Plan to N-shrine reactors for millennia

By EDAN CORKILL
Staff writer

What do nuclear power plants and Shinto shrines have in common?



Long-term plan: Architect Katsuhiro Miyamoto's novel means of safely mothballing the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, and the highly radioactive fuel likely to remain there even after the current crisis is resolved, is to turn it into a Shinto shrine — seen here in a model and a computer rendering. KATSUHIRO MIYAMOTO



For a start, they tend to be hidden from view — the former in remote coastal locations, the latter behind stands of trees or atop hills or mountains. They are also sources of untold energy — one electrical, the other spiritual.

And if a reactor at a nuclear power plant melts down, another similarity emerges: They are expected to be preserved for thousands of years.

It is this latter similarity that sparked the imagination of Hyogo Prefecture-based architect Katsuhiro Miyamoto, who has recently made an extraordinary proposition about what to do with the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, which suffered three reactor meltdowns following the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011.

The 51-year-old who, in 1996, represented Japan at the "Olympics of architecture" — as the Venice Biennale is known — has suggested erecting giant shrine-style thatched roofs over each of the crippled reactor buildings — and so creating what he dubs "The Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant Shrine." This, he tells The Japan Times, will "pacify a malevolent god."

As yet, no long-term strategy for ...