Fishermen Fear That Nuclear Industry Will Despoil Japanese Peninsula : Environment: An $8.48-billion project to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and bury radioactive waste is under construction.

The nuclear industry has arrived in one of Japan’s least-developed areas, against the wishes of fishermen and others who say their rural peninsula will become a dump for radioactive garbage.

Local officials see the industry as a spur to economic growth.

Construction is under way at Rokkasho, a village in Aomori prefecture 360 miles north of Tokyo, on a $8.48-billion project to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and bury most of Japan’s low-level radioactive waste.

Nearby, a specially built port harbors the Mutsu, Japan’s only nuclear-powered ship, a $775-million government project that leaked radiation on its maiden voyage in 1974. It has been rebuilt and readied for a year of tests and experiments to begin this fall.

The plant, on more than 12,000 acres, is set against a pastoral landscape of mountains, lush vegetation and a dramatic Pacific coastline on the Shimokita Peninsula, one of this densely populated nation’s few areas of open space.

Economic prosperity is more on the minds of local officials than preserving an idyllic environment on their peninsula at the northern tip of Honshu, Japan’s main island.

Aomori prefecture, or state, is Japan’s second-poorest and struggled for decades to invigorate its economy.

It established a company in 1971 to lure private firms, but there were few takers until 1986, when major power companies won approval for the nuclear reprocessing and waste-storage facility. Two nuclear power reactors also are planned.

Since the explosion and fire in April, 1986, at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union, residents of the peninsula and anti-nuclear activists from around Japan have demonstrated against the project.

They say rich squid and scallop fishing grounds may be lost or contaminated by radioactive leaks, and that crops will be damaged.

Plans proceed for the development, which has prompted some to call Shimokita “the nuclear peninsula.”

The International Trade and Industry Ministry is studying safety aspects of the waste-storage site, where work already has begun. Spokesmen for the companies involved say they believe final approval will be granted soon.

In an effort to become energy-independent, Japan seeks to produce more electricity with nuclear power and reduce its reliance on oil, nearly all of which is imported.

Japan has 37 active nuclear power plants, which provide 28% of its electricity, and 12 under construction or planned. About $775 million a year is spent on research and development for advanced reactors, four times the amount in the United States.

“Outsiders are more concerned about the presence of the nuclear reprocessing facility here than the local people are,” said Michisaburo Hashimoto, president of the Rokkasho Village Assembly, whose members support the development 20 to 1.

Hashimoto, also head of the Rokkasho fishing industry association, suggested that a careful public relations effort by the companies involved in the project might be enough to ease local concerns.

Japan Nuclear Fuel Service Co. Ltd. and Japan Nuclear Fuel Industries Co. Ltd., the two companies involved, have brought people who live near a similar plant in France to Rokkasho to talk to residents. They also have organized hundreds of explanatory sessions for the more than 13,000 citizens.

Hiroshi Tsuchida, the village chief, was elected last year on a platform of freezing construction until it is certain the facility is safe.

“We’ll approve it if its safety can be assured,” he said.

Thirty fishermen in the small port of Tomari don’t believe him.

“To the village chief, to ‘freeze’ actually means to carefully promote the facility,” said Tomekichi Sakai, vice president of the fishermen’s Assn. to Protect the Fishing Grounds.

Sakai said many others oppose the nuclear operations but are reluctant to make their objections public.

He said some vocal opponents were denied jobs at construction sites and agricultural co-ops or transferred to outlying branch offices of the village government, and that votes were bought in last year’s election for village chief.

“The nuclear storage facility is the garbage dump of the nuclear industry, and this will be the place where it lands,” Sakai said. “We don’t think this should happen to anyone’s home, anywhere in the world.”

About $236 million is to be paid over 10 years as compensation to the village and surrounding area. About a quarter of that will be used to promote fishing and farming.

Jobs will be one benefit of the project. Of the 9,000 employees needed to build the reprocessing plant and uranium enrichment facilities, about 1,200 are expected to be local farmers, fishermen or recent high school graduates.

Fishermen in nearby Mutsu were paid $11.2 million because they lost part of their sole and squid fishing grounds to the home port, for which the nuclear ship is named. Part of the money paid for construction of an impressive harbor and a headquarters building for the fishermen.

The Mutsu’s history is one of mishaps and protests by communities that would not allow it in their ports after the reactor leaked on the maiden voyage. The leak was patched temporarily with a rice mixture prepared by the ship’s chef.

In 1988, the ship found a home at Mutsu when the government allocated $243 million to build the port.

Testing of its reactor began in March after 16 years of repairs and delays. The reactor has been shut down five times--the latest time in April, when operators discovered problems with a switch used to move its control rods.

Officials of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute said experiments would be conducted aboard the Mutsu off Aomori to obtain data for possible future development of nuclear-powered commercial vessels. They acknowledged that no one planned to build such a ship.