo-shinbun 2012\/11\/8)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why is the &#8216;Nuclear Village&#8217; being revived? According to Dr. Kurokawa, professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies and the former chair of the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC), \u201cThe biggest issue is that due to weak Legislative branch of the Government, the Administrative branch of the Government is not being kept in check.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlthough it is the job of the Legislative branch of the government to develop policies, the bureaucracy is still doing this. Meanwhile, the Administrative branch by the bureaucracies will not acknowledge that it has made mistakes. In these circumstances, there is no way that policies will change by Ministrial silos, even after the Fukushima accident.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Kurokawa takes the view that \u201cwhen the government, TEPCO, scholars, and the mainstream media colluded and declared that the nuclear plant did not undergo a meltdown, it effectively signalled the \u201cmeltdown\u201d of all authority. A country that was supposed to be an economically and technologically advanced was seen as incredibly irresponsible and our nation lost the world\u2019s trust.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>How can this trust be regained? Dr. Kurokawa\u2019s answer is the \u201cstrengthening of the functions of the legislative branch,\u201d which specifically means the establishment of independent committees like NAIIC and discussion of important policies by such committees. He explains, \u201cNAIIC is the first case of the legislative branch functioning successfully. Because it was independent from the government and electric power companies, it was able to maintain credibility. When making important decisions, such as how to deal with the problem of spent fuel, such a commission should be established as necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In its report, NAIIC presented seven recommendations to the National Diet. Regarding the establishment of a new regulatory agency, the report recommends, \u201cthe Diet should set up a committee through which the agency will be monitored\u201d and \u201cthe agency must have a high level of independence and strong sense of responsibility regarding its duty.\u201d However, Dr. Kurokawa comments, \u201cI can\u2019t say that is taking place right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe implementations of the recommendations of this Commission will be the first step in making true democracy work in this country. In the next general election, the people must confront candidates as to whether they have the intention of implementing the recommendations.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why is the &#8216;Nuclear Village&#8217; being revived? According to Dr. Kurokawa, professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies and the former chair of the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC), \u201cThe biggest issue is that due to weak Legislative branch of the Government, the Administrative branch of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kiyoshikurokawa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kiyoshikurokawa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kiyoshikurokawa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kiyoshikurokawa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kiyoshikurokawa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kiyoshikurokawa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3640,"href":"https:\/\/kiyoshikurokawa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions\/3640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kiyoshikurokawa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kiyoshikurokawa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kiyoshikurokawa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}