Incumbent Haruo Kataoka shakes hands with a resident on the first day of the mayoral election campaign period on Oct. 21, 2021, in the Hokkaido town of Suttsu. (Mainichi/Taichi Kaizuka)

       SAPPORO -- A controversial bibliographic survey as part of a selection process for a final disposal site for high-level radioactive waste will likely continue in a Hokkaido town after the incumbent who led the municipality's application for the research beat the candidate who called for the scrapping of the plan in the Oct. 26 mayoral election.

       Incumbent Haruo Kataoka, 72, was reelected for the sixth time as mayor of the Hokkaido town of Suttsu, overcoming the challenge by former municipal assembly member Yoshiki Echizenya, 70. With an 84.07% voter turnout, Kataoka won 1,135 votes while Echizenya received 900. This was the first local election in which the head of a local government won the confidence of the people after the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan (NUMO) launched documentary research into the possibility of creating a nuclear waste final disposal site in the area.

       The survey is the first in a three-step procedure to select a disposal site based on the Designated Radioactive Waste Final Disposal Act. NUMO will spend about two years investigating for any active faults using academic papers and other documents, and analyze if the land is suitable. Mayor Kataoka announced in August 2020 that he was considering applying for the research, saying that the town would receive subsidies from the central government and thus could expect to improve its finances. The town then applied for the survey two months later. The country's first bibliographic research began that November in Suttsu and the neighboring village of Kamoenai.

       Elsewhere, in April 2007, the Kochi Prefecture town of Toyo in west Japan withdrew its application for the research after the candidate opposing the plan was elected in the mayoral race. In the Oct. 26 Suttsu mayoral election, the losing candidate Echizenya also gained support to a certain extent, revealing once again that people have a strong sense of resistance against nuclear waste which is said to take 100,000 years to become harmless.

       After securing his win on the night of Oct. 26, Kataoka said, "I've felt that the nuclear issue is indeed a difficult one. Regardless of the pros and cons (from the townspeople over the survey) I want to make a decision after carefully listening to their opinions ahead of the general outline survey (the second step of the procedure)." Echizenya, meanwhile, commented that he felt he "didn't know what to say when considering Suttsu's future."

       The past four Suttsu mayoral elections saw no contest with just Kataoka running, but this year Echizenya challenged the incumbent for the first time in 20 years.

       (Japanese original by Junji Takayama and Yui Takahashi, Hokkaido News Department)

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