Hamaoka nuclear plant sits right atop the Nankai Trough megaquake zone. Its operator, Chubu Electric, shrank the key seismic-safety figure the plant is built against, and kept altering data even after regulators opened a probe, rewriting 69 of 225 datasets. On July 1 the NRA called it fabrication and a cover-up. The real test isn't the reactor's engineering; it's whether Japan's post-Fukushima watchdog has teeth.
On June 19, 2026, Iizaka Onsen in Fukushima launched a town-wide all-inclusive plan: one ¥25,000 passport for 16 inns, 13 baths, and 25 shops, with local sake, disc gyoza, and day-baths on the house. A look at a shrinking spa town's bet on a whole-district tourism model.
METI has unveiled Japan's first post-Fukushima numeric target for replacing nuclear reactors: up to 5 by the 2040s, 14 by the 2050s. Behind the decarbonization, energy-security and AI-demand drivers lies a harder question — regulatory capture, the Nuclear Village, and whether the regulator can be trusted.
The world's first factory built to mass-produce diamond semiconductors has opened in Okuma, the Fukushima town that hosts the wrecked Daiichi nuclear plant. How a material researchers chased for 40 years found its purpose in the place that needed it most.
