‘A form of self-destruction’: Japan weighs up plan to expand nuclear power

Tsuyoshi Suda, an anti-nuclear campaigner, with Onagawa nuclear power plant in the background. Suda says Japan’s plans to invest in nuclear power is ‘a form of self-destruction’. Photograph: Justin McCurry/The Guardian

Look carefully through the trees, and it is just possible to catch sight of Onagawa nuclear power plant from its visitors’ centre, perched on a hill surrounded by thick woods.

The plant’s supporters may have had its remote location, on a rugged peninsula in Japan’s north-east, in mind when they campaigned to bring nuclear power – and the promise of subsidies – to the town more than 40 years ago.