Protest at Ooi Nuke Plant Peacefully Ends (for Now), Reactor 3 Restarted by Senior Vice Minister

It rained all day, on both the protesters and the police who had to guard the plant.

It is a little confusing, but from bits and pieces on Twitter, it looks the police, after trying to forcibly remove some protesters who entered the plant compound, decided to withdraw. The protesters, particularly the younger people who had taken turns to protest for 2 days and nights, decided to take a break and withdraw themselves. The protest ended peacefully. There is a report of one arrest, and an allegation that one protester was kicked by the police. If the latter is true, it should be all captured in the live video.

Here's one photo (by Megumi Ikeda) of the protest on July 1, when the rain was particularly heavy. Many in Japan sympathize with these young men who have to stand guard. They look miserable in the photo.

An interesting piece of information from Yasumi Iwakami, who went there on July 1: The riot police was not local but brought in from Aichi Prefecture, where the governor is determined to at least bury the ashes in landfills in Aichi after the disaster debris is burned elsewhere.

In addition to the US's ABC and Germany's ZDF, many Japanese TV stations and newspapers seem to have descended on Ooi-cho. Protesters note some of them:

Since it was pouring rain, the reporters from the major news outlets hired taxis to the protest site, and remained in the taxis to file their report on their PCs and take a nap. One of the protesters look at the taxi meters - 78,000 yen (US$976), 44,000 yen (US$550), 27,000 yen (US$338).

Osaka ABC (Asahi) TV's crew were later seen dumping the garbage in the garbage bins at a local convenience store. (The photos are from this tweet by the same person who read the taxi meters.)

In this age of the internet, social media and mobile smart phones, you can't get away with doing what you've been doing .

Jiji Tsushin (7/1/2012) reports that the Senior Vice Minister of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry arrived at the plant by sea, on a ferry boat, to bypass the protesters. Senior Vice Minister Makino was on hand to remove the control rods from the reactor core of Reactor 3 at the plant to start the chain reaction.

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