One of the reactors is in Niigata and the other is - hold your head up high Hokkaido! - in Tomari, some 60km or so from Sapporo.
Here in Hokkaido we'd rather feed our children to the Russians than turn off our reactors.
Yeah, how do you like them atoms!
In a wonderfully inane piece of PR, earlier this month the Hokkaido prefectural government organized an emergency evacuation drill from Tomari village. They evacuated the municipal workers at the town hall but the townspeople by and large refused to go as it was too feckin cold for such carry on.
Anyway the town employees were barked on to buses by self-important men with loudhailers and safety helmets, and driven to Kutchan some 20km away (which, by the by, has one of Hokkaido's best pizzerias).
Some 20km to the southeast away.
The prevailing winds in Hokkaido, particularly in winter, blow from the northwest to the southeast and, as events at Fukushima proved, 20km downwind from a nuclear reactor in the midst of a meltdown is not the ideal place to be.
Like I said, inane.
All this though is more about politics than safety per se. In April the reactor at Tomari will be switched off for a mandatory maintenance inspection. However, restarting the reactors (two others at the same plant have been shut down since last year) requires the official agreement of the local town authorities (as is the case throughout Japan. It is this refusal of agreement by these local towns that has suspended the other 52 reactors).
Getting their agreement requires (a) convincing the residents of Tomari that the reactors are safe; and (b) convincing them of the deft brilliance of their evacuation plan.
So, Buddha forbid there should be a large earthquake and tsunami off the west coast of Hokkaido, but if there should, don't worry, we'll put you all on buses, drive you down to Kutchan and hey, deep crust pepperoni specials all round!
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