Paper short abstract:

This presentation will focus on nuclear power plant visitor centers, not nuclear plants themselves. Based on exhaustive surveys for more than seven years, the author attempts to define the actual condition of them through studying their entertainment-focused exhibitions.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation, we will focus on nuclear power plant visitor centers (VCs), not nuclear plants themselves. Based on exhaustive surveys for more than seven years, the author attempts to define the actual condition of them through studying their entertainment-focused exhibitions from the viewpoint of media studies and cultural sociology.

Even after the Fukushima tragedy in 2011, sixteen nuclear power plants with forty-two commercial reactors still exist in Japan. Fifteen of them have one or two VCs each, and the total number is more than twenty-five. As compare with the number of VCs, there are very few previous studies on it in English as well as Japanese because they have never been regarded as an essential factor in the nuclear issues. However, and therefore, VCs may bring us new insights into the relationship between nuclear industry and the public.

Many VCs are open from morning till evening seven days a week. Every exhibition provides information about nuclear power plants aiming to increase the agreement, instead of people's anxieties and doubts. In other words, VCs are used as a political apparatus to push the nuclear power policy that existed before the incident in Fukushima.

Since 2012, the author visited every VC and learned their significant points. First, exhibitions in VCs resemble amusement parks, such as Disneyland or Universal Studios, with their high-tech amusement machines and robots. Second, these entertainment-focused exhibitions try to attract visitors' interests in various ways, but actually, there are only a few visitors. It is a contradictorily strange situation. Third, in addition to the regular VCs, there is another type of facilities, such as a day spa or a botanical garden, which can be regarded as an agent of the nuclear industry, even though it has no explicit connection to that. It suggests that such type of facilities aims for the acceptance of nuclear power generation through providing the public with pleasure, not knowledge. In short, this research will reveal that entertainment is one of the critical factors in understanding communication as well as the reality at nuclear power plant VCs in Japan.