Mayor of disaster-hit Minamisoma urges national gov't to learn from tragedy
Minamisoma Mayor Katsunobu Sakurai says Japan is moving in the wrong direction despite last year's twin natural disasters and nuclear crisis which he says provided the country with an excellent opportunity to change itself for the better.

"I seriously question whether politicians on the national level really understand the reality we are facing," he says, adding that the Fukushima tragedy could have been a golden opportunity and a turning point for Japan.

Nearly one year and eight months after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami triggered the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant near his city, Sakurai and his staff are still working nonstop.

He paid a visit to Tokyo recently to prod the central government to speed up the radiation decontamination process. But he says his talks with officials of the Reconstruction Agency and the Environment Ministry on Oct. 31 made little headway due to the difficulty in securing temporary storage facilities for contaminated soil before finding long-term storage facilities.

Sakurai is as frustrated with the protracted decontamination work in his city as the way the government, mass media and business leaders are treating the Fukushima nuclear disaster like a thing of the past and are supporting the restart of nuclear reactors.

When Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda signaled his intention in June to go along with the restarts of the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at the Oi Nuclear Power Plant, the mayor was meeting with residents living in temporary housing and evacuation centers.

"They asked me, 'Are we completely abandoned?'" he recalled.
Source: [link to mainichi.jp]

I agree with that, we may lose the last Chance to stop
the nuclear Madness but i am sure that this will not
come without any Side-Effects for the Japanese Hive!