Skip to content  Fukushima: Life and the Transnationality of
Radioactive Contamination via The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan
Focus   II Human requirements for safety versus economic health
Beyond the concerns of contamination from melted radioactive
fuel, public trust in the Government has also been a casualty of
the Fukushima disaster. The Noda government (2 September 2011 –
26 December 2012) equivocated over the plan by the Kan
administration to shut down nuclear power in Japan, and that
plan was then emphatically revoked by the Abe government from
December 2012. Instead, the latter, at least initially, vowed to
export, restart and accelerate nuclear power-related production,
reverting to and consolidating the LDP construction-state
formula to boost economic growth.  The post facto raising of
safety limits for radiation exposure on 19 April 2011 (from 1 to
20mSv) and reduction of the evacuation zone to less than 30 km
from the NPP, driven by an unapologetic ‘logic’ of optimal
growth, ignored the passage of r