So no wonder they pounce upon this opportunity with a particularly polemical article.
Japan is the only country to have suffered a full-scale nuclear attack, and the only country to have suffered massive casualties from radioactive fallout.
It seems odd, then, that it is so addicted to nuclear energy, operating more reactors than any other country after the United States and France.
This is pathetic. If someone almost drowns in a swimming pool, it doesn't mean they stop drinking water, or if they get stabbed during a mugging, they suddenly decide to stop using cutlery (it might have a bit at first, but after a while, they'd be expected to get over it).
The Japanese are often at the forefront of technological progress. You don't reach this point by embracing CND superstitution and maintaining that because nuclear weapons brought horrible death and destruction upon your country, you cannot use a beneficial new technology that harnesses energy from the same source.
Then there's the use of the word "addicted". A more shameless use of negative connotations there is not. And only 30% of their electricity comes from nuclear power stations anyway, so their dependency is exaggerated (the Beeb exaggerating? Surely not!).
Every day in the North Sea, some platform spills a few barrels of hazardous chemicals overboard and at best gets a strongly worded letter from the DTI about it. Nobody else cares. But it seems the decades old habit of running around like a headless chicken at the mention of the words "nuclear" and "radioactive" lives on.
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