Tens of thousands of people protested against nuclear power outside Japan's parliament, the same day a proponent of using renewable energy to replace nuclear following the Fukushima disaster was defeated in a local election.The protesters, including old-age pensioners, pressed up against a wall of steel thrown up around the parliament building shouting, "We don't need nuclear power" and other slogans.
On the main avenue leading to the assembly, the crowd broke through the barriers and spilled onto the streets, forcing the police to bring in reinforcements and deploy armoured buses to buttress the main parliament gate.- The protest came as results from rural Yamaguchi showed that Tetsunari Iida, an advocate of renewable energy to replace nuclear power, lost his bid to become governor to a rival backed by the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which promoted nuclear power during its decades in power, Kyodo news agency reported, citing exit polls.
Iida, who wants Japan to exit nuclear power by 2020, had promised to revitalise Yamaguchi's economy with renewable energy projects and opposed a project by Chubu Electric Power Co to build a new nuclear plant in the town of Kaminoseki.- Energy policy has become a major headache for Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, who less than a year in office is battling to hold his Democratic Party together before a general election due next year but which could come sooner.
- Weekly protests outside Noda's office have grown in size in recent months, with ordinary salary workers and mothers with children joining the crowds.
On Sunday, the protesters - holding candles as darkness fell on the hot summer day - took their demonstration to parliament.Chanting "oppose restarts", they pressed against steel barriers erected around the parliament building, where thousands of police were deployed to keep the peace.
Many of the crowd had marched past the headquarters of Tokyo Electric Power Co, the company at the heart of the worst nuclear crisis since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
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