Are Reactors Like Casinos? A Culture of Dependency in Japan

Abstract

Japanese communities with nuclear reactors have the reactors because they applied for them, and they applied for them for the money. Among Japanese municipalities, they were some of the most dysfunctional before the reactors had even arrived. Communities depend on young families for the social capital that holds them intact, and these were the communities from which those families had already begun to leave. After the reactors arrived, young families continued to disappear. Unemployment rose. Divorce rates climbed. And in time, the communities had little -- other than reactor-revenue -- to which they could turn.