Millions of Japanese signed a petition that was handed to the government Friday urging it to abandon nuclear power in the wake of last year's disaster, according to dpa. Nobel literature laureate Kenzaburo Oe and other intellectuals handed over some of the roughly 7.5 million signatures gathered by the citizens' campaign group Sayonara Nukes Organization to Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura, and requested that the government fundamentally change its nuclear policy. The group also expressed its opposition to the restart of idled reactors 3 and 4 at Oi Nuclear Power Plant on the Sea of Japan coast, which is operated by Kansai Electric Power Co. All of Japan's 50 nuclear reactors have been shut down for maintenance and repairs over the past year, but power companies have been unable to reactivate them because of public fears after the nation's worst atomic disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The plant, run by Tokyo Electric Power Co, went into meltdown after it was hit by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Tens of thousands of people have been forced to leave nearby areas.
