When told by local television crews that the white buildings on the other side of the harbour house a nuclear power plant, and that an accident there killed four people this month, some holidaymakers decide to pack up and leave. Others shrug it off. As one of the teenage surfers says, it's too beautiful a day to worry. Besides, he says, aren't nuclear power plants extremely safe?

Such blind public faith in nuclear power has allowed Japan to embrace the energy source at a time when many nations are reconsidering the wisdom of using it. Japan operates 52 plants around the country, providing roughly a third of the country's electric power. Four more are under construction. While the plants all use conventional uranium, there are plans to burn mixed uranium- plutonium fuel in several, including the one at Mihama.

There are also plans to continue with a fast-breeder reactor programme which would use pure plutonium instead of uranium. Inside these reactors, the plutonium multiplies, holding out the prospect that Japan could have its own cheap, renewable energy source, a dream it has held since the late 19th century.

But the dream is turning into a nightmare, and opposition to nuclear power is growing. Since 1999 a spate of accidents, scandals and cover-ups have shaken public confidence. In late September 1999, anti-nuclear activists in Japan and England discovered data relating to a shipment of mixed uranium-plutonium fuel manufactured at Sellafield that had been falsified by staff at British Nuclear Fuels. The fuel was to be used in a plant near Mihama and operated by the same utility, Kansai Electric Power Co (Kepco). Despite warnings by Japanese activists that there was something strange about the data, BNFL and Kepco insisted there was nothing to worry about.

Only when BNFL admitted the falsification was use of the fuel cancelled.

As anti-nuclear activists and Kepco were fighting over the meaning of numbers on a spreadsheet, Japan's worst nuclear accident occurred at Tokaimura, near Tokyo, on 30 September 1999. Two workers at the plant died when they disregarded safety procedures and dumped a large quantity of uranium into a settling basin. The uranium reached critical mass, causing an explosion. Tens of thousands of people in the area were quarantined and checked for radiation.

Tokaimura was the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. It was also a turning point for Japan's anti-nuclear movement. Tokaimura, the BNFL scandal and, in 2002, scandals at Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) in which the utility admitted it had covered up structural damage at its nuclear power plants, have led to a loss of public trust.

In 1990 a government-sponsored survey on public attitudes to nuclear power showed that 55 per cent favoured the active or cautious development of nuclear power plants, with about 38 per cent against.

Just over a decade later, after the Tepco scandal, only 19 per cent of Japanese favoured continued development of nuclear plants, while nearly two-thirds opposed further development or wanted Japan to stop nuclear power generation entirely.

'Public trust in nuclear power is eroding annually and will continue to erode unless the Japanese government and industry changes the way it operates,' said Kyoto-based Aileen Mioko Smith, one of the key activists involved in bringing the BNFL affair to light.

One of the main organisations in the battle against nuclear power is the Tokyo-based NGO Citizens' Nuclear Information Centre. Earlier this year, reflecting growing divisions within the Japanese government about the wisdom of nuclear power, the Japan Atomic Energy Commission appointed the centre's co-director, Hideyuki Ban, to a committee planning the country's long-term nuclear energy programme.

The anti-nuclear lobby also found unexpected support from members of the ruling Liberal Democratic party known as the Young Turks who, unlike their elders, have no ties to the nuclear power lobby and are fed up with the scandals. Led by Taro Kono, the son of a former foreign minister, they are publicly questioning the need for nuclear power and are calling for a moratorium on certain projects, such as the operation of a plant at Rokkasho, in northern Japan, that is supposed to begin reprocessing spent nuclear fuel in 2006.

Towns throughout Japan, hoping for government aid to prop up local economies, have put their names forward as candidates to host nuclear waste facilities. In the past year mayors and a few business officials in half a dozen towns had debated allowing high-level nuclear waste to be buried in their backyards. But, despite the lure of money and jobs, citizens have opposed their efforts.

One town unlikely to get a nuclear waste dump is Mihama. While the mayor approved, the government of Mihama's Fukui prefecture has said it will block such facilities, giving residents one less thing to worry about.

The future must be nuclear,

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