“If things had reached that level, not only would the public have had to face hardships but Japan’s very existence would have been in peril,” he later told Reuters.
As 160,000 people near Fukushima were evacuated from their homes, unsure if they would ever be able to return, the public in the earthquake-prone country turned firmly against nuclear power.
The previously pro-nuclear Kan immediately scrapped plans to build new atomic plants and began shutting down the country’s 50 reactors, a process that was completed in May 2012 under his successor, Yoshihiko Noda, also of the centre-left DPJ.
This
